Has Israel only ever acted in self-defence?

1. How Israel defines its military role—and why that matters

From its founding the state organized its armed forces under the rubric of defence: the IDF emerged from pre‑state militias to protect Jewish settlements and was formally created in 1948 with a doctrine shaped around the need to deter and survive superior regional foes ^{[5] [6] [7]}; that institutional self‑definition matters because calling an operation “defence” carries legal weight under Article 51 and shapes political narratives even when critics contest the characterization ^[8].

2. Many operations explicitly presented as responses to attacks

A long list of named IDF operations—ranging from retaliatory raids in the 1950s–60s to Gaza campaigns such as Operation Cast Lead and Hot Winter—are described in official and secondary sources as responses to cross‑border attacks, rocket fire or infiltrations, and Israel routinely cites immediate security threats to justify such campaigns ^{[1] [9]}.

3. Pre‑emptive, covert and punitive actions complicate the “only self‑defence” claim

Not all Israeli operations fit a narrow reactive model: documented covert operations such as the 1954 Operation Susannah, which planted bombs in Egyptian targets to mislead others, and other actions characterized by scholars as punitive or pre‑emptive show that force has sometimes been used for strategic, political or covert ends rather than purely to repel an ongoing armed attack ^{[1] [3]}.

4. International law and the gray zones of necessity, imminence and proportionality

Legal scholars note that the jus ad bellum permits self‑defence but imposes tests of necessity, imminence and proportionality; academic analyses of episodes like the Six‑Day War and recent Gaza campaigns show these criteria are contested—some experts argue Israel’s initial responses can meet self‑defence tests while later, sustained campaigns raise questions about proportionality and whether alternatives were exhausted ^{[2] [8] [4]}.

5. Human‑rights and Palestinian perspectives reject an unbroken self‑defence narrative

Palestinian and pro‑Palestine NGOs, and some academic commentators, argue that Israel’s status as an occupying power, or its broader settler‑colonial practices, undercut claims of self‑defence for operations in the occupied territories and label many actions punitive or illegal; organizations such as Badil and advocacy pages explicitly contest the legal and moral basis for self‑defence claims in places like Jenin and Gaza ^{[10] [11] [3]}.

6. Recent high‑profile strikes and the political calculus of “existential” threats

In 2025, major cross‑border operations such as Operation Rising Lion—presented by Israeli authorities as necessary to defeat an imminent existential threat from Iran—illustrate how Israel sometimes frames offensive campaigns as anticipatory or collective self‑defence; military analysts debate whether necessity and proportionality justify such long‑range strikes, producing divergent legal assessments ^{[12] [8]}.

7. Bottom line: a mixture of defensive, pre‑emptive, punitive and covert uses of force

The source material shows a consistent pattern: Israel has frequently acted in response to attacks and legitimately invokes self‑defence, but it has also carried out covert, pre‑emptive and punitive operations and engaged in conduct challenged as disproportionate or unlawful by other states, courts and rights groups—so it is inaccurate to say Israel has only ever acted in self‑defence ^{[1] [2] [3] [13] [4]}.