IMMORAL EQUIVALENCY

Rafael Medoff

David French speaking at the 2012 CPAC in Washington, D.C.  Photo by Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America – David French, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikipedia

In a New York Times op-ed this week, pundit David French denounced what he called “both the heinous massacre of Jews on Oct. 7, 2023, and the aggressive, violent expansion of settlements in the West Bank.”

French’s implied equivalency between mass murder and peaceful housing construction was, to put it charitably, profoundly misguided.

Israeli construction in the Israeli-administered portion of the Judea-Samaria (West Bank) territory is not “violent.” Building houses and kindergartens is not the equivalent of massacring and gang-raping defenseless civilians.

Moreover, there is not one word in the Oslo accords prohibiting Israel from building in that territory—just as there is no prohibition in the accords against the Palestinian Authority building in the portion of the territory that it governs. One would have thought David French would have familiarized himself with those accords before diving into this issue.

French’s repugnant statement is reminiscent of an infamous remark made by the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, in early 1997. Israel was reeling from a series of attacks by Palestinian Arab terrorists. They bombed buses in Jerusalem and cafes in Tel Aviv, leaving scores killed or wounded. And then came another outrage—Israeli housing construction in its own capital!

Ambassador Indyk was furious when he learned, in March 1997, that the Israeli government planned to build a new neighborhood in southern Jerusalem, to be called Har Homa.

So he decided to put some public pressure on the Israelis. Indyk declared that “terrorism, on the one side, and unilateral actions…on the other,” were “undermining the peace process.” Building Har Homa would “break trust,” Indyk asserted.

Congressman Tom Lantos and other prominent Democrats criticized Indyk for depicting terrorism and housing construction as equivalent.

David French is not a strident accuser of Israel, as was Martin Indyk. Perhaps, upon reflection, French will realize his error. In the meantime, however, Israel has once again been unfairly derided in the pages of America’s most prominent newspaper.

Fortunately, time has a way of healing such wounds. Martin Indyk’s State Department has long since given way to the very different leadership of Marco Rubio. And Har Homa today is a thriving neighborhood of more than 25,000, indistinguishable from the rest of Jerusalem. It will be there long after its opponents have been forgotten.