Israel Claims "Self Defense," Which is a Common Excuse for Genocide.
Israel joins the long history of genocidal maniacs "just defending themselves."
Since October 8th, 2023, Israel and its supporters have insisted the relentless bombing of Gaza is defensive. While they excuse every massacre as an attempt to “kill terrorists” or “bring home the hostages,” any sober observer can easily see through this pathetic lie and recognize that “self-defense” is not Israel’s true objective. Haim Rubinstein, the spokesperson for the families of hostages, publicly resigned in protest of Netanyahu’s lack of concern for his citizens, admitting Hamas offered to release all hostages on October 9th, 2023, in exchange for Israel not invading Gaza.1 Last week, Israel (and the U.S.) voted against a U.N. Resolution demanding the release of the hostages and a ceasefire. And while I have no military expertise, I don’t see how 2,000-pound bombs are an effective means to rescue prisoners in one piece. If my loved one were being held captive in a bank, I would be quite concerned if the hostage negotiator insisted on air-striking the bank.
All of this, from the “Bring Them Home” propaganda campaign to Israel’s near-century-long colonization of Palestine, rests on the idea that Israel’s militarism is an act in self-defense. Even when its attacks are preemptive against actors who have never raised a hand to Israel, the IDF and Mossad insist they must kill, occupy, and oppress to save Israeli lives. Obviously, claiming you are “defending yourself” by sending assassins to kill another nation’s scientists (which Israel repeatedly does) is nonsensical, the type of lie that would be too outlandish for an Orwell novel.2 But even such horrendous acts pale in comparison to the current claim that Israel must level an entire civilization and ethnically cleanse its inhabitants to rescue a handful of people, who will somehow be immune from their munitions.
I was quick to call Israel’s post-October 7th actions a genocide, simply because Israeli officials openly stated their intentions to rid Gaza of its indigenous inhabitants. This accusation was retorted by the usual chorus, who claimed, “Israel is just defending itself! It has an obligation to protect Israeli lives.”
While I doubt many of those who put forth this justification actually believe it, even if they do, they should know their excuse of “self defense” does not absolve Israel. In fact, it lumps the Zionist state in with the many other perpetrators of genocide who have justified their crimes under the pretense of self defense.
If We Don’t Do It To Them, They’ll Do It To Us
During World War I, the neighboring Ottoman and Russian empires clashed across their shared border. Amidst the chaos, nationalism, religious tension, and racism came to a boil. The Armenians, a Christian population living inside the Muslim Ottoman Empire, were alleged to be “internal enemies,” collaborating with their ethnic brethren in the Russian Army. After discovering a few sporadic pockets of Armenian resistance, the Ottoman state began what is now known as the Armenian Genocide. Much like the Israelis, they claimed they were defending themselves from a military threat. The below quote from Ottoman Grand Vizier (prime minister) Talaat Pasha in 1915, sheds light on Ottoman motive.
"We have been blamed for not making a distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [To do so] was impossible. Because of the nature of things, one who was still innocent today could be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other concerns.”
Operating under this “self defense” impulse, between 1915 and 1917, Ottoman soldiers displaced or executed up to 1.5 million Armenians.
We Americans know full well where bogus claims of preemptive defense can lead. Many of our government’s crimes against indigenous Americans were predicated on the basis of protecting white Americans from “Indian Savagery.” This accusation is baked into the American Declaration of Independence, the very first document our country ever produced.
“He (King George) has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages.”
With the assumption that Indigenous Americans were bloodthirsty animals baked into the national DNA, it’s no surprise Americans thought it justified to proactively kill entire tribes. The Sand Creek Massacre, one of the most infamous atrocities of the genocide of Native Americans, was carried out under this false claim of preemptive defense.
In 1864, Colonel John Chivington took it upon himself to hunt down the Dog Soldiers, a militant group of Cheyenne and Lakota. After two months of searching with no avail, Chivington chose the time-tested tactic of the American military: slaughter innocent women and children and claim you’re a fierce warrior bound for Valhalla.
