Israel: Response to Tucker Carlson Concerning Christian Realism

My comment at 6:16 PM on a Post from Tucker Carlson:

Excellent grist for the conservative defense mill, Tucker. I have a vegan pacifist charism myself, but I respect those with a charism for physical guardianship of our country and for world civilization. Have you studied the Christian realism of Niebuhr at all? Maybe you could have a Niebuhr expert on your show. Practically speaking, in this fallen world, I think American Christians have to combine pacifism, just war theory and peacebuilding in a balanced foreign policy. In my view, Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization that illegally took hostages and used Gazan civilians - especially women and children - as martyrs and human shields in an 8-front war to destroy the world's one and only Jewish state. Ideally, in a just war, there are no civilian casualties. Realistically, under the best IHL and LAC on the planet, collateral civilian casualties are not necessarily war crimes. This said, at every step of this 8-front Iranian proxy war against Israel, it is crucial for American conservatives to pressure Israel to pursue the most moral next just war action possible, and to encourage Hamas and its 8-front collaborators to repent and disarm in keeping with UNSCR 2803 on the way to an eventual 2-state solution. All of Israel and Israel's allies should of course grieve the profound tragedy and collective moral failure of mass civilian casualties and work for the speediest possible resolution of the conflict. A clear UN Security Council condemnation of Hamas on October 8 would have helped enormously in this regard. Israel never should have been compelled to deal with Hamas at all, in my opinion - it should have been a UNSC Chapter 7 ISF mission to rescue the hostages and disarm Hamas from the beginning. What do you think the UN Security Council should have done from October 8 and following, so that Israel didn't have to handle the crisis itself? 

Here is the text of Tucker's post:

We should be very on guard against people who try to leverage the Word of God, the words of Jesus, for political ends. That is a dangerous thing to do. I don't want to do that. And I attempt every time. This is all sort of new to me. I'm so obviously not a great Christian that it's not like a lot of people are going to be like, “Oh, I want to be like him.”

But there are people, particularly Christian ministers, I have noticed, who are preaching a political message and pretending that it's the gospel. So let me just say, and I think my theology is right, I'm hardly a theologian: God is not on any country's side. Certain countries can decide to be on God's side. And that is true for people too. 

God doesn't have a partisan affiliation, he doesn't have a nationality. And if someone is telling you otherwise, that is just not true. It is not true.

And I would also call your attention to the very obvious prohibitions in the New Testament against killing the innocent. We are not, as Christians, allowed to kill the innocent. Period. We are not.

And you see elaborate arguments on behalf of doing so or ignoring it. “Oh, that always happens in war.” Well you're right. One of the reasons I'm not that into wars. But when it does happen, unavoidably, we have to say that's wrong. We have to say that. We have to acknowledge that was wrong. And I'm sorry for the extent to which I participated in it. Forgive me, because killing people who committed no crime is immoral. It will always be immoral, and people who do it will be punished for it, and nations that endorse it will be punished for it. That's a fact.

And you are seeing now a very intense effort to convince you otherwise. “Oh it's fine. They deserved it.” Really? Did their children deserve it? If a man commits a crime, do we kill his kids? I don't care if it's in Minneapolis or Gaza City. No we don't. And if we do, accidentally, we say, I am so sorry that we murdered someone who did nothing wrong because it is murder.

And that's not a partisan question. That is not a political question. That is the only question that matters. Do we have the right to murder people? And the resounding answer that Christianity provides us is no.