Is "Israel Has a Right to Defend Itself" Code for "We Are Killing the Geneva Conventions"?

Using insider speak, officials can transmit one image to the public and a very different one to their colleagues. This sets up the legal construct for carnage.

During the Korean War, Chinese officials accused the US of using bioweapons.

Officials from the US would retort that these were “baseless charges”.

It would later be found out that a secret US bioweapons program was actually called Project Baseless.

So the US officials were likely having a nice big laugh about it all.

They were tacitly admitting the existence of the bioweapons program while it appeared to any normal listener that they were denying the accusation. (This is recounted in Nicholson Baker’s 2019 book, appropriately entitled, Baseless. See his C-SPAN talk from August 2020.)

This constitutes an extreme example of what I call “insider speak”.

Insiders say words which are understood a certain way by the general public, while those in on the scam understand the same words in an altogether different way.

We may have been witnessing a very prominent example of insider speak over the last eight months.

• Blinken referred to “our support for Israel’s right to defend itself, indeed its obligation to defend itself.”

• Biden: “Israel will always have the right to defend itself against the threats to its security and to bring those responsible for October 7th to justice.”

• Harris: “President Biden and I have been clear: Israel has a right to defend itself. And we will remain steadfast in that conviction.”

• Sullivan: “The United States strongly supports Israel’s right to defend itself following the horrific terrorist attacks that occurred on October 7.”

It’s been a mantra.

But the amazing thing is that Israel has no legal right to defend itself from Palestinians in Gaza under international law as several legal scholars have pointed out. For example:

Prof. Richard Falk: “Gaza remains from the perspective of international law and the UN an 'Occupied Palestine Territory' subject to the Fourth Geneva Convention. This means that Israel as Occupying Power has a primary obligation to safeguard the safety of the civilian population. It is entitled to take reasonable lawful means to restore its security in the aftermath of such an attack [Oct 7]. As such, it has no international legal right of self-defense; even if it had a right of self-defense it would have no legal or moral basis for engaging in a genocidal assault, the character of which has been strongly confirmed by Israel's top leaders, Netanyahu, Gallant, and to a more indirect sense, Herzog.”

Prof. Michael Lynk: “The UNSC and the UNGA, between them, have adopted more than 100 resolutions stating that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies in full to all of the OPT: the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.”

He notes: “The International Court of Justice said in 2004, in the Wall Advisory Opinion that Israel, as the occupying power, does not have a right of self-defence” —

138. The Court has thus concluded that the construction of the wall constitutes action not in conformity with various international legal obligations incumbent upon Israel. However, Annex I to the report of the Secretary-General states that, according to Israel: “the construction of the Barrier is consistent with Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, its inherent right to self-defence and Security Council resolutions 1368 (2001) and 1373 (2001)”. More specifically, Israel’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations asserted in the General Assembly on 20 October 2003 that “the fence is a measure wholly consistent with the right of States to self-defence enshrined in Article 51 of the Charter”; the Security Council resolutions referred to, he continued, “have clearly recognized the right of States to use force in self-defence against terrorist attacks”, and therefore surely recognize the right to use non-forcible measures to that end (A/ES-10/PV.21, p. 6).

139. Under the terms of Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations:

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

Article 51 of the Charter thus recognizes the existence of an inherent right of self-defence in the case of armed attack by one State against another State. However, Israel does not claim that the attacks against it are imputable to a foreign State.

The Court also notes that Israel exercises control in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and that, as Israel itself states, the threat which it regards as justifying the construction of the wall originates within, and not outside, that territory. The situation is thus different from that contemplated by Security Council resolutions 1368 (2001) and 1373 (2001), and therefore Israel could not in any event invoke those resolutions in support of its claim to be exercising a right of self-defence.

Consequently, the Court concludes that Article 51 of the Charter has no relevance in this case.

The US government doesn’t recognize Israel as the occupying power over the Palestinians. When I asked at a State Department briefing, “Is Israel the occupying power in Gaza?” Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel responded: “That is not what we believe to be the case” and refused to take the followup: “So Israel is exempt from the obligations of being an occupying power in Gaza?” as he ended the news conference and the State Department cut off my microphone.

So, given that legally, Israel has no right to defend itself in this particular circumstance under international law, is the repeated assertion that it does have that right a way of saying it is immune from international law?