Over the last decade I've written more than 500 opinion articles, but, to the best of my recollection, I've never written a column on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The reasons are simple: First, it's an immensely complex issue about which I have very little actual knowledge (it's unfortunate this fact doesn't deter pundits more often).

Second, opinions on the subject tend to be so bitterly entrenched that the only people who are open to any kind of persuasion on the issues involved are people who don't care enough about the subject to have already developed a position.

Third, this is a subject on which there is an amazingly uniform consensus among the American political elite, which as a practical matter makes public opinion on the subject almost irrelevant.

Glenn Greenwald describes the latter situation well: "The degree of mandated orthodoxy on the Israel question among America's political elites is so great that if one took the statements on Gaza from George Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Howard Berman and randomly chosen Bill Kristol-acolytes and redacted their names, it would be impossible to know which statements came from whom. They're all identical: What Israel does is absolutely right. The U.S. must fully and unconditionally support Israel. Israel does not merit an iota of criticism for what it is doing. It bears none of the blame for this conflict. No questioning even of the wisdom of its decisions - let alone the justifiability - is uttered. No deviation from that script takes place."

(As many people have pointed out, the Israeli government's policies toward the Palestinians are subjected to far more scathing criticism from mainstream Israeli political figures than anything that could conceivably be said by any prominent American politician.)

So rather than comment on the merits of the issue, or on the current military operation in the Gaza Strip, I'll just make a few observations about some of the underlying dynamics of the dispute.

One of the most discouraging aspects of arguments on this subject is that it is taken for granted by so many of the participants that the death and suffering of Israelis are matters of indifference to supporters of the Palestinian cause, and vice versa.

Over and over again one sees this accusation: If you condemn Israeli military action against Hamas this means you support Hamas' campaign of launching rockets into southern Israel. Or, if you condemn Hamas as a fanatical group that has seized control of part of the Palestinian political authority by exploiting fantasies of the destruction of Israel, this means you're a supporter of the Israeli government's annexationist policies.

Something about this particular dispute causes those involved to assume the absolute worst motives on the part of their opponents. This, I suppose, helps explain why the political conflict the dispute centers around seems so utterly intractable.

Another discouraging aspect of the arguments on this subject is how they illustrate the extent to which the word "terrorism" has been emptied of almost all practical meaning. "Terrorism," in the context of Middle East politics and warfare, has come to mean something very close to "violence targeted at people with whom I sympathize."

As Nir Rosen puts it in The Guardian, it is "an empty word that means everything and nothing; it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do."

Thus a teenage Palestinian unaffiliated with any group who tries to run down Israeli soldiers with a car (and is shot and killed) is a terrorist, but a fighter pilot who drops bombs that he knows to a moral certainty will kill civilians is carrying out a legitimate military mission.

It would be an exaggeration to say such definitions have been created by the strong for the express purpose of doing as much as possible to disarm the weak. But to say a claim is exaggerated isn't to deny that it contains much truth.

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be reached at paul.campos@colorado.edu.