By Xavier Villar

Since the events of October 7, the assertion that Israel has the right to defend itself has been echoed consistently by media outlets, politicians, commentators, and the general public.

The constant mantra of Israel’s right to defend itself is incessantly repeated and rarely questioned. It is one of those statements that appears irrefutable to many individuals.

Since the establishment of the Zionist entity, this justification has been used to deny Palestinians their right to property, homes, freedom and most fundamental rights.

It was used to justify the looting of Palestinian properties after the wars of 1948 and 1967, and to support the imposition of martial law on Palestinians for nearly two decades.

The invocation of the alleged right to defend themselves from the resistance of colonized communities has been used by the vast majority of colonizers as justification to carry out their project of eliminating native communities under the settler-colonial project.

The constant mantra of Israel’s right to defend itself is invoked at all times, not just by the regime itself but also by governments in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, and other places.

This repetition serves to construct a discourse that conceals Zionist crimes by portraying itself as the affected party. One could even argue that the Zionist colonial occupation is so pervasive that it usurps the place of the actual victims.

By invoking the right to defend itself, Zionism shelters behind a victimhood that doesn’t belong to it, merely seeking to conceal its own settler-colonial violence.

In her book Se défendre: Une philosophie de la violence, philosopher Elsa Dorlin highlights a crucial point about self-defense using the case of Rodney King, a black construction worker brutally beaten by the Los Angeles police on March 3, 1991.

During the 1992 trial against four police officers accused of assault, every attempt by King to protect himself from the police was interpreted in court as a threat against the officers.

Any gesture by King that didn’t entail absolute submission to police violence was seen as a risk to the officers’ lives.

In a broader political analysis, the example of King represents a historical, legal, philosophical, and political system that legitimizes violence carried out by individuals or entities seen as normative, while condemning the self-defense of those categorized as subaltern, whether they are states, individuals, or organizations, and labeling it as mere aggression.

The example of King represents, at an individual level, a reflection of the colonial model known as preemptive legitimate defense.

This deliberate confusion surrounding the concept of the right to defend oneself showcases how, in Palestine, the colonial legal order uses this recourse as a tool to maintain its control.

Hence, it’s not surprising that the actions of Palestinian resistance groups are labeled as illegal since they seek to disrupt the colonial status quo.

All this serves to problematize the issue of self-defense. Or in other words, for whom is self-defense a right? It shouldn’t come as a surprise, in attempting to answer the question, that historically, the right to legitimate violence, including self-defense, is tied to a racial issue.

In many cases, this racial division that permits or prohibits violence is disguised behind various signifiers such as the right to property, individual autonomy, and so forth.

Philosopher Sylvia Wynter explains that Western societies, through imperial expansion and colonial violence, have established a human hierarchy based on racial and, consequently, legal distinctions.

Those perceived as outside the appropriate humanity or lacking legal recognition are stripped of their human status and thus lack legal protection.

This dynamic helps understand, for instance, the justification of killings of racialized individuals in the United States by deeming their presence in places they shouldn’t be as a threat.

Similarly, this racial construction is used to legitimize the killing of Palestinians by the Zionist regime, including minors, by portraying them as a threat.

From the racial and normative perspective on the legitimacy of violence, as seen in Palestine, the false mantra of the right to defend itself becomes the justification for preemptive war, indefinite detention, constant police surveillance, mass expulsions, and other repressive actions.

The Zionist right to self-defense is nothing but the right to perpetuate oppression and the ongoing elimination of the native Palestinian population.

From a political and ethical standpoint, the only admissible violence is the one exercised by the colonizer. The self-defense of the colonized should be assessed from different perspectives as their political and ethical objectives are entirely divergent.

The colonial violence and its justification under the guise of the right to defend itself imply upholding a regime of brutality founded on racial division.

In contrast, the self-defense of Palestinians involves a struggle to reclaim their humanity and dismantle the racial frameworks that subjugate them.

Therefore, maintaining the fiction that a colonial entity has the right to defend itself is to support, consciously or unconsciously, the racial language and everyday practices of brutality in Palestine.

Xavier Villar is a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies and researcher based in Spain.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of AnsarPress )