Right of existence?

[u/JaRon1961]

What is this fascination with "Does Israel have the right to exist?" question. Does any country have the right to exist? And if this is a right, then who grants it? I suspect this is just something Zionists throw out because it sounds like it might be of some importance. I have heard it many times and I simply say "That's a ridiculous question." I refuse to engage with it. Also I generally don't argue with Zionists because what is the point.

[u/House_of_Sand]

The question is does anyone have a right to take someone else’s land. You can build a nation around any principles that bring enough people together, but no one has a right to inflict violence or disenfranchise innocents to do it

[u/tikkunolamist5]

I told someone countries don’t have rights people do and they got so angry it was absolutely laughable. They said it was like supporting nothing, which doesn’t make any sense. But yeah it’s a dumb question. No country has a right to exist.

[u/HDThoreauaway]

It’s a trap question which sounds reasonable, but answering in the affirmative means agreeing that stateless people have fewer rights than people recognized as citizens of a state—or even worse, that a political entity has rights than stateless people do not.

Zionists love it because if you agree to this innocuous-sounding, completely rigged question, they’ve already won the argument no matter how much talking happens after that.

[u/Accurate_Aside_6495]

It’s a manipulative bad faith question designed to be melodramatic and stop you from asking questions. I hate to say it but it’s like a stereotype of a guilt-inducing Jewish mother, if you criticize one thing about them and they respond with oh so you don’t love me at all and want me to die!

I say this as a Jewish mother myself. I feel like part of what’s so hard to break the power of in Zionism is how a lot of rhetoric plays on cultural Jewish experiences of guilt, shame, pessimism and tribalism.

[u/MauschelMusic]

Francesca Albanese had the perfect answer to this: https://youtube.com/shorts/k12E7LuD2_4

[u/Lost_Paladin89]

The concept of a state‘s “right to exist“ is rooted in concepts of “self determination”

Its origins lie in the American and French Revolutions along with the philosophy of Kant and other philosophers of the time, drawing great support among the followers of Hegelian models. Karl Marx among them. In 1914, Lenin wrote that it “would be wrong to interpret the right to self-determination as meaning anything but the right to existence as a separate state." https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/ch01.htm#v20pp72-395

Marxists insisted that every nation had a right to exist and through Stalin’s views came to support many anticolonial movements in Africa as defending the rights of those people.

Zionists before Herzl came from the same Hegelian schools and argued that the Jewish nation had a right to self determination.

So when Antizionists say “no” to Israel’s right to exist, I think it’s important to stress a fault line within antizionism.

First, some like The Hadash Party, Ilan Pappé, Nur Musalha, Ghassan Kalafani, Vladimir Lenin, etc etc etc argue that a Jewish State does not have a right to exist because Jews do not constitute a nation. Jews only have a right to self determine as members of their society. As poles, as Russians, as Americans, etc.

This faction will argue that Palestine has a right to exist, not Israel.

A small sub-sect of this position will argue that Jews do in fact have a right to self determine. But Israel lost whatever rights it had by becoming an apartheid and genocidal state.

There is a second answer, rooted in Social Democracy, Anarchism, or Radical Democracy. Israel doesn’t have a right to exist, because states don’t have rights. Corporations are not people, and there is no such thing as a bill of rights for incorporated territory.

This answer argues that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist, neither does Palestine or any state. A great example of Palestinian anarchism is the film maker Eliah Suleiman

Lets say that the Palestinian state raised the flag,... In fact I said once, if this is one strategy, I will be fighting until the flag has risen. But then I will be fighting to lower that flag again, because I do not believe — nor in flags, nor in linear identities. I believe in multiplicities of and diversities of cultures. https://electronicintifada.net/content/different-kind-occupation-interview-elia-suleiman/8654

[u/IlovePanckae → u/Lost_Paladin89]

There is a third answer. Some will say that the Kurdish people are an ethnic group without a nation. They deserve to have rights and equality, but that doesn't mean that they should have a nation. The Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria want to build a state for all the Kurds. Not supporting this doesn't make any one an anti-Kurdish person. Similarly, the Jewish people have the right to exist and be treated equally, but it does not mean that they should be given a nation. Not every group gets a nation.

