What Does It Really Mean to Say Israel Has the Right to Defend Itself?

“As I said then, I say today, Israel had a right—has a right to defend itself.”

This is militarism set in stone. The words are those of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, of course, in her extensive CNN interview last week—quick words that lead the charge and spew the glory, no matter how blatantly false they are.

Oh, and by the way: “Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”

She had to add some vague, paradoxical empathy, apparently, just because the nation she hopes to lead—USA! USA!—is kind of growing up, at least a little bit, and a certain (inconvenient) segment of its voters now maintain skepticism about the effectiveness, not to mention the moral sanity, of militarism. Harris, alas, had no intention of addressing the issue with intelligence, nor does the media push her to: What, in fact, does self-defense mean? Does it always, unquestionably, require violence?

The violence in Palestine—in Gaza and also the West Bank—goes on and on, to what end? Nothing I write here is new, but what I want to do is push the matter beyond the realm of glorious, media-certified abstraction. Israel has the right to defend itself. What does that actually look like? Here’s a brief, recent example from the Drop Site:

For nearly a week, the Israeli military has been laying siege to hospitals in Jenin and other cities in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, severely restricting access to medical care, targeting medical workers and ambulances, and cutting off water and electricity, as part of a massive military offensive in the occupied West Bank, the largest operation in the Palestinian territory in over two decades.

...The move mirrors tactics by the Israeli military in Gaza, where every hospital has been targeted and only a fraction are partially functioning, leaving the healthcare system in ruins.

And the Palestine Red Crescent noted that “Israeli troops have ‘directly targeted’ ambulances, injuring two medical workers and a volunteer doctor. ‘Our teams have been prevented from transporting various casualties, patients, and elderly suffering from chronic diseases, and women in labor. The further marginalization of already vulnerable communities renders the area uninhabitable.’”

But Israel has the right to defend itself! Just imagine if the mainstream media refused to report on war—on “self-defense”—as an abstraction, especially when hospitals are being targeted, ambulances are being targeted, refugee camps are being bombed. Even if there’s a justification of some sort for any particular action, this is what self-defense looks like. Real journalism will not quietly look away from it.

Nor will it take events out of context for the purpose of creating a “good guy/bad guy” narrative. Maybe creating such a narrative is part of the game of politics, but honest journalism refuses to submit to it. For instance, as per the website Decolonize Palestine:

Framing is important. Being able to dictate the narrative, to be given the freedom to explain events in a way sympathetic to your worldview, can be an incredibly powerful tool. As many studies have shown, there has been an empirically proven bias toward the Zionist and Israeli narrative in U.S. media. This means that Israelis have had enormous advantages in framing what is happening in Palestine.

In other words, the Hamas attack of October 7 stands all by itself: a shocking act of barbaric violence perpetrated (for no reason except hatred) on innocent Israelis. But in fact, horrific as the act was, it happened within a context: seven decades of Israeli occupation, Gaza turned into an open-air concentration camp, Palestinians living without freedom and dignity.

Ignoring this is the equivalent, let us say, of a Hollywood-constructed brutal Indian attack on a wagon train of American settlers. The white guys are the victims! They have a right to defend themselves.

But this is just the starting point. Journalism is supposed to speak truth to power. This is easy to say, but truth is not necessarily simple—let alone simplistic.

Israel has the right to defend itself. Let me take a moment here to agree with would-be President Harris. Yes, Israel has the right to defend itself. But what does that actually mean? Self-defense is far, far more than an us-vs.-them standoff. If Israel wants to be safe and secure, step one—Kamala, I’m certain you know this!—is to value Palestinians as fully human, talk to them, and listen. And of course, this truth goes in all directions.

Anyone who isn’t aware of this is... deeply ignorant? Or do I simply mean part of both parties’ voting base? I listen to Harris triumphantly declare that the United States has the most lethal military force on the planet, followed by a resonating cheer from the voters, and it all sounds as phony as the worst movie script I can imagine. But apparently we remain trapped in our military budget.

As I wrote a few months ago: “We will not enter the future with closed minds. We will not find security—we will not evolve—if we choose to remain subservient to linear, us-vs.-them thinking. We will not become our fullest selves or have access to our own collective human consciousness if we choose to stay caged in our own righteous certainty.”

And yes, Israel has a right to defend itself. So does Palestine. So do all of us—we have the right to defend ourselves from our own militarism.