Guest Post: Moral Equivalence Hamas and Israel

A guest post by a reader on Kiwiblog:

There has been much outrage this week over the deaths of aid workers from western countries in Gaza.

I use the word “outrage” deliberately to reflect the moral element of the stance of Arab nations, many western governments and much of the media. The outrage is predicated largely on the assumption the act was deliberate or highly negligent and that therefore it is demonstrably true that Israel is a morally degraded and aggressive state and that ……… moral superiority resides with the Palestinians (the dots indicating that we are usually left to deduce that last point rather than it being explicitly stated).

But as commentators continually wish to remind us, context is everything.

So let’s do a little simplistic analysis around whether or not Israel or Hamas is more morally reprehensible by asking a number of questions:

1. If the acts of barbarism of 7 October were deliberate and those of Israel this last week were also deliberate, is Israel less virtuous than Hamas?

2. If the acts of barbarism of 7 October were deliberate and those of Israel this last week were accidental, is Israel less virtuous than Hamas?

3. If the acts of barbarism of 7 October were accidental and those of Israel this last week were also accidental, is Israel less virtuous than Hamas?

4. If the acts of barbarism of 7 October were accidental and those of Israel this last week were deliberate, is Israel less virtuous than Hamas?

It can be seen that only under option 4 is moral outrage at the actions of Israel when compared to those of Hamas actually justified. And of course Option 4 is off the table because it is clearly not possible for thousands of fighters to stream across a border to rape and kill “by accident” as that particular question would have us accept.

Moreover if as Israel contends the deaths were actually accidental then the moral element of continued outrage as between one side and the other in large part evaporates.

None of this is to detract from the tragedy of those recent deaths or the events as a whole. None of it either is intended to make morally repugnant actions less so. But it does help challenge the way in which the noise of moral outrage is so often deployed in unbalanced ways reflecting subtle or overt biases.

One final note to those who wish to contextualise Israel into moral opprobrium beyond the above snapshot of recent events; in other words those who say Israel got what was coming to it on 7 October for what has happened over many decades. Exactly the same kind of analysis as above is possible with all the major wars and other actions fought over all those years. It’s never been a morally one-sided conflict. Fact is that at worst Israel is morally on the same page as the Palestinians and at best (as I would argue) it’s in a significantly better place. But whichever way one wants to cut it, one-sided versions of Palestinian victimhood and moral superiority as a consequence do not wash.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.