Israeli soldiers found the bodies of three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped allegedly by members of Hamas, the terrorist organization that has done everything in its power to prevent peace, undermine the moderate Palestinian leadership and destroy Israel.

Sadly, no one will look at this as a human tragedy and the murder of the three teenagers will be exploited into political weapons that Israelis and Palestinians will use against each other.

Already, extremists in Israel are demanding that not only should the people responsible for the murder be punished, but that the punishment should extend throughout the Palestinian population targeting the leadership beyond Hamas.

Israel's government is top-heavy with extremists who oppose a two-state solution, making it easy to exploit violence to undermine peace and fan the flames of hatred and continue the conflict.

But the Israeli extremists won't be held responsible for their actions. Their vengeance will find justification in the one-sided and incomplete manner in which the Middle East conflict is viewed in the West.

Just as ferociously, Palestinian extremists are already responding to the discovery of the bodies of the three Israelis arguing that Israelis kill Palestinian civilians all the time, old men, women and children, and no one is outraged and no one cares. They argue that Palestinian lives have no value among the outraged who are screaming for Arab blood in response to the murder of the three innocent Israeli teenagers.

The proper response is something rarely to be found in the Middle East, which is dominated by vicious hate and fanaticism driven by religious extremists. That response is to view the murders as the atrocities that they are. They are heinous crimes and the perpetrators should be punished.

There should be a criminal investigation that looks at facts and evidence and then metes out justice.

But that won't be what will happen.

The three victims are children. They are Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16. Fraenkel has dual Israeli and American citizenship, something that many Israelis enjoy, but will become another major push in the United States where American victims of Israeli atrocities are shoved aside.

In fact, Yifrach, Shaar and Fraenkel join a growing list of victims who have been brutally murdered as a result of the Palestine-Israel conflict. And instead of harvesting the outrage in a positive way to end the conflict, the brutality will feed a voracious Arab-Israeli appetite for vengeance that will only result in more atrocities on both sides.

The response will be predictable. Israel will begin a massive sweep using the outrage of the vicious murders to justify revenge against its Arab enemies. They will target and murder Palestinian members of Hamas, many of whom are guilty of only being angry and of leadership incompetency. Most will have had nothing to do with the killings.

But the atmosphere of outrage will be fanned by Israel's right-wing leadership, which never misses an opportunity to exploit a tragedy for its own objectives, which include pushing the Christian and Muslim Arabs out of Israel and out of the lands it occupied in order to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.

The Palestinian leadership is itself incompetent and worthless. They have no sense of strategic principle. They can't lead because they fear the small but loud fanatics that thrive and continue to grow in their own societies. Even the most moderate of the Palestinian leaders are cowards blinded by suffering, frustration and failure that they can't in their most lucid moments find a way to extricate themselves from this conflict. They are hostage to the fanatics who operate in their society with impunity and without consequence.

It's easier for the moderate Palestinian leadership to appease the religious and secular extremists than it is to confront them, control them and then make peace with Israel. The Palestinians can't control their extremism, which is spreading like a cancer.

The murder of Yifrach, Shaar and Fraenkel could become a turning point where people of good faith, love and principle honor their memories not by shedding more blood or feeding the frenzied animosity that defines current Palestinian and Israeli relations, but by speaking out loudly for an end to the cycle of violence and a coming together of both sides for peace.

Death should never be used as a justification to cause more death or destruction. But it always is. Vengeance dishonors the memory of these three young children who happen to be Israeli and Jews. Next, the dead will be Palestinian and Muslim.

The violence will continue in a cycle, fed by hate. Fed by animosity. Fed by leaders who lack the courage to do what's right and who bow down to the intense pressures of public outrage and emotion. Who wouldn't be emotional for the loss of three children, whether they were Israeli or Palestinian? Well, somehow compassion is absent in the tragedy in Palestine and Israel. What passes for "justice" is not driven by justice at all, but rather by the religion and the race of the victims.

Until Palestinians and Israelis learn to mourn for each other, rather than just for their own victims, there will be no peace. There will only be more tragedy.

Palestinians should be more outraged about the murder of the three Israeli teenagers, not defensive. Israelis should be more outraged by the predictable response from their government leadership. Only when you can express compassion for the suffering of the victims of the other side can you find your true humanity and achieve a genuine peace.

Today it's three Israeli children. Tomorrow it will be Palestinian children.

Ray Hanania is an award-winning Palestinian American columnist managing editor of The Arab Daily News at www.TheArabDailyNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @RayHanania. To find out more about Ray Hanania and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.