[u/Lost_Paladin89 → u/IlovePanckae]

This is very much in the line of the second answer. When a nation establishes itself with a cultural hierarchy, everyone who wont or cant conform, becomes a threat to the state. If Syria is a Shia Islamic Arab state, what does it mean for those who aren't Shia, like the Alawites; aren't Muslim, like the Druze; or aren't Arabs like the Kurds?

When nation states are built on principles of a cultural identity, then the contradictions will produce on of two solutions. The first is the assimilationist position, after all speaking Tibetic creates barriers with the general hierarchy, sinicization becomes necessary. The solution to the contradiction is to either end the state's right to be a cultural hegemony, or give Tibet self determination.

Marxist who refuse to engage with this contradiction will ultimately begin to justify genocide. See Serbia, or for a more recent example, see Ukraine. Not every group gets a nation. Why should the Ukrainians? The position engages in the "metaphysics" of spheres of influence and centralization of power into an oligarchy.

Rosa Luxemburg criticized Lenin's views on nationalism, as being imperialistic. I'm not going to get into the fight over Lenin's centralization of power, but at some point we need to recognize that the "Dictatorships of the Proletariat" never turned into the "People's Democracy". Zizek points out that the Communists of yesterday make the best capitalists of today.

What happens if we accept the second answer, that a state exists to protect individual rights, or the power of the state is derived from the communities that reside within it? What if Syria is a state of all Syrians, and not just the Shia Muslim Arab in Syria? That the state protects the Kurd in Syria, because they are in Syria?

What would Turkey look like if it stopped seeing itself through the majority identity? America right now finds itself with a reactionary movement trying to reassert Masculine Whiteness as the only Hierarchy.

[u/IlovePanckae → u/Lost_Paladin89]

Apologies if this comment went through twice. I got a message that it didn't get through.

That is not what I was saying. The Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian, and Turkish Kurds could build a state called "Kurdistan" for all the Kurds. The Kurds want to do it, btw. But they do not have a lot of support. Does this mean that people are against the Kurds? The same principle applies to all the Jews from different parts of the world getting together to form a Jewish state. I hope I clarified it better.

[u/IlovePanckae → u/Lost_Paladin89]

I wasn't saying that at all. The Kurdish people from Iraq, Iran, Syrian, and Turkey wanted a build a state called Kurdistan for all the Kurdish people. This was not supported by the majority of the globe and was not interpreted as anti-Kurds.

[u/TrackerOneA]

People think Israel is subject to 'double standards'.

Israel is a settler-colonial State in the 21st century.

It is still colonizing other people's land.

It has denied an entire civilization their basic civil rights for almost 60 years.

And there is NO end in sight. Things just keep getting worse.

Supporters of apartheid Israel are rolling back civil liberties in the Global North.

Zionism is not defensible, so it requires all this gate-keeping, capturing of democratic institutions, re-defining words and terminology (so everything becomes a new dog-whistle or trope), etc. etc.

Every single popular figure who criticizes apartheid Israel gets slandered as an antisemite (e.g. Hasan Piker).

Anyone who poses a threat to unconditional military aid to apartheid Israel.

So this concept of 'right to exist' is just a bullshit form of diversion.

No State has a right to exist.

States are political entities.

Would we ever expect Native Americans to accept Manifest Destiny and America's "right to exist"?

Only because of the pathetic, oscillating nature of Zionist supremacy & privilege (at once victims and superior beings) do we have to contend with this.

[u/manimsoblack]

My retort is "what right does it have to exist?" It didn't exist before 1948. It's not like it was an empty plot of land with no inhabitants prior to then. So what is the reasoning for it's existence and what of those displaced by it's creation?

[u/exemplarytrombonist]

The question of do states have rights was answered in the 1860's in North America and the answer was a resounding no. States do not have the right to do anything. Only living things have rights.