On November 29th of that same year, Chivington commanded his troops to attack a band of American-allied Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes living outside Fort Lyon in Colorado. Despite these tribes being under the protection of federal troops, he killed them all in what is now known as the Sand Creek Massacre, an infamous step in America’s genocide of its indigenous population.
During the Congressional investigation into the massacre, Chivington lied and claimed the camp was a predominantly male war party planning to attack Americans.3 Asked for his motivation for his attack, he replied:
White men who had been trading with the Indians informed me that the Indians had determined to make war upon the whites as soon as the grass was green, and that they were making preparations for such an event by the large number of arrows they were making and the quantity of arms and ammunition they were collecting that the settlers along the Platte and Arkansas rivers should be warned of the approaching danger that the Indians had declared their intention to prosecute the war vigorously when they commenced. With very few troops at my command I could do but little to protect the settlers except to collect the latest intelligence from the Indians' country, communicate it to General Curtis, commanding department of Missouri, and warn the settlers of relations existing between the Indians and the whites, and the probability trouble, all of which I did.
This “collecting of intelligence” amounted to hundreds of slaughtered Arapaho and Cheyenne. Modern estimates put the death toll at seven hundred and fifty dead, two-thirds of which were women and children. In 2000, letters were Chivington’s officers were unearthed in a Denver archive. They revealed hundreds of American soldiers refused orders to attack the camp, proving the genocidal nature of the raid was well-known.4
But the self-defense justification does not always require prior military conflict between the victim and their perpetrators. The Holocaust, the most notable genocide of the 20th century, was conducted on the false accusation that German Jews were “sabotaging” German society.
Following Germany’s defeat in World War I, Hitler and the Nazis insisted the loss was not due to a military nature, but because “Jews stabbed Germany in the back” by signing the Treaty of Versailles. Many prominent leaders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), a socialist party that had negotiated the Treaty along with the Centre Party, were Jewish. Hugo Haase and Kurt Eisner had led strikes demanding an end to the war, while communist icons Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Lienknecht were former SPD members, who broke off to form the anti-war Spartacus League, which became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). When Hitler became Chancellor, he outlawed the KPD and SPD and ordered party members be sent to Dachau, the Holocaust’s first concentration camp.
With the blurry line between “communists/socialists” and “Jews” established, Hitler extended the arrest of non-socialist and apolitical Jews by claiming socialism was inherent to Judaism. One of the Nazi propaganda slogans was the warning against “Cultural Bolshevism,” a conspiracy theory that Jews were trying to sneak socialism (a.k.a. Bolshevism) into German culture through music, art, and sex for the ultimate goal of turning Germany communist. In this way, Hitler built a non-existent threat that Germans were under attack by the Jews. Segregation, encampment, and gas chambers became the mechanism of defense. As we know all too well, over six million Jews and five million other “undesirables” were murdered in the Holocaust, with millions more perishing in the conflict to stop it.
Despite this readily-available history, Israeli apologists still cling to the idea that Israel is only guided by self-defense and a desire to live in peace with its neighbors. While this might have held up fifty years ago, the mountain of evidence shows the contrary. Israel is not a small, defenseless nation, but a militarized society that seeks to dispel its neighbors and conquer their land. Since 1967, Israel has claimed it must occupy Syria’s Golan Heights as a “buffer zone,” yet just last week the IDF pushed deeper into Syria. Now they claim they need a buffer zone for their buffer zone. Only a fool believes them. There’s no longer any debate about what Israel is or what it intends to be. Those who still insist upon its innocence, are no different than those who murdered millions of Armenians, Native Americans, and Jews under the lie that they were “defending themselves.”
Those who parrot this propaganda should be scorned and derided as we would any other who carries water for a murderous regime.
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Further Reading
https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-doubt-netanyahu-preventing-hostage-deal-charges-ex-spokesman-of-families-forum/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/29/iran-irgc-assassinations-israel-targeted-killing-nuclear/
https://kclonewolf.com/sand-creek-documents-chivington-testimony.html
https://www.nps.gov/sand/learn/historyculture/index.htm
Best take down of the "Israel is only defending itself" argument I've ever heard.
really well written. thanks