After every successive war crime and crime against humanity perpetrated by Israel in its current genocidal rampage, the single most common refrain of Western government officials (and of Western corporate media) is that “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
No, it does not.
In fact, as a matter of international law, this is a double lie.
First, Israel has no such right in Gaza (or the West Bank and East Jerusalem).
And, secondly, the acts that the “self-defense” claims seek to justify would be unlawful even where self-defense applies.
The UN Charter, a treaty binding on all member states, codifies key rights and responsibilities of states. Among these are the duty to respect the self-determination of peoples (including the Palestinians), the duty to respect human rights, and the duty to refrain from the use of force against other states (where not authorized by the Security Council). Israel, for the 76 years of its existence, has been repeatedly in breach of these principles.
A temporary exception to the prohibition on the use of force is codified in Article 51 of the UN Charter for self-defense from external attacks. But importantly, no such right exists where the threat emanates from inside the territory controlled by the state. This principle was affirmed by the World Court in its 2004 opinion on Israel’s apartheid wall. And the Court found then, and again in its 2024 opinion on the occupation, that Israel is the occupying power across the occupied Palestinian territory. Thus, Israel, as the occupying power, cannot claim self-defense as a justification for launching military attacks in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or the Golan Heights.
Of course, Israel, from within its own territory, can lawfully repel any attacks to protect its civilians, but it cannot claim self-defense to wage war against the territories it occupies. In fact, its principal obligation is to protect the occupied population. In doing so, an occupying power can undertake essential law enforcement functions (as distinct from military operations). But, given that the World Court has subsequently found that Israel’s occupation of the territories is itself entirely unlawful, even those functions would likely be illegitimate, except as strictly necessary to protect the occupied population and within a short timeline of withdrawal.
Israeli Merkava Tank captured by Palestinian militias during the 7 Oct attacks.
By Hani Alshaer CC0 1.0.
In its most recent opinion, the Court has declared that Israel’s presence in the territories violates the principle of self-determination, the rule of non-acquisition of territory by force, and the human rights of the Palestinian people and that it must quickly end its presence and compensate the Palestinian people for losses suffered. As a matter of law, every Israeli boot on the ground, every Israeli missile, jet, or drone in Palestinian air space, and even a single unauthorized Israeli bicycle on a Palestinian road, is a breach of international law.
In sum, Israel’s lawful remedy for threats that it alleges emanate from the occupied territories is to end its unlawful occupation, dismantle the settlements, leave the territories, remove the siege, and fully relinquish control to the occupied Palestinian people.
Here, international law is a simple reflection of common sense and universal morality. A criminal cannot take over someone’s home, move in, loot its contents, imprison and brutalize the inhabitants, and then claim self-defense to murder the homeowners when they fight back.
And, beyond occupied Palestine, while Israel has a right to self-defense from attacks by other states, it cannot claim that right if the attack is a response to Israeli aggression. Israel cannot attack a neighboring state (e.g., Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen) and then claim self-defense if that state strikes back. To accept such an assertion would be to turn international law on its head.
Thus, most assertions by Western politicians and media that “Israel has a right to self-defense” are demonstrably false, as a matter of international law.
The second lie contained in these repeated assertions is the suggestion that a claim of self-defense justifies Israel’s myriad crimes. International law does not allow a claim of self-defense to justify crimes against humanity and genocide. Nor does it magically overcome the international humanitarian law imperatives of precaution, distinction, and proportionality, or the protected status of hospitals and other vital civilian installations.
In addition, the presence of people associated with armed resistance groups (even if proven) does not automatically transform a civilian location or protected structure into a legitimate military target. If it did, the common presence of Israeli soldiers in Israeli hospitals would equally render those hospitals legitimate targets. Attacking hospitals is not an act of self-defense. It is an act of murder and, in systematic and large-scale cases, of the crime of extermination.
A claim of self-defense does not justify collective punishment, the siege of civilian populations, extrajudicial executions, torture, the blocking of humanitarian aid, the targeting of children, the murder of aid workers, medical personnel, journalists, and UN officials- all crimes perpetrated by Israel during the current phase of its genocide in Palestine. And all shamelessly followed by claims of self-defense by Israel’s defenders in the West.
Thus, every response of a politician or complicit corporate media voice to an Israeli crime that begins with “Israel has a right to defend itself” is at once a justification of the unjustifiable and a bald-faced lie- and it should be called out as such.
Further, what you will never hear these voices utter is that Palestine has a right to defend itself, even though, under international law, it absolutely does. Rooted in the UN Charter, and in international humanitarian and human rights law, and affirmed by a series of UN resolutions, Palestinian resistance groups have a legal right to armed resistance to free the Palestinian people from foreign occupation, colonial domination, and apartheid.
And the world agrees. The UN General Assembly has declared:
“the inalienable right of …the Palestinian people and all peoples under foreign occupation and colonial domination to self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity, national unity and sovereignty without foreign interference” and has reaffirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”
Of course, all resistance must respect the rules of humanitarian law, including the principle of distinction to spare civilians. But Palestine’s right under international law to armed resistance against Israel is by now axiomatic.
Simply put, the Palestinian people have a recognized legal right to resist Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide, including through armed struggle. And, since the underlying resistance is lawful, alliances, aid, and support to the Palestinians for this purpose are also lawful.
Conversely, as Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide are unlawful, support to Israel in those endeavors by Western states is unlawful. Indeed, the World Court has found that all states are obliged to end any such support to Israel and to work to end Israel’s occupation.
And one more point on the notion of self-defense. History did not begin on October 7, 2023. In the 1930s and 40s, Zionist colonists traveled from Europe to attack Palestinians in their homes in Palestine. No Palestinian militia traveled to Europe to attack the colonists in their homes in England, France, and Russia. (Of course, Jews fleeing European persecution had every right to seek asylum in Palestine and elsewhere. But Zionists had no right to colonize the land and to dispossess the indigenous people).
For more than 76 years since, Israel has attacked, brutalized, displaced, dispossessed, and murdered the indigenous Palestinian people, and sought to erase them. It has ethnically cleansed hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages, stolen Palestinian homes, businesses, farms, and orchards, and destroyed Palestinian civilian infrastructure. Every Palestinian community has experienced daily assaults on dignity, arrests, beatings, torture, pillage, and murder at the hands of Israel. Survivors have been forced to live under a regime of apartheid and racial segregation and with the systematic denial of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights in their own land.
Every peaceful Palestinian effort to end the oppression and to regain the Palestinian right to self-determination, through diplomatic initiatives, judicial action, peaceful protest, or organized boycotts and divestment, has been met with repression or rejection, not only by Israel but by its Western sponsors.
In this context, basic morality and simple logic dictate that the right of self-defense belongs to the Palestinian people, not to their oppressor. And international law agrees.
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Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and former senior United Nations Official. He left the UN in October of 2023, penning a widely read letter that warned of genocide in Gaza, criticized the international response and called for a new approach to Palestine and Israel based on equality, human rights and international law.