Guest Post: The Limits of (International) Law
Monday, September 22, 2008
By Dexter Van Zile
Note: This is a much briefer entry than what I have posted previously. I offer the following arguments to spark debate. As time allows, I will provide more detail and narrative to the argument I make below. I am confident that many readers of UCCtruths will understand the underlying truth of the arguments I offer below and in some instances will be able to fill in the blanks on their own.
1. Mainline Protestant peace activists and church leaders who are willing to subject Christian Scriptures to pretty intense hermeneutics invoke international law as if it were inerrant, without assessing whether or not the rulings they invoke are just or fair. When it comes to international law, mainline peace activists and church leaders are fundamentalists.
2. Mainline Protestants know that appeals to law are not by themselves decisive for Christians. Slavery was legal in the Old South where the law deprived Africans of their status as human beings. German law allowed for Jews to be stripped of their citizenship and of their possessions and shipped off to death camps.
3. Mainline Protestant peace activists and leaders who regard nation states with great suspicion have portrayed the system of international law -- created by nation states -- as sacrosanct, inerrant, and a reliable judge of Israeli behavior.
4. It is not. For the past few decades, international law has been used to give Arab terrorists and tyrants the pretext and territory they have used to attack Israeli citizens.
5. In previous historical eras, national laws have been used to deprive people of their God-given rights. (See #2.) In the current historical era, international law has been used to deprive the Jewish state and the Jews who live in it of their right to self-defense.
6. Jews, like all other peoples, have a God-given right to defend themselves as individuals and as a group. This right cannot be taken away from them by the injust, discriminatory and biased application of the principles of international law.
7. Mainline peace activists and church leaders have assisted in the sustained effort to deprive Israel of its rights in the community of nations in a number of ways including the reckless invocation of unjust rulings and legal opinions against the Jewish state.
8. Mainline peace activists and church leaders should abandon the prosecutorial demeanor and attitude they have exhibited toward Israel and the licentious attitude they have exhbited toward Arab leaders in the Middle East.
Note: This is a much briefer entry than what I have posted previously. I offer the following arguments to spark debate. As time allows, I will provide more detail and narrative to the argument I make below. I am confident that many readers of UCCtruths will understand the underlying truth of the arguments I offer below and in some instances will be able to fill in the blanks on their own.
1. Mainline Protestant peace activists and church leaders who are willing to subject Christian Scriptures to pretty intense hermeneutics invoke international law as if it were inerrant, without assessing whether or not the rulings they invoke are just or fair. When it comes to international law, mainline peace activists and church leaders are fundamentalists.
2. Mainline Protestants know that appeals to law are not by themselves decisive for Christians. Slavery was legal in the Old South where the law deprived Africans of their status as human beings. German law allowed for Jews to be stripped of their citizenship and of their possessions and shipped off to death camps.
3. Mainline Protestant peace activists and leaders who regard nation states with great suspicion have portrayed the system of international law -- created by nation states -- as sacrosanct, inerrant, and a reliable judge of Israeli behavior.
4. It is not. For the past few decades, international law has been used to give Arab terrorists and tyrants the pretext and territory they have used to attack Israeli citizens.
5. In previous historical eras, national laws have been used to deprive people of their God-given rights. (See #2.) In the current historical era, international law has been used to deprive the Jewish state and the Jews who live in it of their right to self-defense.
6. Jews, like all other peoples, have a God-given right to defend themselves as individuals and as a group. This right cannot be taken away from them by the injust, discriminatory and biased application of the principles of international law.
7. Mainline peace activists and church leaders have assisted in the sustained effort to deprive Israel of its rights in the community of nations in a number of ways including the reckless invocation of unjust rulings and legal opinions against the Jewish state.
8. Mainline peace activists and church leaders should abandon the prosecutorial demeanor and attitude they have exhibited toward Israel and the licentious attitude they have exhbited toward Arab leaders in the Middle East.
