Because his very political existence has been to pull Ukraine to the west and Israel is the US’s 51st state. Things are going very badly for him and he’s eager to get as much favor from the patron state as he can. He’s going to get eaten alive by his local politics.
There are heroic stories from the Warsaw ghetto and partisans who refused to be captured and took to the forests that you’d be erasing by making such a claim. Martyrs. Examples you and I could only hope to live up to if we found ourselves in their shoes. Resilience against pain and suffering the likes of which we can only read about. The human spirit will not allow itself to be extinguished without a struggle. Those who wish to extinguish it will always have examples of violence occurring against them.
If you had asked them, they would have told you differently. They would have told you about the long and complicated history that brought them to that point and the necessity of their actions. They would have told you about the barbarism of their enemies and the atrocities they carried out.
Okay devoid of all context and reality and focusing only on the rhetoric, you have a point.
Now imagine if I commit a genocide while claiming a right to defend myself, like the Nazis did? How is that phrase being deployed in that historical example?
If you claim a right to defend yourself while committing a genocide, it is in fact the same as calling for genocide.
The state of Israel was founded as a colonial settler project. If you have never heard this before I’d be shocked to learn you’re from anywhere but the US
“You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all, but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.”
Anyone who asks someone to prove a prediction is categorically an idiot