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.
Omega armchair response here, mostly drawing on college courses from a few years ago
Basically, rights in the context of international law are very specifically entitlements to something (like clean water) or entitlements not to be subjected to something (like discrimination). These rights are meant to apply to every person universally (as long as the state governing you has ratified the relevant charter), and they can never be taken away. No one can legally take away your right to clean drinking water, for instance. States do not have rights because they are neither people or a group of people, but rather an apparatus operated by people.
A state can use force in self-defense against another state or entity, but this is NOT a right, because there are limits and conditions enforced by international law*, and rights are meant to be inalienable and unconditional. You as a person can't be (e: legally) prevented from drinking water, but a state CAN
be prevented from retaliatingviolate law regarding self-defense if they're not doing it in the right way.This is tricky terminology wise because people like to use terms interchangeably when they don't have the same meaning, either by accident or as rhetorical sleight of hand. To say Israel has a "right" to defend itself would be to say that it can conduct those military operations without concern for international law. Based on what we're seeing right now I guess that's correct in a realist sense...
*Of course, these conditions are rarely applied consistently. Take the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia for instance, which was declared to be "illegal but justified" by the Independent International Commission on Kosovo (funny how most of the members of that commission were from NATO states".
Bonus: There's further complications on how the terms country/nation/state changes things. People like to use those terms interchangeably, too, but they can mean different things depending on who you ask. I used "state" with a pretty rigid definition above. While some people use "nation" in the same way, it can alternatively connote more of a group of people with a common region, ethnicity, religion, and so forth. In that context, a nation CAN have rights, as despite the supposed universality of rights they often must be specifically expressed for vulnerable groups. That's the prime contradiction of rights as it happens—if a right needs to be enumerated like that, it's not really universal, is it?
But, as we see in the case of Palestine right now, people can be prevented from drinking water. It my be inalienable in a normative sense, but this whole conflict is replete with examples if Israel withholding the rights of Palestinians.
Conversely, Israel can't be prevented from retaliating. Right or not, they are going to retaliate anyway, and the international communities willingness to accept it seems to only be weakly tied to how egregious their retaliation seem to be. I guess the realist perspective you allude to is what I am getting at here, so the statement "Israel has a right to defend itself" seems to be doing a rhetorical slight of hand between factual and normative statements.
You're right, I slipped up in my phrasing there and have edited it to make things slightly clearer. Part of what makes discussing this so difficult is the incredible breadth of difference between what is mandated by international law and what really happens in practice.
Didn't mean to imply you had slipped. I actually found your reply quite helpful in organizing my thoughts.
Nah my phrasing could have used some work regardless. Glad it was helpful though!
the law isn't important when they say "Israel has a right to defend itself" they mean a moral right. Israel doesn't need a legal right nuclear weapons put you above any human laws