Sigh- no state has a right to exist because there is no overarching power to guarantee that right. If I sign a contract with Shadi promising to pay him $1000, and I refuse, Shadi can get a court to compel me to pay. Nothing like that exists for international relations (the International Criminal Court relies on others to enforce its rulings, and if a powerful enough state wants to ignore it, nothing will happen). Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia didn’t have a right to exist and now neither does. Nor does Colonial India or Colonial Algeria. As a state, if you have enough power to resist threats against you- be they external OR internal then you will continue to exist. If you don’t then you won’t. It really is that simple. It’s fine to not want Israel to exist but then you have to come up with a plan to do that and right now Israel is looking pretty powerful. Probably more effective to see if you can get Israel to change its behavior instead, if that is what you dislike.
People only talk about Israel's "Right to Exist" because people keep trying to make it not exist. The people who use the term most often are not making some philosophical point, they're arguing that Israel does in fact exist, and like every other state that exists, will not willingly do things to extinguish itself or cease doing what it takes to continue securing it's existence, and that this is morally just.
Strange that at the start of the Israel Hamas war, you rightly pushed for Israel's right to defend itself while supporting innocent palestinians, but now it seems like all you want to do is throw libels around like "ethnic cleansing," "genocide", "apartheid". Part of this essay reads like an overdone philosophy exercise where a professor asks students if they have a right to exist. The olther part of this essay reads as racism in the form of antizionism. It's possible to be a zionist and against Israeli hardliner rhetoric and military aspects that harm palestinians. It's possible to be pro palestinian without questioning Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Just ask Palestinian American Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (who lost family members in Israeli strikes and additionally knows all too well how Gaza is terrorized by Hamas)... Look around the middle east at the number of Muslim/Arab ethnostates that exist.... You wrote a book still in my wishlist that argues American power can be a force for good. It's weird that you don't have that similar positive vision for Israel. Almost as if your biases hold Israel to a higher standard than you would other states. A small country besieged by multiple annihilistic threats from near range. Adam Louis Klein writes:
"Constitutive denial, gaslighting, and willful blindness to antizionism have persisted for decades. Only in the 1970s—with voices like Jean Améry, Jacques Givet, or Patrick Moynihan’s speech at the United Nations opposing the “Zionism is Racism” libel—did glimpses of sustained attention and condemnation begin to emerge.
Multiple Arab states baking an endless genocidal war against Israel into their national identities—as in Baathism, Nasserism, or the PLO—is not normal. Endless Islamist warfare, placing anti-Jewish conspiracy theories at the center of imperial visions of total jihad, is not normal. Western antizionists drawing tens of thousands into the streets to destroy one small state is not normal.
Antizionism is a systemic, global, discriminatory phenomenon, so normalized that it has been rendered invisible.
It's time to radically break the silence, forever."
Sigh- no state has a right to exist because there is no overarching power to guarantee that right. If I sign a contract with Shadi promising to pay him $1000, and I refuse, Shadi can get a court to compel me to pay. Nothing like that exists for international relations (the International Criminal Court relies on others to enforce its rulings, and if a powerful enough state wants to ignore it, nothing will happen). Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia didn’t have a right to exist and now neither does. Nor does Colonial India or Colonial Algeria. As a state, if you have enough power to resist threats against you- be they external OR internal then you will continue to exist. If you don’t then you won’t. It really is that simple. It’s fine to not want Israel to exist but then you have to come up with a plan to do that and right now Israel is looking pretty powerful. Probably more effective to see if you can get Israel to change its behavior instead, if that is what you dislike.
People only talk about Israel's "Right to Exist" because people keep trying to make it not exist. The people who use the term most often are not making some philosophical point, they're arguing that Israel does in fact exist, and like every other state that exists, will not willingly do things to extinguish itself or cease doing what it takes to continue securing it's existence, and that this is morally just.
Strange that at the start of the Israel Hamas war, you rightly pushed for Israel's right to defend itself while supporting innocent palestinians, but now it seems like all you want to do is throw libels around like "ethnic cleansing," "genocide", "apartheid". Part of this essay reads like an overdone philosophy exercise where a professor asks students if they have a right to exist. The olther part of this essay reads as racism in the form of antizionism. It's possible to be a zionist and against Israeli hardliner rhetoric and military aspects that harm palestinians. It's possible to be pro palestinian without questioning Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Just ask Palestinian American Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (who lost family members in Israeli strikes and additionally knows all too well how Gaza is terrorized by Hamas)... Look around the middle east at the number of Muslim/Arab ethnostates that exist.... You wrote a book still in my wishlist that argues American power can be a force for good. It's weird that you don't have that similar positive vision for Israel. Almost as if your biases hold Israel to a higher standard than you would other states. A small country besieged by multiple annihilistic threats from near range. Adam Louis Klein writes:
"Constitutive denial, gaslighting, and willful blindness to antizionism have persisted for decades. Only in the 1970s—with voices like Jean Améry, Jacques Givet, or Patrick Moynihan’s speech at the United Nations opposing the “Zionism is Racism” libel—did glimpses of sustained attention and condemnation begin to emerge.
Multiple Arab states baking an endless genocidal war against Israel into their national identities—as in Baathism, Nasserism, or the PLO—is not normal. Endless Islamist warfare, placing anti-Jewish conspiracy theories at the center of imperial visions of total jihad, is not normal. Western antizionists drawing tens of thousands into the streets to destroy one small state is not normal.
Antizionism is a systemic, global, discriminatory phenomenon, so normalized that it has been rendered invisible.
It's time to radically break the silence, forever."
One can reasonably ask Israel itself if it believes in its neighbours’ right to exist. Look around and the answer is a resounding no!
Does Israel have the right to be an apartheid state?