{"id":397951,"date":"2026-04-18T01:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T01:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/397951\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T01:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T01:44:08","slug":"outlawing-israeli-self-defense-commentary-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/397951\/","title":{"rendered":"Outlawing Israeli Self-Defense \u2013 Commentary Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday\u2019s Senate vote<\/a> on Israel highlighted the utter uselessness of the term \u201cdefensive weapons.\u201d It also shows why pro-Israel good faith is no match for anti-Zionist opportunism, especially in an era saturated with political propaganda.<\/p>\n

Almost all Senate Democrats voted against the sale of bulldozers and anti-tunnel munitions to Israel. And the specifics here matter a great deal. Hamas\u2019s battlefield innovations (and those of the wider net of Palestinian terrorist groups) have always been aimed at ballooning the death toll. Israel has been forced to innovate methods that would counteract Hamas\u2019s ghoulish calculation.<\/p>\n

Casualty reduction is the reason Israel wants the weapons at issue in yesterday\u2019s vote. They are not, however, defensive weapons. And because they are not defensive weapons, Israel\u2019s congressional opponents have a better shot at killing the sale\u2014a fact to which last night\u2019s roll call readily attests.<\/p>\n

So: What does Israel need bulldozers for?<\/p>\n

Their most common use by the IDF is to clear mines and IEDs (like homemade roadside bombs) and other deadly boobytraps. They are also useful in uncovering and destroying the tunnels used exclusively by terrorists and the hostages they kidnap.<\/p>\n

And although obviously not a primary use, the bulldozers are also helpful during wildfires, when a nimble armored earth-mover can help stymie the flames\u2019 path. All of these uses will be improved as Israel continues to make these vehicles more reliably remote-controlled.<\/p>\n

Is it a \u201cdefensive weapon of war?\u201d No, but it\u2019s a bulldozer, not a fighter jet.<\/p>\n

But the debate over the word \u201cdefensive\u201d largely misses the point, because it was never about defensive weapons in the first place. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expressed<\/a> 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): \u201cIf the moment presents itself in Congress, will you commit to voting \u2018no\u2019 for any spending on arms for Israel, including so-called \u2018defensive capabilities?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo-called defensive capabilities\u201d was a telling phrase, and AOC\u2019s willing submission to the DSA\u2019s demands foreshadowed last night\u2019s vote on bulldozers and anti-tunnel munitions. The new talking point is that there\u2019s really no such thing as purely defensive weapons.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s where we are. Those of us who have tried to find common ground with Israel\u2019s critics have made a\u00a0 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

We should have seen it coming. The progressive idea of \u201ccolonialism\u201d bears no relation to actual colonialism; it\u2019s usage is solely to justify the killing of Jews in Israel no matter where they live. They\u2019re considered occupiers even in Tel Aviv. Academic and NGO activists have been arguing that Israel has no right to defend itself\u2014so how could anything Israelis deploy be considered defensive? \u201cDefense\u201d doesn\u2019t exist for the Jewish state, according to this line of thinking.<\/p>\n

Once you concede that non-defensive weaponry is on the table, Bernie Sanders and AOC and Elissa Slotkin and Chris Murphy merely adjust the category so that all arms are non-defensive.<\/p>\n

In a broader sense, this simply means that Israel is deprived of the rights we usually accord to all other states. It\u2019s another way of saying Israel has no right to exist, therefore anything that enables it to exist is evil, including mine-clearing and wildfire-fighting vehicles. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.<\/p>\n

The worst part is that the trend is clear: Unless something changes, this shameful moment in American history will be surpassed by an even more shameful moment next time this vote is taken. And anti-Israel Democrats will continue trying to chip away, bit by bit, at the Jewish state\u2019s ability to defend itself from mass-casualty terrorism.<\/p>\n

\"\"\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yesterday\u2019s Senate vote on Israel highlighted the utter uselessness of the term \u201cdefensive weapons.\u201d It also shows why…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-397951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}