To my pro-Israel friends, to my pro-Palestinian friends

We cannot buy Palestinian liberation with Jewish blood. And we must not buy Israeli security with Palestinian blood, writes RAPHAEL MORRIS.

The slaughter of innocent civilians is an atrocity. It is ALWAYS an atrocity. No matter the allegiance of the perpetrators or the victims. No matter how noble the cause.

The massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas is an atrocity. And the bombing of innocent Palestinians by Israel is also an atrocity.

To my non-Jewish friends who believe they are witnessing the heroic liberation of Palestine from occupation: you have been misled. Yes, the Israeli occupation of Palestine is real, and a great injustice. And let us grant for the sake of argument that violent resistance is sometimes appropriate in the service of liberation from oppressors, and that the liberation of Palestine may even be a cause that warrants violent resistance. Nevertheless, to portray current events as a blow for justice is a profound and dangerous error.

There are two key reasons for this. First, the massacre of Israeli civilians has no plausible chance of actually bringing an end to the occupation. On the contrary, it will lead to destructive and bloody reprisals. We Jews have seen this from the other side, when we took up arms against Rome two thousand years ago, and they retaliated by committing genocide. We are already seeing this. The Israeli government has made it clear that they are prepared to burn Gaza to stop Hamas. The blood of Jews cannot buy the freedom of Palestinians. And those who insist that it will are either lying, delusional, or victims of propaganda.

Second, even if the actions of Hamas did indeed advance the cause of Palestinian liberation, that alone would not justify them. War is too unpredictable for utilitarianism. And the justice of a cause cannot become an excuse to indulge our bloodlust. There must be lines that are not crossed, no matter how justified the struggle. The Haitian Revolution is an exemplar of justified violent resistance; who can deny the right of enslaved persons to overthrow their oppressors and claim their freedom by force? But the massacres of families, the torture and murder of thousands of innocents in the wake of Haitian independence remains an atrocity. A justified insurrection does not license the acts of terror we are seeing committed against civilians.