This is the typical throwaway line used by liberals when it’s pointed out that Israel should stop doing war crimes, but I’m not sure what it’s trying to convey.
Rights are always a tricky abstraction, doubly so at the international level, so I’m not sure what asserting the existence of some right is supposed to do. Israel obviously has the capability to defend itself1, so what good is asserting some intangible right to do so? Are they actually saying “We should not stop Israel from doing what it wants to defend itself”? I imagine even they would object to Israel use of sarin or nuclear weapons, so I don’t think that’s what they mean. Is it “Israel should be given wide but not unlimited latitude by the US to respond as it sees fit”? Cause if that’s what they mean, the easy answer is “not with our tax dollars”.
Anyway this just seems like one of those empty pat expressions used during arguments I hate.
- When they aren’t busy doing racialist dismissiveness of Palestinian military capability.
It’s an indirect way of stating they support an apartheid state because they view Palestinians, and really Arabs, as subhuman.
Israel has a right to defend itself but Palestinians do not have a right to resist their occupation, oppression, displacement, dispossession, and humiliation by Israel. Palestinians are surplus humanity, especially those living in the Gaza strip, and deserve - in Western eyes - nothing but to accept their own extinction and erasure.
Right to defend itself is a euphemism for right to uphold white supremacy, the interests of western capital, and to dominate the oil producing gulf states.