ICC Arrest Warrants: Moral Equivalence? by John Whitbeck

 One thing that reasonable people can agree with in the outraged and outrageous Israeli and American reactions to the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against two Israeli leaders and one (presumably dead) Palestinian leader is that there can be no moral equivalence between the Israeli government and Hamas.

Indeed, there can be no moral equivalence between those enforcing an illegal occupation, as Israel’s 57-year-long occupation of the State of Palestine has been definitively declared to be the International Court of Justice, and those resisting that occupation, as is their legal right, including by armed action, under international law.

Of course, as a matter of international law, both the oppressors and the oppressed can be guilty of committing war crimes while enforcing or resisting an occupation, but there can be no conceivable moral equivalence between those enforcing injustice and illegality and those resisting injustice and illegality.

Applying the quintessentially subjective epithet “terrorist” to those resisting injustice does not alter this clear moral distinction.

As I wrote in 2002, “the poor, the weak and the oppressed rarely complain about ‘terrorism’. The rich, the strong and the oppressors constantly do. While most of mankind has more reason to fear the high-technology violence of the strong than the low-technology violence of the weak, the fundamental mind-trick employed by the abusers of the epithet ‘terrorism’ (no doubt, in some cases, unconsciously) is essentially this: The low-technology violence of the weak is such an abomination that there are no limits on the high-technology violence of the strong which can be deployed against it.”

This fundamental mind-trick continues to be employed and exploited by the enforcers of injustice and illegality.