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NefeshBarYochai <void@invalid.noy> wrote in
news:rejhejdb4kfoih811rh48ghaotio7hdn5k@4ax.com: 

> One of the many disturbing revelations that have emerged since the
> current phase of genocide in Palestine began almost a year ago, is the
> degree to which U.S. and other Western politicians are prepared to
> dutifully stick to a script provided by Israel and its Western
> lobbies, whether the script is true or not. A case in point is the
> oft-repeated “self-defense” canard. 
> 
> 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. 
> 
> 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.  
> 
> https://mondoweiss.net/2024/09/no-israel-does-not-have-a-right-to-
defen
> d-itself-in-gaza-but-the-palestinians-do/ 
> 
> 
> 
Maybe Palestine should not have declared a war on Israel, by incursion 
into Israel, killing civillians and kidnapping hostages. 
Imagine what would happen in Mexico did the same thing to the USA ?