Doesn't Israel have the right to defend itself after October the 7th?

Mohammed Hijab said in this video: How can it be that an occupier is defending itself in the first place? The notion that Israel is defending itself is as absurd as the notion that the rapist is defending itself from the victim. Because Israel is the occupier. An occupier by international law definition means that they are already in an offensive posture. If someone brings you, grabs you, throws you into your bathroom, you in your bathroom are screaming and are eating food and having a good time, one day you come out of your bathroom, you try and fight one of them, then who's defending themselves from who?

If it is the case that it's defending itself against Hamas, is the only way to defend itself against Hamas by dropping bombs in one of the most densely populated areas in the world?

Norman Finkelstein said in this and this parts of a video:

This is not a particularly complicated situation right now, the Israeli government has openly unabashedly blatantly declared a war of genocide on the people of Gaza, that's not an exaggerated language. The prime minister of Israel said in a speech which been which has been reproduced everywhere said this is a war against Amalek referring to the Old Testament. What's a war against Amalek? well, just open up the Old Testament. It obliges Israel to kill every man, woman, and child. Can there be any doubt, now I mean this seriously, can there be any doubt in the minds of any objective observer when Israel declares a policy of prohibiting any food water, fuel or electricity from entering Gaza that it's a genocide?

Why do they do that? Because Gaza for Israel has always been a problem. Because they refuse to just languish and die in a concentration camp. The famous expression: wherever there's oppression there's resistance, so periodically there is resistance and Israel mows the lawn but after October 7th, it decided, number one this was obviously a resistance of a much higher magnitude and also it was an opportunity to solve the Gaza question. During the first week, and we're not talking about ancient history, they were hoping to expel all the Palestinians to Egypt and ethnic cleansing just clean out Gaza that was the goal it didn't work.

Doesn’t Israel have a right to defend itself?

Short: The Israeli state had the right to defend its people from the militants who attacked as it was happening on Oct. 7th. But that was a one-day event; they can't then follow that by spending an indefinite amount of time massacring Palestinian civilians as revenge. Plus, under international law, the Israeli government actually has a responsibility to protect civilians under its occupation, meaning Palestinians. The Israeli government declaring war on the same territory it occupies is not just contradictory, it leaves Palestinians doubly vulnerable because they are occupied and then attacked under occupation by those occupiers. The Israeli government does not have a right, morally or legally to do either of those things. The International Court of Justice has actually rejected Israel's interpretation of the right to self-defence, stating that attacks on Israel by Palestinians do not meet the criteria for invoking Article 51 of the UN Charter. The ongoing double standard in the Palestine/Israel ‘conflict’ is obvious when we start justifying Israeli violence while condemning any Palestinian response. Regardless of where you stand, it should be clear that self-defence doesn’t include killing children, bombing hospitals, bombing aid trucks, bombing schools and refugee camps, cutting off food and water and displacing millions of people.

Long: The Israeli state had the right to defend its people from the militants who attacked as it was happening on Oct. 7th. But that was a one-day event; they can't then follow that by spending an indefinite amount of time massacring Palestinian civilians as revenge. As the occupying power of the Palestinian territories, the Israeli government has an obligation to protect the civilians under its occupation. So it cannot simultaneously occupy the territory, thus taking over the self-governing powers that would otherwise belong to Palestinians, and then declaring war upon them.

These contradictory policies (occupying land and then declaring war on it) make the Palestinian population even more vulnerable. The unstable and unsafe conditions Palestinians suffer are Israel's responsibility. Israel argues that it can invoke the right to self-defence under international law as defined in Article 51 of the UN Charter. The International Court of Justice, however, rejected this. The ICJ explained that an armed attack that would trigger Article 51 must be attributable to a sovereign state - but the armed attacks by Palestinians emerge from a land which Israel controls. While Israel does have the right to defend itself against rocket attacks, it must do so in accordance with occupation law which balances military advantage, civilian suffering and proportionality. We can see that morally and legally, it is doing none of those things.

The basic double standard of the Palestine/Israel ‘conflict’ is also that any Palestinian violence justifies any Israeli violence, but no Israeli violence ever justifies any Palestinian violence. Even if you believe Israel is ‘defending’ itself after the Hamas attacks, what do you think defence looks like? Is defence collectively punishing a population of more than 2 million people, publicly calling for genocide, cutting off food, water, and power, and indiscriminately bombing them self defence? Do these really seem like the actions of a state defending itself, or is there perhaps more going on?

Sources:

@nouraerakat

@zunguzungu

@raadbarhoush

@aaronjmate

This answer is taken from the document Palestine: in Conversation Document.