Dissent: Moral Nonequivalence

UPDATED: October 3, 2014, at 10:37 a.m.

Last Monday, the Palestinian Solidarity Committee (PSC), Progressive Jewish Alliance, and the Student Labor Action Movement engaged in a propagandistic, theatrical performance that claimed to discuss the conflict in Gaza, but did little to portray the nuance of the issue or offer constructive discussion toward a peaceful solution.

We want to make clear that every civilian death is a tragedy. However, the “die-in” went beyond simply commemorating the dead, in tone if not in content. It made no attempt to display any sort of nuance regarding the violence this summer. Rather, the PSC opted for vitriol, writing on its Facebook page that the event commemorated those “massacred by Israel,” and that the “resistance remains steadfast.” The “resistance” seems to be set unambiguously against Israel, rather than the terrorist group governing Gaza, which uses civilian hospitals as wartime command centers and stores rockets in United Nations school buildings. We are further surprised by the lack of attention given by the Palestinian Solidarity Committee to the even greater number of Palestinian victims who have been killed in the Syrian war.

Not only did the event display no level of detail or nuance regarding the situation, but it was also detrimental to the peace process. Such events indirectly elevate Hamas, a group identified by the United States, the European Union, and much of the Western world as a terrorist organization, to the level of a valid player and partner for peace. Hamas, we would all do well to remember, pledges in its founding Charter to annihilate the State of Israel and its leadership refuses to accept a peaceful two-state solution as a viable option.

Moreover, the event made no mention of the fact that hundreds of lives were tragically lost at the direct hands of Hamas. Militants encouraged residents not to flee impending airstrikes, built rocket launchers in heavily populated areas, and even executed Gazans suspected of collaborating with Israel. Hamas, as a central tenet of its strategy, attacks Israeli civilians from both above and below. The organization launched rockets into heavily populated areas of Israel and constructed elaborate networks of tunnels underneath Israeli territory with the sole purpose of attacking and capturing Israelis.

We further lament the fact that the majority of the Crimson (Editorial) staff present on Monday subscribed to that dangerous line of thinking, in which a terrorist group is as equally faulted for violence as the nation it attacks. We certainly do not agree that the actions of both the IDF and Hamas “deserve nothing but the strongest condemnation.” In this instance, there is a clear moral unequivalence between the two warring actors. Condemning both on equal terms equates Hamas, which openly targets civilians, with Israel, a country which, for all its faults, has taken pains to minimize civilian casualties, dropping leaflets in Gaza and phoning civilians prior to striking.

Those most punished by the actions of Hamas have been the civilians of Gaza, and each and every one of their deaths is an absolute tragedy. But to consider Israeli actions akin to “massacre,” as the PSC wrote, or to condemn Israel and Hamas on equal footing, as the Crimson has decided to opine, is both intellectually dishonest and counterproductive to any sort of dialogue intended to promote the sovereignty and security of all people in this region.

Edyt J. Dickstein ‘17 is a Crimson editorial writer in Adams House.  Jacob R. Drucker ‘15, a Crimson editorial writer, is an economics concentrator in Mather House.

EDITORS' NOTE: Occasionally, The Crimson Staff is divided about an opinion we express in a staff editorial. In these cases, dissenting staff members have the opportunity to express their opposition to staff opinion.

CORRECTION: October 3, 2014

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the title was Moral Equivalence . In fact, the title of this article is Moral Nonequivalence.