Regular readers of this website will be aware of a line I frequently refer to in exposing the blatantly propagandistic approach taken by the BBC in its reporting of Israel. It appeared again following the Itamar massacre of five Jews in a West Bank “settlement” last week. The settlements, the BBC said, “are held to be illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this”. In its construction, the logic of the sentence may be compared to something like this: “The square route of nine is three, according to basic mathematics, though Robin Shepherd disputes this.” In both cases a proposition is established as being beyond all reasonable dispute. It is then pointed out that there are some (weird or wicked or possibly deviant) types out there that have the temerity to take a different view. This is called giving both sides of the argument, though it is deliberately done in such a way as to make a categorical statement about who is right and who is wrong: Robin Shepherd is a mathematical dunce; the Israelis are shameless criminals.

At this point one could take the discussion in several directions. But, unfolding right before our eyes, there is a fine (if that’s the right word) illustration of the futility of using “international law” in this manner as Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi slaughters his own citizens in broad daylight while the world twiddles its thumbs because China and Russia refuse to give “legal authority” to any form of intervention via the UN Security Council. Ponder that thought:

Two dictatorships — China, which massacred 3,000 peaceful demonstrators in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and holds millions in labour camps; and Russia, which has killed at least a hundred thousand in Chechnya in the last 15 years and which now occupies part of the sovereign state of Georgia — have the power to determine what does or does not constitute “international law”. That puts things in some perspective doesn’t it? And to be honest, there’s nothing especially difficult in exposing the fatal flaw in the international-law-as-categorical-imperative line of thinking.

The greater mystery lies in why such an obviously flawed proposition is fetishised in the manner in which it is by European elites and opinion formers (not to mention the Obama administration). Let me offer the following as one possible explanation.

The paradox of relativism: a world view saturated with post-modernist relativism still needs some frame of reference so as to impose order and project power. Unable to accept, for example, that democracy is “objectively better” than dictatorship or that freedom is “better” than oppression, let alone that the Western liberal-democratic tradition is “superior” to other models of government, there is a gaping hole that needs to be filled when we come face to face with mass injustice. International law fills that gap and does so very effectively since it conveys the sense of certainty that relativism inevitably always lacks, while simultaneously making its peace with multi-lateralist and multiculturalist assumptions — we are all equal at the UN, or at least on the Security Council — which themselves derive from post-modernist relativism.

Of course, those whose primary interest is the state of Israel might say that this is to over-intellectualise the matter. For Israel bashers it’s always a case of any stick will do. If it suits them, one day they’ll quote “international law”. On another day it’ll be a quote from Amnesty International. On another it’ll be a critical remark from a Nobel Laureate. Fair enough.

But I still think there is something more all embracing going on in the use and abuse of the notion of “international law” which constitutes a broader attack on the promotion and sustenance of Western values generally. It does not take much searching through the archives of the Guardian or the BBC, after all, to note that it was the weapon of choice against the Bush administration on a variety of fronts, but especially on Iraq. It is the “illegality” of Tony Blair’s actions in supporting Bush that always forms the centrepiece of the polemic against him. And yes, against Israel, the Guardian, the BBC, the British Foreign Office, the European Union and NGOs galore consistently throw “international law” in the country’s face as a means to deligitimise its behaviour, whether it concerns self-defence operations against Hamas or over the “settlements” in east Jerusalem.

If there’s a beginning, middle and end point to any process of thought, I’d say I’m somewhere in the middle right now on this one. I’d welcome thoughts in the comment section below.