Israel, Hamas and the discourse of ‘moral equivalence’
Ethical evaluation is rarely a matter of black and white.
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An Israeli airstrike on the refugee encampment at Tal al-Sultan, in the Gaza Strip, resulted in the death of at least 45 Palestinian civilians on the night of May 26, 2024. It is a matter of dispute in this case as to whether the attack was deliberately intended to target civilians. A week before, however, the International Criminal Court charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the intentional targeting of civilians in the course of the conflict in Gaza; such targeting is a war crime under international law.
The ICC’s document, however, also charged three leaders of Hamas with war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, torture and the taking of hostages, during the October 7, 2023, attacks.
The decision to charge both the Israeli leadership and that of Hamas has led to widespread condemnation, much of which used the concept of “moral equivalence.”
President Joe Biden described the implication of such equivalence as “outrageous”. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement saying that the indictment was a “noxious attempt at moral equivalence” from a “rogue kangaroo court.”
Some commentators have similarly deployed the concept of moral equivalence – to condemn, instead, the decision to charge Hamas’ leadership alongside Israel’s. Tim Anderson, director of the Center for Counter-Hegemonic Studies, wrote that the violence of...
