We should have the right to exist is a pretty good argument for self-defense.
Sending rockets at civilian targets is a terrible example of self-defense.
If your argument for murder is that other people want to murder you, then you have no moral high ground. You are, at best, moral equals. Because now you are invoking their right to exist.
But in a sense, this is the mitigation strategy: to not just portray aggression as defense, but the actions themselves as equal.
Even as your lethality is more than ten times theirs.
Never mind the systemic oppression, the stunning poverty, and constant military threat Israel imposes on the Palestinians. And that’s even before the occupying, settlement building, and night raids that make Israel into a perpetual bully.
Nothing about this is equal except for the argument: the appeal to human rights.
Focusing on the actions, the seemingly intractable position, the organized division, drives us to see this as a dispute between equal actors. Neighbors that just can’t seem to get along. Who knows how it all started, but shucks, it just seems to keep going.
There is nothing actually equal about the situation. And none of the arguments in support of Israel’s actions are very satisfying. Hence the mental and moral gymnastics. We’re victims too isn’t a line offered to encourage a broad sense of human rights. It’s clearly an attempt for us to ignore just how one-sided this really is.
Here are prayers I wrote in 2018 that may be suitable to the moment.