In 2012, I realised whose side I was on in the Israel-Palestine conflicts.

I was standing next to a pile of rubble in a village in the West Bank. Nearby a man who was staring blankly into space. He was not just shocked. He was in a state of severe shock. That is why he simply stared ahead, not rushing to help his wife, who was crying as she comforted their two children, also crying.

The pile of rubble had been their house. It had just been destroyed by the Israeli authorities.

They had built the house without a permit. This is because the authorities often withhold building permits – and then send in bulldozers to destroy the houses.

Other villagers gathered around, trying to comfort this desperate family.

I watched those children crying, clutching their mother and their neighbours, their world destroyed in a matter of moments. And I realised whose side I needed to be on. I needed to be on the side of those children.

Not by any possible interpretation of history, not by any stretch of the imagination, not by any political theory or religious belief could those children be blamed for the fact that they had lost their home.

I resolved then that I would not be on “Palestine’s side” or “Israel’s side”. I would be on the side of children who had nowhere to sleep.

This involves caring about victims at the point when they are under attack. It also means enquiring into the causes of their suffering. It involves challenging injustice as well as supporting those who suffer from it. It requires a concern with both causes and consequences.

Like the vast majority of people, I was sickened by Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians, including children. I grieved for the people killed and prayed for the people left alive. This is not because the victims were Israelis, or because the killers were Palestinians. It is because in any situation of murder, I want to be on the side of the victims, not the murderers.

For exactly the same reason, I grieve and pray for innocent people in Gaza now suffering from the aggression of the Israeli government and the Israeli “Defence” Forces (IDF). Not only are children and other innocent people being repeatedly bombed by Israeli forces, but those same forces are cutting off electricity and food supplies. Many, many civilians will die in Gaza – are dying in Gaza – by bombing, by starvation, by the lack of medical care available in hospitals without electricity.

Let’s take the side of innocent people killed by Hamas and take the side of innocent people killed by the IDF.

Killing children is wrong – whether you kill them with knives, bombs or starvation. If you condemn the killing of children by Hamas but condone the killing of children by Israel’s bombs and blockade, you are not really against killing children at all. You are simply valuing people of one nationality over people of another.

Whether in Palestine, Israel or anywhere else, let’s seek to take the side of people whose humanity and human rights are attacked or denied, and to take sides against those who are attacking or denying them.

In some situations, people whose rights are denied are members of a particular group – a nationality, ethnicity or religion, for example. Backing the people who are under attack may involve backing this group – but I back them because they are under attack, not because of their identity per se.

Therefore I support the Black Lives Matter movement because Black people continue to be denied equality and their human rights are frequently denied. Contrary to what their critics suggest, Black Lives Matter campaigners insist that everybody’s life matters. They emphasise that Black lives not because they don’t care about other lives but because Black lives are under attack.

Similarly, I support Palestinians in objecting to Israeli occupation, a viciously oppressive reality that is itself a denial of human rights to millions of people. I applaud the many acts of nonviolent resistance to occupation that many Palestinians engage in every day, and the Israelis who speak out against occupatoin or refuse to fight in Israel’s army. This does not mean that Israelis cannot be victims too – victims of their own government’s policies, but also, as we saw so disturbingly last week, victims of Hamas.

Decades of Israeli aggression cannot justify Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians. Israeli children cannot possibly be responsible for the actions of the Israeli government and armed forces – just as children in Gaza cannot be responsible for the actions of Hamas.

Siding with children, siding with innocent people, siding with people attacked, killed, threatened and denied human rights – this means opposing the IDF and Hamas. It means opposing the armed forces sent by any country to support either the IDF or Hamas – including the Royal Navy and RAF units that Rishi Sunak has just promised to send in.

If our distress at the killing of children is genuine, we will oppose the killing of children whatever their nationality, ethnicity or religion. The choice is between supporting innocent victims and supporting killers – not between backing one group of killers over another.