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.
This seems like a cart and horse issue though, because those rights are not granted or revoked by any supervening authority; they're essentially fictitious. The same honestly goes for notions of legitimacy.
When someone says I have the right to remain silent, that means that any interrogation coerced out of me in contravention of that right will be ruled inadmissible by a supervening authority (the judge). There's no judge to appeal to in these cases; no stick to rap Israel with when in acts beyond it's "rights". So is it just saying Israel can do what it wants and I need to shut up?
Yes. They are inventions of words. And they only matter to the people who care about words.
But pretending to care about words matters a great deal to liberals, their hypocrisy and disregard for the rules based order they advocate for being exposed is a huge risk. The observance of these words is a part of the control structure that reduces the risk of revolution, the population of the global north BELIEVING that we observe and adhere and care about these rules is a large part of what makes the imperial core significantly less susceptible to revolution than the periphery where people are not so naive about this.
It's not the entire picture, but it's a piece of it and one that matters a great deal.