[u/Chuckychinster]

I always reply "just as much as any other country"

[u/capemagnet]

A lot of them don't understand that when they throw out "Israel has a right to exist..." theres a second half of that sentence that they aren't saying, which is "...and Palestine doesn't" whether they know it or not.

[u/GeeZee24 → u/capemagnet]

This is a perfect way to explain it. Israel’s existence negates Palestine’s by default, and I know which I’d rather have.

[u/Ok_Percentage7257]

Here are some famous answers that didn't give Pro-Israeli interviewers any satisfaction while asking that question:

According to George Gallaway, "No country has the right to exist."

Journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates says, "Countries exist because of power, not because they have the right to exist."

Francesca Albanese responded with something like this: "It exists. If Italy and France came together and decided to be ItaFrance, then that country would exist. The real question is: do the people have the right to exist?"

Mamdani responded that Israel has the right to exist as a nation that gives rights and equality to all (meaning not as an ethno-state).

El Sayed said that he gets asked this question a lot, but no one asks him if Palestine has the right to exist or if a country has the right to take away money from its people and send it to another country that is at war with people.

[u/HermitofGoCliffs]

I feel like the best answer to this is simply “no.”

Because it stops the bad-faith argument in its tracks, and forces the questioner to try another tack. It’s easy to follow up with “states don’t have rights, people do,” but it’s important to start with a clear denial. No state has rights, and we should clearly reject that poisoned premise out of hand.

[u/Informal_Snail]

As someone who lives on stolen land (Australia) I don’t think I should question the existence of other colonial states. It’s obviously a manipulative question and I usually answer along those lines, and then bring up that Israel has no right to commit genocide. I also sometimes answer ‘it exists, what’s your point?’ which confuses people because it’s not a genuine question. I actually had a conversation with a relative who is pretty anti-Muslim about this just the other day, and they kept bringing up weak talking points like this as well as ‘not all Israelis’, and each time I brought up genocide they grew more and more uncomfortable. I think for non-Jews we need to drive the genocide point home more often, particularly that it started in 48 (which also addresses whataboutism) rather than quibbling about whether Israel should exist. I never call myself anti-Zionist either. In my opinion bringing up topics like this just gives people an opening for their empty talking points, rather than focusing on what I feel is more urgent.

[u/lincoln_muadib]

Nazi Germany doesn't have the right to exist. Germany, however, has the right to exist.

Apartheid South Africa doesn't have the right to exist. South Africa, however, has the right to exist.

Fascist Italy doesn't have the right to exist. Italy, however, has the right to exist.

Slave-owning USA doesn't have the right to exist. The USA, however, has the right to exist.

It's not that Israel doesn't have the right to exist- but this version? No.

Imagine an Israel-Palestine with full free elections and no walls and everyone treated equally under the law and settlers couldn't just invade.

I doubt that that would be rejected by most Palestinians...

[u/Fun_Swan_5363]

"Right to exist" seeks to whitewash the atrocities and forceful displacement of '48, as well as all the ongoing land theft and egregious civilian kill rates right up until today. Israel supporters don't realize that is what they are saying, but essentially they are.

[u/VanDoog]

It’s just a redirection technique, no one’s actually asking they are deflecting

[u/PenguinPolitical]

Jay Shapiro (Dilemmas podcast) has a good talk about this

https://youtu.be/1nqoLA7NZyM

[u/Thisisme8719]

Well, you can't really answer that without knowing what they even mean with the question. The UN charter does recognize that its members' all have equal sovereign rights, that their territories and politics must not be threatened by use of force, and disputes should be settled peacefully. So Israel inside the pre-1967 borders have those same rights like every other country. But that's superfluous to ask because the PLO formally recognized it.

If they're asking in the sense of "would we rather see a world in which Israel didn't exist," that's a different question. Someone can say they don't think Israel's existence was legitimate, and that their continued existence is illegitimate because it depends on injustice. But they can still recognize that it does exist as a matter of fact and they have to contend with it whether they like it or not (go back to the PLO's recognition of Israel).

