From the onset of Zionist settler colonialism, the settlers always worked hard to distinguish themselves from the natives. Naturally, this included areas such as technology, where the Palestinians were framed as backwards and uncivilized, the complete antithesis to the civilized European colonist. Another crucial point of differentiation was in the realm of morality. Palestinians, according to the settlers, were short-sighted, scheming and untrustworthy, and therefore not fit to have a land of their own.
An extension of this moral superiority, is the claim that the colonists only resorted to warfare to defend themselves, unlike the warlike Arabs who thirsted for conquest. This gave birth to myths such as “purity of arms” and the laughable assertion that Israel has always sought peace [You can read more about this here].
This can even be seen in the name chosen for their military: “the Israel Defense Forces”. Funnily enough, this is the exact same tactic and moniker adopted by the Apartheid South African military which also referred to itself as the “South African Defense Force”. This rhetoric animates much of the political culture of Israel and its defenders and serves multiple purposes.
Framing is important. Being able to dictate the narrative, to be given the freedom to explain events in a way sympathetic to your worldview can be an incredibly powerful tool. As many studies have shown, there has been an empirically proven bias towards the Zionist and Israeli narrative in US media. This means that Israelis have had enormous advantages in framing what is happening in Palestine.
Palestinian Author Mourid Barghouti wrote:
“It is easy to blur the truth with a simple linguistic trick: start your story from “Secondly.” […] Start your story with “Secondly,” and the world will be turned upside-down. Start your story with “Secondly,” and the arrows of the native Americans are the original criminals and the guns of the white men are entirely the victim. It is enough to start with “Secondly,” for the anger of the Black man against the white to be barbarous.”
He continues:
“You only need to start your story with “Secondly,” and the burned Vietnamese will have wounded the humanity of the napalm, and Victor Jara’s songs will be the shameful thing and not Pinochet’s bullets, which killed so many thousands in the Santiago stadium. It is enough to start the story with “Secondly,” for my grandmother, Umm ‘Ata, to become the criminal and Ariel Sharon her victim.”
The selective “telling” of the story, is exactly what Israel aims to achieve by framing all its military operations as “self-defense”. Invoking self-defense shifts the conversation from Israeli settler colonialism, and focuses it on any reactions to said colonialism. It compartmentalizes current events into separate decontextualized “escalations” that Israel must “handle”. This is done to avoid situating anything into its proper historical context.
If you limit the scope of the story and begin it with Hamas’ rockets, suddenly they become the aggressors. What gets swept under the rug is the entire history of Zionist settler colonialism -which predates every Palestinian faction existing today- or how the Gaza Strip was created, why there are millions of refugees, and why they are prevented from going home or from having the most fundamental of human rights. Even Hamas’ Arabic acronym translates into “The Islamic Resistance Movement”, which should clue you that it was formed as a reaction to resist something. Stripping this information from the story completely changes its conclusions.
This rhetorical method has been applied to even the most ludicrous scenarios, such as framing a sneak attack on Egypt in 1967 as a “preemptive defensive strike” [You can read more about this here]. Because no matter what Israel does, it always argues that it is purely for defensive reasons.
The whole situation is quite ridiculous when you think about it.
What does it even mean for a settler colony to defend itself against the natives it is colonizing? What does it mean for an entity that can only exist through the negation of Palestinians to defend itself from said Palestinians?
Settler colonialism by its very definition necessitates violence and oppression. They are so constant that they seep into every facet of life for the colonized. There are no periods of “calm” or “normalcy” for the Palestinians. Take the average Palestinian living in Gaza, for example. They are a refugee who had their family ethnically cleansed simply because they were not Jewish, and would thus be an inconvenient “demographic threat” to Israeli ethnocracy. This person has the right, by any means possible, to try and reclaim their stolen rights. That cannot under any possible scenario be construed as aggression which could warrant “self-defense”. Even more, Israel wants to reserve the “right” to occupy Palestinians, torment them, besiege them, ethnically cleanse them and steal their land, homes and livelihoods and claim self-defense against any push-back to this oppression.
It boggles the mind that we have people demanding that the colonized and militarily occupied population must guarantee the safety of their oppressors and tormentors. It is akin to a mugger claiming self-defense when their victim fights back against their mugging.
