Editorial

Israel and the Issue of Moral Equivalency

Following Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham's timid criticism of Israel's use of excessive violence against innocent civilians, he has been blasted by the Canada-Israel Committee, as well as by editorials in most of Canada's daily newspapers, including the Winnipeg Free Press. These editorials adopted a common theme to discredit Graham's comments - it is unacceptable to claim that there is any moral equivalency between Israeli victims, deliberately killed by Palestinian suicide bombers, and Palestinian victims killed "accidently" by the Israeli Defence Force in its air and artillery strikes against Palestinian cities and refugee camps.

They are correct that there is no moral equivalency between the Israeli and Palestinian casualties, but they have turned truth on its head.

The Israeli Defence Force is an occupying army engaged in the expulsion of an indigenous people from their land so that it can be taken over by a settler population. Both acts are illegal under international law and have been repeatedly condemned by the United Nations. The Israeli government has openly adopted a policy of collective punishment of Palestinians, a tactic perfected by the Nazis during World War II and universally condemned as a crime against humanity. The Israeli air force, using "smart bombs" supplied by the United States has deliberately bombed elementary schools, hospitals, cultural institutions, police stations and prisons, so the "collateral" casualties are obviously deliberate, not accidental. Deliberately targetting noncombatants to achieve political aims is the currently accepted definition of terrorism by which the United States is pursuing its war against Afghanistan. In addition, members of the Israeli Knesset are openly debating the expulsion of all Palestinians from the occupied territories, a crime against humanity known as "ethnic cleansing" for which Slobodan Milosevic in currently facing trial in The Hague.

The Palestinians are an oppressed nation fighting for the liberation of their homeland against an occupying force. The United Nations and international law upholds their right to do so. They are a largely unarmed people facing one of the world's most powerful military machines armed with the most sophisticated weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Despite what one may think about suicide attacks, most such attacks have been carried out against Israeli military or settler targets, both of which are recognized under international law as legitimate targets of a national liberation struggle.

In other words, both international law and morality come down on the side of the Palestinians and not on the side of their Israeli tormenters. On the other hand, there is a certain moral equivalency between the current defenders of Israel's illegal and genocidal war against the Palestinian people and those who deny and/or defend the Holocaust against Jews, Gypsies, communists and others during the Nazi reign of terror in Europe.