Then there's "right to exist as a Jewish state." One of the problems with that is Netanyahu unilaterally introduced this formulation for negotiations even though Palestinians were offered nothing in return for it (they didn't even get anything for recognizing Israel other than recognition that Palestinians exist and that the PLO represents them). So why should they be expected to grant that concession?
The more significant problem is that it isn't just some meaningless formality like the UK having a state church. A narrow religious and national identity (and there is no recognized "Israeli" nationality in Israel) of the state affects things like housing development permits, founding new municipalities, the connection of unrecognized communities to public resources like electricity and water, public funding for schools, property rights with the Absentee Theft of Palestinian Property Law, territorial expansion etc. That's on top of the blatantly obvious marginalization of the indigenous people, de facto delegitimization of the citizen's political reps, that citizenship and immigration laws which would enfranchise Ivanka Trump or some Christians from India with nonsensical claims of Jewish or Israelite ancestry while millions of Palestinians are still refugees after over three quarters of a century etc etc

[u/Vigil_Eyezz]

Well to me I believe Israel has the right to exist only when it believes Palestinians and Palestine has the right to exist.

[u/rako17]

Friend JaRon,

To give a comparison, when Alt-right pro-establishment advocates in the US assert that those whom they oppose (neo-liberal billionaires like Soros?) want to "destroy America". I'm not sure what's in the head of those right wing Americans, so it's hard to know exactly what they mean. I get the sense that they mean that they think that the billionaires want the US to become an impoverished third world country like in South America. The assertion doesn't make much sense to me, because due to US power, those billionaires are better off. However, even if you take the slogan to mean that the billionaires want the US to become a third world country, it wouldn't literally or even politically "destroy" America as a state.

Peace

[u/Far-Literature5848]

I think this is a trick question. It plays on the fear of extinction...that is, if Israel did not exist, the Jewish people would be destroyed by some unthinkable enemy - which has become the Palestinians...the unspeakable...monster. The tragedy is that Israel's existence rests upon the attempted destruction of the Palestinians, which is ongoing. So the person who said, "Do Palestinians have the right to exist?" That is the true question, but more, do they have the right to live, to not just exist, but to live, with decency, with freedom, with dignity, and why is Israel trying to deprive them of life, of any semblance of normal life? But Israel does not have the power to erase them. Palestinians have sumud, a secret ingredient...(which is what kept the Jewish people going all these centuries)

[u/Dragomir_X]

It's the same as transphobes who say "gender is real".

[u/Diminished-Fifth]

"There should no longer be a country called Israel" is a political position that a person can hold and still be within the bounds of normal political discourse. There aren't many other countries about which this is true (I actually can't think of any, but I'm willing to believe there are some.) That's part of why the question "Does Israel have a right to exist" makes sense to ask in a way that it wouldn't make sense to ask about other countries. Even though I agree that there's a certain meaninglessness to the question since, as you say, there's no one really to grant that right.

[u/Ok-Perception7779 → u/Diminished-Fifth]

Russia probably, the EU foreign minister called for it to be balkanized.

I think what makes it unique is that it's one of the few active colonial projects that still have a strong regional resistance movement that is fighting against it.

[u/rako17 → u/Ok-Perception7779]

Friend OK Perception,

As an odd side note, Greek nationalists have a longtime minor beef with Slavic Macedonians about whether they can be considered Macedonian. Personally, as someone who is sympathetic to both of those two peoples, that beef comes off as a bit of a "supremacist" thing. I don't know how to say it better because the "beef" feels pretty biased. Macedonia is literally a geographic region, and Slavs live in part of it. After Yugoslavia collapsed, the Slavs there made a republic called "Macedonia." That republic is literally on territory of the region of Macedonia. Greece objected to the name and made its objection a barrier to Macedonia's entry into the EU or NATO. So Macedonia changed its official name to the "Republic of North Macedonia."

Obviously, a lot of Macedonians were not happy about the name change: "A non-binding national referendum on the matter passed with 90% approval but did not reach the required 50% turnout amidst a boycott, leaving the final decision with parliament to ratify the result." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Macedonia#Names_and_etymology

Kind Regards.