This is hardly unique to Zionism and Israel; colonial forces throughout history have always sought to frame their racist colonialist expansionism as “self-defense” or as acts of mere “self-preservation”.
Thomas Jefferson even argued against abolishing slavery using this exact same logic, citing “self-preservation” as the reason why this barbaric practice must continue. Imagine the audacity of arguing that the slave masters were acting in self-defense against their slaves.
Naturally, this example is not meant to equate the oppression between the victims of slavery on Turtle Island and those of Israeli colonialism, but to highlight the ridiculous ways in which reactionary forces consistently frame their aggression as self-defense.
Israel has a long history of arguing about its dubious “rights”.
An infamous example is its “right to exist” which has no basis in international law, nor does it have any practical meaning [You can read more about this here]. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Israel’s legal claims have always gone hand in hand with masking its colonial expansionist agenda. After all, Israel still claims that the West Bank and Gaza strip are unoccupied, even with its troops, siege, settlements and military bases; their argument is that for an occupation to exist, a territory must be part of a sovereign state, which the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were not. This same justification is used to argue that the Geneva conventions, and international and humanitarian law in general, don’t apply to Palestinians. Of course, this argument was never accepted by the international community, which still maintains that these areas are occupied.
Long story short, Israeli legal claims should be taken with a mountain of salt.
However, due to the long-standing refusal of said international community to hold Israel accountable, Palestinians have become jaded by international law. Decades of advisory opinions and resolutions have gone ignored by Israel and the international community, even as Israel’s violations have become more brazen. Were international law be actually applied, Israel’s “right” to self-defense wouldn’t pass muster.
The major flaw with Israel’s claims is that quite simply no legal right can be derived from an illegal act. What are the illegal acts in question?
- Israel’s foundation and actions are predicated on denying the Palestinian people the right to self-determination. Peoples the world over have this right, and according to international law, an occupying power cannot suppress any insurrection or resistance which is struggling to gain self-determination.
- Israel’s occupation of Palestine has crossed into a permanent occupation, whereas Israel has created permanent new facts on the ground, such as the illegal transfer of its settler population into the occupied areas.
Basically, Israel’s actions are illegal to begin with, and therefore it cannot claim any right to “defend” these actions.
It should be noted that resistance or insurrection here does not necessarily mean “peaceful” or “popular” resistance, but includes all means possible.
United Nations resolution 37/43:
“Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.
It continues:
“Reaffirms the inalienable right of the Namibian people, the Palestinian people and all peoples under foreign and colonial domination to self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity, national unity and sovereignty without outside interference”.
Even if such a right was not enshrined in international law, Palestinians have a moral right to rid themselves of domination and oppression.
Regardless of what type of resistance Palestinians choose, they will be designated as terrorist aggressors anyway. When Israel seized private Palestinian land to expand an illegal settlement, Palestinians responded by erecting a small encampment called Bab al-Shams on it as a peaceful demonstration against this action. Naturally, they were accused of practicing “construction terrorism” by Israelis and promptly beat, repressed, arrested and removed from the land. When Palestinians started preparing a case against Israel in the International Criminal Court, they were accused of practicing “legal terrorism“. Palestinian prisoner hunger strikes are described as “Terrorism in Prison”. None of this would qualify as terrorism from an international law perspective; however, Israel uses this designation indiscriminately to demonize and ostracize any kind of Palestinian resistance, no matter what it looks like, while simultaneously claiming its monstrous repression as defensive. There must be consistent and principled pushback against the ludicrous claim of Israeli “self-defense”. It is the Palestinians who are defending themselves against settler-colonial, ethnonationalist aggression, and who surely need the support more than an imperialist backed nuclear state.
- Massad, Joseph. Israel’s right to defend itself. Electronic Intifada. January 19th, 2009. [Link]
- Finkelstein, Norman. Gaza: An inquest into its martyrdom. University of California Press, 2018.
- Finkelstein, Norman, Stern Weiner, Jamie. Israel Has No Right of Self-Defense Against Gaza. Jacobin. July 27th, 2018. [Link]
- Erakat, Noura: No, Israel Does Not Have the Right to Self-Defense In International Law Against Occupied Palestinian Territory. Jadaliyya. July 11th, 2014. [Link]
- Gathara, Patrick. The fallacy of the colonial ‘right to self-defence’. Al-Jazeera. May 16th, 2021. [Link]