The arguments from both sides bear disturbing similarities. Both the right and the far-left deprive individuals of any sense of agency. They depict Palestinians as robots motored by incitement and settlers as people who blindly risk their lives in the service of ideology or, worse, as mere pawns of governmental policies. Both sides generalize about an entire community on the basis of one individual or a handful of individuals.

Both sides bandy about terms like “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity,” and each side applies the term only for its own use. Both sides have abdicated any pretense to a sense of absolute morality and, in this relativistic moral abyss, some mothers are more worthy of life than others, some children are purer victims than others, some civilians are entitled to safety and others aren’t.