The case of Joseph Jesner v. Arab Bank is a bid by about 6,000 Israelis who have been harmed by Palestinian terrorism to get redress from Jordan’s Arab Bank, which delivered money to the groups carrying out the acts.

Yet when the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on October 11, the contretemps most often cited was between a French official and a French adventurer in Philadelphia in 1784.

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“I mean, we passed this statute to avoid foreign entanglements because we wanted to provide a forum for someone like the French ambassador in the Longchamps affair,” Chief Justice John Roberts said to Jeffrey Fisher, the attorney appearing on behalf of the plaintiffs, “but I’m wondering if extending it to corporate liability is, in fact, going to have the same problematic result of increasing our entanglements, as it obviously has here with respect to the government of Jordan.”

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Fisher pushed back against Roberts’ theory that allowing the case to proceed could complicate US foreign policy, arguing that should the courts quash the plaintiffs’ bid to seek redress, Israel — like France in the 1780s — would have cause for alarm at how the United States conducts its foreign policy.

“Imagine Israel’s view if our financing — if our entire finance system — could be used and accessed … to commit terrorist attacks, make them easier, make them more deadly, make the funding more effective,” the attorney said. “If suits like this were taken away, Israel and countries like it might well have a complaint to the United States.”