Just as with the stones and the bullets, so it is with the recriminations and the frustration and the professed bafflement - flying back and forth, destructive exchanges with no victors in this latest outburst of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
From the president of Israel to the Palestinian protesters at Netzarim in the Gaza Strip, this is a battle in which each side is utterly convinced of the rightness of its grievances, and the viciousness of its enemy's conduct - and makes precious little effort to find a deeper, perhaps more painful, understanding.
Moshe Katsav, the Israeli president, remarked yesterday that the violence has probably closed some of the political divisions in Israel. Since he is not supposed to enter the political debate, he was being cryptic. What he meant was that many on the Israeli left will now be coming round to his own right-wing position, of scepticism about the viability of peace-making with the Palestinians.
And he's probably correct. Like the rest of the world, Israelis are talking with sorrow about their troops' filmed killing of 12-yearold Mohammed al-Durra at Netzarim on Saturday.
But they're also talking about the brutality that saw a soldier bleed to death for six hours at Joseph's Tomb in Nablus the next day, because Palestinian gunmen shooting into the compound could not be persuaded to hold their fire to enable medics to go in and save him. They're talking about the humanity of three of their own troops who risked their lives in a mission co-ordinated behind the scenes to enter Nablus at the height of the hostilities, and move the wounded and dying son of the local Palestinian governor from the town's hospital to a better facility inside Israel, in what turned out to be a vain effort to save his life.
Many have discussed in horrified tones the incitement against Israel on Palestinian TV and, with equal horror, the footage shown on Israeli TV on Tuesday night, of Palestinian demonstrators apparently triumphantly holding aloft the brain matter of one of their dead colleagues.
And in a grim echo, from the other side of the war zone, come the appalled comments of the Palestinian leadership, demanding to know why Israel is acting with such pulverising force against civilian protests, and wondering how anyone can place any faith in a diplomatic settlement now. Why is there talk of a "ceasefire", the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has been fuming, when only one side to the conflict is employing an army.
The true picture of that footage from Netzarim on Tuesday, from the Palestinian point of view, shows that the bits of brain had been freshly smashed out of a demonstrator's skull, hit directly by an Israeli missile as he stood on a warehouse roof.
Not a triumphant display, then, but frenzied grief.
For Palestinian anguish and incomprehension, now, of course, read also Israeli Arab anguish and incomprehension. Take Ahmed Lubani, whose nephew was shot dead by Israeli police in Nazareth on Monday. "He was only demonstrating," said Mr Lubani yesterday.
"I was eight years old when I left my house and saw it being smashed behind me," he added, referring to the destruction of his home village in the 1948 war of Israel's independence. "But we want to be here. We want to be part of this country. My nephew only went out to let off steam."
Both sides profess a readiness to stop the shooting - provided that the other side stops first.