The Anti-Israel Axis & the Post-Truth Environment Part 2

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International Law

One of the appeals Palestinians and Palestinian supporters often make is to international law.  The average person might be tempted to think that international law is some special independent set of law to which all other laws and countries are subject.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Here is what Professor Christopher Greenwood, writing for the Legal Department of the United Nations, has to say in the article “Sources of International Law: An Introduction” which is accessible here.

Where does international law come from and how is it made? These are more difficult questions than one might expect and require considerable care. In particular, it is dangerous to try to transfer ideas from national legal systems to the very different context of international law. There is no “Code of International Law”. International law has no Parliament and nothing that can really be described as legislation. While there is an International Court of Justice and a range of specialised international courts and tribunals, their jurisdiction is critically dependent upon the consent of States and they lack what can properly be described as a compulsory jurisdiction of the kind possessed by national courts.

So where does international law come from? Professor Greenwood goes on to share that the Statute of the ICJ (International Court of Justice), Art. 38, identifies five sources of international law:

• Treaties between States;
• Customary international law derived from the practice of States;
• General principles of law recognized by civilised nations; and, as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of international law:
• Judicial decisions and the writings of “the most highly qualified publicists”.

Since international law draws it jurisprudence from such a diversity of sources, including domestic law and the opinion of publicists (“experts”) it is anybody’s guess how the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court are able to prove Israel’s intent to commit genocide given that it (Israel) has been under attack from at least four different sets of enemies.   

But the treasurer of CAAP would have you believe this is a forgone conclusion. So much for truth.

The Underdog Syndrome

Nowadays people do not reason from basic concepts  to principles to principled positions.  What they have is a strain of un-intellectualism which we choose to call “solidarity by similarity” (SxS); in effect, what that means is this: if someone happens to be in as situation that sounds similar (not necessarily identical) to one experienced, automatically sympathy arises for that someone.  It is the underdog syndrome; and the underdog is never wrong!

That is what underpins the accusations that Israel is an apartheid and colonial state.   Conveniently, those uttering such gibberish do not want to be bothered by the FACT that dividing walls have had to be erected to present Palestinian suicide bombers from inflicting death in Israelis going about their business and that there is historical evidence that ties Jews/Israelis to the land “from the river to the sea” for thousands of years.  

For too many people, truth does not matter anymore; that is why the transgender axis tells us that men can have babies despite the biological counter evidence before our eyes.

Eventually, the goodly gentleman is going to have to admit that the war between Israel and the Palestinians is not really about land or nebulous human rights which lawyers not only manufacture but get paid six digit figures to debate.  

In the widest sense, the war is about the difference between two divergent world views or ideologies: Islam and Christianity. In the meantime, let us continue to pretend that Palestinians are some original ethnic group that has been dispossessed of its land, that Israel does not exist and that Islam is a religion of peace.