Israel has the right to defend itself.

Basic morality defies this claim. There is no culture in the world that would tolerate strangers deciding to occupy other people's homes, loot their contents, then shooting the owners "in self-defense" when asked to leave.

Israel's claim of "self-defense" has no legal merit. International law affirms that a state does not have a right to self-defense against the people it occupies. The International Court of Justice, the world's highest court, rejected Israel's claim of self-defense in 2004 and reaffirmed in 2024 that Israel's entire occupation is unlawful. Israel cannot have it both ways: occupying a land while simultaneously claiming the right to wage war against its people.

Even if self-defense were applicable, which it is not under occupation, Israel would still be bound by international humanitarian law. Collective punishment, starvation, forced displacement, bombardment of homes, hospitals, schools, and refugee camps are prohibited under international law. "Self-defense" does not justify these crimes, nor does it erase accountability or the rights of victims.

This claim has been one of Israel's central propaganda slogans used to whitewash its colonial expansion across Palestine and the region. The myth portrays Israel as the perpetual victim of Palestinian and Arab "terrorism," while presenting it as a democratic, civilized state defending itself in a hostile region. This narrative erases the reality of occupation, apartheid, and colonial aggression, helping shield Israel from accountability and secure continued political, military, and financial support from complicit powers.

The Zionist movement invoked this claim from the very establishment of the settler-colonial state in 1948, portraying itself as acting in self-defense against attacks by Arab states, when in fact Zionist militias had already forcibly displaced over 300,000 Palestinians and committed major massacres including Deir Yassin before any Arab army entered Palestine in May 1948. These atrocities formed part of Plan Dalet, a military strategy aimed at taking over Palestine and ethnically cleansing its people. This is settler colonialism, not self-defense.

Israel has not stopped using this baseless claim since its establishment in 1948. It invoked "self-defense" in 1967 after launching a surprise attack on Egypt and occupying the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the Egyptian Sinai. It used the same narrative during its invasions of Lebanon in 1978, 1982, and 2006, its repeated assaults on Gaza in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, and 2021, and throughout the ongoing genocide since 2023. The pattern is one of colonial expansion, not defensive response.

Israel invokes the language of "self-defense" whenever Palestinians resist, including after Hamas' attack on October 7, 2023, while deliberately erasing the root causes of Palestinian resistance: decades of occupation, blockade, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and colonialism. These structures of oppression predate Palestinian resistance and would continue to exist without it. Any genuine solution must address the root cause of the violence: Israel's eight-decade settler-colonial regime.

Every colonial power has invoked "self-defense" to justify violence against the colonized and whitewash its crimes. The British claimed self-defense in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising. The French claimed self-defense in Algeria. Apartheid South Africa claimed self-defense against the ANC. In each case, history recognized these systems for what they were: colonial domination violently suppressing resistance.