Yesterday’s Senate vote on Israel highlighted the utter uselessness of the term “defensive weapons.” It also shows why pro-Israel good faith
by Seth Mandel
But the debate over the word “defensive” largely misses the point, because it was never about defensive weapons in the first place. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expressed her opposition to Iron Dome funding, which is undeniably purely defensive, she was responding to a DSA member who phrased it this way (emphasis added): “If the moment presents itself in Congress, will you commit to voting ‘no’ for any spending on arms for Israel, including so-called ‘defensive capabilities?’”
“So-called defensive capabilities” was a telling phrase, and AOC’s willing submission to the DSA’s demands foreshadowed last night’s vote on bulldozers and anti-tunnel munitions. The new talking point is that there’s really no such thing as purely defensive weapons.
Iron Dome is an umbrella. When Ocasio-Cortez walks under an umbrella in the rain, are we unsure who is protecting themselves from what? Only a lunatic would say the umbrella is an offensive capability deployed against the raindrops.
But that’s where we are. Those of us who have tried to find common ground with Israel’s critics have made a serious mistake: We allowed for the division of offensive and defensive categories thinking it would at least protect the anti-missile system that stops rockets from falling on the heads of little children as they walk to school in Israel. We didn’t imagine that members of Congress would suggest those children are the aggressors in the conflict and therefore anything that protects them is an offensive weapon.
We should have seen it coming. The progressive idea of “colonialism” bears no relation to actual colonialism; it’s usage is solely to justify the killing of Jews in Israel no matter where they live. They’re considered occupiers even in Tel Aviv. Academic and NGO activists have been arguing that Israel has no right to defend itself—so how could anything Israelis deploy be considered defensive? “Defense” doesn’t exist for the Jewish state, according to this line of thinking.
