Abusing the right to self defense

Abusing the Right to Self-Defense

-feigning or creating an ‘enemy’ IN ORDER TO violently act out “defenses”. Thus converting paranoia -- irrational fear; fear of the irrational
(terror) – into convulsive violent hate/love spasms (orgasmic death reflex/impulse). The result in individuals is sadistic brutality. In groups, the result is one-sided wanton disregard for human life, dignity and property in the planning and execution of military action.

There is no “right” to be so jumpy and hyper-reactive that the slightest real or imagined insult immediately launches all-out, unconstrained use of force of arms. Psychoanalytically, such behavior is “overdetermined”. Perhaps an abstract ‘right’ might be claimed to be that way – ‘prickly’; or ‘venomous’; but not as part of a civilized milieu. Individuals are required to either get over their paranoid delusions of persecution or be put away (to prevent it passing over into pre-emptive attacks acting out defenses against ‘threat of immediate attack’). Groups are required by moral law and international understandings not to react as Israel has done in response to the capture of a few soldiers, claiming “the right of self defence” to justify collective punishment. The altogether disproportionate response, when the individuals themselves are reported well treated, is an over-determined spasm of violence and hate of a scale not witnessed in the civilized world since Kristallnacht. As the Germans turned out overnight Nov. 8/9, 1938 to slaughter Jews and destroy their property, acting out defense of their group ‘right’, insulted by Theodor Grnzspan’s murder of German Embassy secretary Von Rand, so these same-by-name Jews turn out to do unto Hizbollah (Party of God, in Arabic).

“While we analyze the individual battles and the stages of this campaign we must not forget the most important aspect of this war: Hezbollah and what this organization symbolizes* must be destroyed at any price.” (- P. Schiff in Haaratez (off The New Republic online, 7.28.’06) … “If Hezbollah does not experience defeat in this war, this will spell the end of Israeli deterrence against its enemies.” Schiff goes on to explain that it is the massive-response ‘deterrence policy’ that has kept the peace since l970. Now, “a situation of strategic parity between Israel and Hezbollah” demolishes the ‘deterrence policy’’s deterrent clout, so The Enemy will be pouring in for the kill like Mexicans across the Texas border. Can’t have that. “For Israel, the conflict in Lebanon is a must-win situation.”

The pin-prick of a few soldier kidnappings, by their huge overreaction, has been propelled into a situation that threatens Israel’s very existence. Now the question must be raised whether the kidnappings were not ‘arranged’ IN ORDER TO bring about this spasmodic result.

The announced intent to destroy “Hezbollah and what this organization symbolizes” is a declaration of war on a people as a group, which is genocide. The semantics of “Party of God” juxtaposes the theological contradiction between Muslims and Zionists. Whose “God” is God? If the term is used at all for these two religions, each claiming theirs is the one and only, this question cannot be avoided without throwing logic entirely out the window. Only one can be right, the other must be wrong. That is how religious wars go, and “gods” have been fighting through people in that part of the world, or vice versa, since the dawn of civilized history. Israel “right to exist” contradicts Hezbollah’s; they mean something
Different by “God”.

And Questioning Whether Israel has a Right to Exist


Does Israel have “the right to exist”? A peculiar defense against the threat of non-being is built into the conception of “Israel” which this unique phrase tries to reverse.

In logical terms, “existence” is not a predicate, as Kant pointed out; therefore not ‘something’ granted to some, but denied to other, things. In general, whatever can be assumed under “rights”, such as “safety”, “privacy”, “self-defense” belongs or not to something already existing. “Right to exist” is thus a malapropism from this point of view. Further: when the concept of “right” is associated with “inalienable”, it invokes the Aristotelian/Thomistic distinction between essential and accidental attributes; ‘inalienable’ rights being those essential to the concept of what-it-is-to-be a thing of the type in question, hence formally inseparable. The notion of “right to exist” suggests a tautological, undeniable linkage again of peculiar import. What would deny it?

It is not generally noticed by those eager not to deny Israel’s “right to exist”, that two distinct claims are being made: the right to exist of the descendents of Abraham and Sarah – a blood line, or tribe, with a very rich heritage; and the right to exist of a particular entity, as in the Zionist state set up by the Balfour declaration. These are different lines of legitimacy claimed convergence under the mantra “Israel’s right to exist.” What holds the former, tribal lineage use in mind is the “God”, translated YHWH (or Elohim or YHWH El Elyon, etc.) of the Old Testament. Although the very metaphysics of what this word stands for is changed in the New Testament by the Incarnation, replacing the undifferentiated “monotheism” by the Trinity, many Christians allow themselves to be abused by identification with the Jewish version. Even though Jesus’ central message, emphatically repeated, was difference in scale of being between His Father and the Jews. (“Before Abraham was, I AM. –John 8.58)

So this first line of defense of Israel’s “right to exist”, pursued backward, terminates in a question mark. Does a cargo cult have the right to exist? say, by silencing beneficent anthropologists who would fain enlighten them about the origin of their ritual?

As to the second line, this goes over to the actual historical thread of decisions, legalities and actions leading up to the situation the entity called “The State of Israel” faces today. There are markers in this thread: the Balfour Declaration, Kristallnacht and the holocaust, Truman’s decision, the Irgun, Ben Gurion, the War of 1967, invasion of Lebanon 1982, the first intafada, ’88; Sharon’s Temple Mount provocation 2000; war on Lebasnon, 2006.

Through this succession, ‘looping’ through the trauma of historical abuse each time the name “Israel” recalls it, the abused become the abusers. That which was done unto them by Germans, claiming their civilization’s “God” was superior, they have done to Palestinians and Lebanese.

And by the incompatible linkage of Old and New Testament “God”, America has been manipulated into complicity with genocide.