On Tuesday evening, a jury in Minneapolis, Minnesota reached a verdict that Derek Chauvin was guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. Last May, in his role as a police officer, Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed. 

Justice or mob justice

The killing of Floyd instigated massive protests and riots that quickly spreading nationwide and to over 2,000 cities and towns in over 60 countries involving an estimated 20 million people. George Floyd became the central cause of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Arson, vandalism, and looting between that summer were tabulated to have caused $1–2 billion in insured damages nationally, the highest recorded damage from civil disorder in U.S. history,

The seven-week trial was perhaps one of the most controversial and widely publicized in recent history and was accompanied by riots. Rep. Maxine Waters left Washington to join the protests in Minneapolis, calling for protesters to “stay on the street” and “get more confrontational” if Chauvin were acquitted in Floyd’s killing. 

“We’ve got to stay in the street and demand justice,” Waters said to reporters. “We’re looking for a guilty verdict and we’re looking to see if all of the talk that took place and has been taking place after they saw what happened to George Floyd. If nothing does not happen, then we know that we got to not only stay in the street, but we have got to fight for justice,” she added.

These statements were considered by many lawmakers to constitute incitement and Judge Peter Cahill presiding over the Chauvin trial told defense attorney Eric Nelson “that Congresswoman Waters may have given you something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned.”

President Biden also weighed in before the verdict, commenting that the “evidence was overwhelming”, implying that a guilty verdict was called for. 

“I’m praying the verdict is the right verdict,” Biden added. “I think it’s overwhelming in my view.”

White House spokesman Jenn Psaki was challenged on this as it is highly irregular for a sitting president to make comments that would influence an ongoing trial.

“The jury is sequestered… he certainly is not looking to influence [the trial],” Psaki responded.  

The biblical mandate to establish courts and police

The president’s comments may, in fact, violate the necessary separation between the executive and judicial branches of the government. From a Biblical perspective, such a separation is mandated as is a rejection of mob justice, as was called for by Rep. Waters. Deuteronomy mandates for establishing courts and police, as well as carrying out proper justice that is not influenced by external forces.

You shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes, in all the settlements that Hashem your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. You shall not judge unfairly: you shall show no partiality; you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the plea of the just. Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that Hashem your God is giving you. Deuteronomy 15:18-20

It should be noted that the word shotrim, translated here as ‘officials’, also means police. Establishing a court system and pursuing justice is also included in the Seven Noahide Laws incumbent upon all of mankind, as implied in Genesis:

Whoever sheds the blood of man, By man shall his blood be shed; For in His image Did Hashem make man. Genesis 9:6

Taken in the context of current events, this verse explicitly teaches that if Chauvin was guilty of murder, he should, as an image of God, be treated with respect and judged in a court, rather than through mob justice. This justice is necessary as Goerge Floyd was also in the image of God. 

Defund the police: Godless

Rabbi Hillel Weiss, the former spokesman for the Sanhedrin and a lawyer by profession, noted that the same people who are calling for justice to be carried out according to the will of the people are also part of the “Defund the Police” movement. 

“Justice has become a product of politics, in the US as well as in Israel,” Rabbi Weiss said. “Not only is this explicitly injustice but it is also anti-Bible. And the people who advocate for this are, of course, anti-religion and anti-Bible.”

“This agenda is hidden under the guise of ‘freedom’. People want to be free to do what they want, even if it is explicitly unjust. The US is built on freedom but this can be taken to an unholy extreme. In Biblical terms, the government and the courts have authority because of their Biblical mandate. The actual judge or ruler is almost irrelevant so long as he adheres to that mandate. And, alternatively, even the best ruler or judge who throws off the yoke of heaven loses his right to rule.”

“This is based on justice as it is taught in the Torah. As soon as a person claims that he can replace those rules of judgment, he has placed himself in the place of God and removed the one true God from the process. Torah must be based in Torah and these crises are coming to push the world towards establishing a Sanhedrin that can send the light of Torah into the world to prevent the world from continuing down this path towards anarchism and lawlessness.”

“No systemic racism”

David Rubin, a terrorism expert and founder of Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund, deals with the political polarization in the US in his book, Confronting Radicals: What America can Learn from Israel. Rubin noted that President Biden responded to the guilty verdict by saying, “It ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism. Systemic racism — a stain on our nation’s soul.” 

“He also referred to the fact that other police officers testified against Derek Chauvin,’ Rubin noted. “Perhaps racism had something to do with the murder of George Floyd, or perhaps it was just a murder without racism being a factor. But if it was racism, what was systemic about it? Wasn’t the murder carried out by an individual?”

The verdict absolutely does not prove that systemic racism exists,” Rubin asserted. “There is definitely individual racism in America and that will only be eradicated through education about judging people by who they are inside, not by their skin color or their ethnic background, but there is nothing inherent in the American system that is racist. Systemic racism ended with the Civil Rights Act in 1964. From that moment onward, racism has still existed and has been exhibited by many individuals, but it’s just not honest to say that it’s built into the system.”

“Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Democrats as a political party do not want this issue to go away after the verdict. Identity politics has been very successful for them, and therefore, even if it’s not honest, they will definitely continue to exploit the inaccurate loaded term ‘systematic racism’ in order to keep their rioters and looters angry and to score political points.”

“The term is part of a political propaganda campaign, Rubin said. “There is a war of semantics taking place in America. Here in Israel, we know about semantics from the loaded terms that have been used against us for many years. Historically inaccurate terms like Palestine used instead of Israel, or the West Bank used instead of Judea and Samaria, have long been used to mislead people about the real history in our region. So, too, in America, with terms like systemic racism, or fictional mental disorders such as homophobia and Islamophobia. These are all politically loaded terms that have been created recently by the radical Left for the political purpose of keeping conservatives on the defensive, as well as activating their own radical Left political base with identity politics.”

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has approved of a proposal to ban the use of the terms ‘mother’ and ‘father’ in the House of Representatives. This is semantic warfare against the traditional family that was once the bedrock of American society. This is cultural warfare that the Democrats are exploiting to charge up their radical Left base. The late great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was a Democrat, had warned of this semantic deception years ago, as did George Orwell, but one thing is certain; Moynihan would not feel at home in the Democrat party today.”