The conclusion is stated modestly here; one could say “shameful” or “outrageous”. For critics on both sides, the point is: wrong. And at its core the argument is the same.
On May 20, Karim A.A. Khan, prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, issued a statement that he was seeking arrest warrants for persons involved in the current war in Gaza. Khan named Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masr, and Ismael Haniyeh; Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. These warrants were sought for commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Hamas: killing of some 1200 people, kidnapping of 251, mass killings in public settings, and sexual violence against women. Israel: extermination, use of heavy weapons in populated areas, starvation, maiming of tens of thousands of children, arbitrary detention, and gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys. Those who follow the news about the ongoing destruction would not be surprised at this horrifying list. Human rights groups praised prosecutor Khan’s initiative.
But objections came quickly. President Biden sensed an implication of moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas and deemed that implication outrageous. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau expressed the same sentiment, saying the prosecutorial initiative implied a sense of equivalency between elected leaders in Israel and the bloodthirsty terrorists that head up Hamas. In a statement for the U.S. government, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken rejected “the Prosecutor’s equivalence of Israel with Hamas”, saying it was shameful. He said that the groups committing the horrifying acts did not have the same moral status. Hamas is a terrorist group, while Israel is a recognized state fighting a just war.
These critics sensed implied moral equivalence between the agents, in the accusation that both had committed actions in violation of international law. Defenders of the Palestinians also sensed an implied moral equivalence and objected to it. A representative account is that of Tim Anderson, in “Palestine: The Cowardly Refuge in ‘Moral Equivalence’”. Anderson is director of the Center for Counter-Hegemonic Studies. On his view Hamas, presumed to represent Palestinians, and Israel could not be equivalent in moral status because Hamas represents the oppressed and Israel is the oppressor.
The arguments sensing and rejecting moral equivalence go like this:
- Khan’s initiative to prosecute Hamas leaders and Israeli leaders for commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity implies that Hamas and Israel are morally equivalent agents.
- Hamas and Israel are not morally equivalent agents. Therefore…
- Khan’s initiative is improper.
The conclusion is stated modestly here; one could say “shameful” or “outrageous”. For critics on both sides, the point is: wrong. And at its core the argument is the same.
Defenders of Israel and defenders of the Palestinians have both used this line of argument and it is the same argument. Clearly they would defend the second premise in different ways: the point is, we are not like them. Why not? We can say how and why we are not like them and are not morally equivalent to them. Because we are in the right and they are in the wrong. Israel: they are terrorists; we are a state acting in self-defence. Hamas: they are guilty oppressors; we are fighting for innocent victims of oppression.
When two parties are engaged in a bitter conflict, each will think justice is on its side and evil on the other. In the nature of the case, each will have an understanding according to which the opposed sides could not possibly be morally equivalent.
In 1986 Jeane Kirkpatrick, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, published a well-known essay, “The Myth of Moral Equivalence.” She was resisting criticisms of American foreign policy. Kirkpatrick objected to accounts according to which the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were rival superpowers in a struggle for world dominance. In their rivalry each had intervened in third countries, causing harm and suffering along the way. Kirkpatrick saw in these accounts an implication of moral equivalence between the United States and the Soviet Union. She objected to that implication. On her view there was a vast moral difference between the two states and the severity of harms resulting from their actions. Slight wrongs were erroneously equated to profound ones and very different states were wrongly viewed as rivals for dominant state. Kirkpatrick thought that moral equivalence was implied by the conception of superpower rivalry and associated criticisms of American foreign policy (popular and dangerous in Europe, she said) — and that the implied moral equivalence did not exist.
To reflect on all this, we need to ask: what is moral equivalence? And when is it implied? Putting the matter in abstract terms, if two parties are morally equivalent, then in a relevant moral respect, there is no difference between them. A simple case: if person A steals $4000 from a bank and person B steals $4000 from a credit union, then, in reference to these specific actions, A and B are morally equivalent. Given that A and B have both broken the law, they would both be open to prosecution and would be charged with theft. In respect to these actions, A and B would be legally equivalent as well as morally equivalent. But that is not to say that A and B are morally equivalent in other respects, for instance in their moral status as agents. A might be a seasoned criminal while B is a teenager owing money to a drug trafficker. This difference would be relevant to sentencing, but not to issues of legality and guilt.
In contexts ascribing equivalence, two parties are compared and the comparison must be in some respect. There are a number of possibilities. Relevant to the situation of Israel and Hamas are moral status as agents, on the one hand, and the moral and legal status of specific actions in the war, on the other. Comparison of two parties regarding their agent status is one thing; comparison of them regarding their actions is another. As agents, Hamas and Israel are significantly different because Israel is a state and Hamas is a terrorist group. As to some actions they are relevantly different: Hamas started the conflict; Israel did not. Hamas officially seeks to destroy Israel. There is some lack of clarity on the question of whether Israel seeks to destroy Palestinians in Gaza — though they do seek to destroy Hamas. These differences are many and they are important.
But as to the quality of their actions since October 7, 2023, Hamas leaders and Israeli leaders are relevantly similar: as was cited by Khan in his prosecutorial statement of May 20. Both have committed actions in violation of international law. By this standard and in this respect their actions are morally and legally equivalent. Due to these violations these actions merited prosecution. In submitting a request for warrants of the leaders he named, Khan was relying on evidence that the actions they had ordered had violated international law. In doing so he was not implying that the agents, Israel and Hamas, were morally equivalent as agents.
Seeking to understand all this, I find confusions of meaning. The opening premise of the argument alleging false moral equivalence is that Khan’s statement implied a moral equivalence of agents. And yet what is at issue regarding prosecution is the quality of actions according to international law. Agents are not actions and actions are not agents. Yet the critics’ arguments ignore this distinction, finding in a rejection of similarly illegal actions an equation of the moral status of agents and using a rejection of the latter to reject the former.
There is a term in logic for this sort of confusion; it is the fallacy of equivocation. When this fallacy is committed, a term is used in an argument in two different senses, the distinction between them going undetected. The confusion allows a logical link which a correct understanding would reject. I find a fallacy of equivocation in the critics’ arguments. Their arguments deny the moral equivalence of agents and employ that denial to deny the moral equivalence of actions. To be sure, there are many reasons that the agents are not morally equivalent, but as Khan stated, their actions are legally equivalent in that they are violations of international law and as such merit prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
Defenders of Israel and defenders of Hamas used what was formally the same argument against Khan. It is an argument flawed by the fallacy of equivocation. In this respect, their arguments were logically equivalent. 