That's a trite expression but actually a vitally important part of the international law of war. Initiating a conflict is the immoral act, collective self-defence is not. How far back does collective self-defence reach in terms of destroying the enemy's capability to attack you? That is the difficult bit and where so many people take issue with the Israeli use of this justification.
(Unless you want to argue against armed self-defence tout court, that the participants in the defence of the Warsaw ghetto were also murderers etc. etc, which is a self-consistent but rather unusual position)
That's a trite expression but actually a vitally important part of the international law of war. Initiating a conflict is the immoral act, collective self-defence is not. How far back does collective self-defence reach in terms of destroying the enemy's capability to attack you? That is the difficult bit and where so many people take issue with the Israeli use of this justification.
(Unless you want to argue against armed self-defence tout court, that the participants in the defence of the Warsaw ghetto were also murderers etc. etc, which is a self-consistent but rather unusual position)
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