Reading Progress:

Why Israel Has No ‘Right to Exist’

by Mar 15, 2019Foreign Policy, Articles14 comments

Palestinian refugees fleeing their homes in 1948, from the front cover of "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem" by Benny Morris (Public Domain)
Apologists for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians claim the state has a “right to exist” in an effort to legitimize the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Reading Time: ( Word Count: )

()

Zionists taking it upon themselves to try to defend Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people frequently level the charge that its critics are attempting to “delegitimize” the self-described “Jewish state”. Israel, they counter, has a “right to exist”. But they are mistaken.

This is not to single out Israel. There is no such thing as a state’s “right to exist” , period. No such right is recognized under international law. Nor could there logically be any such right. The very concept is absurd. Individuals, not abstract political entities, have rights.

Individual rights may also be exercised collectively, but not with prejudice toward the rights of individuals. The relevant right in this context is rather the right to self-determination, which refers to the right of a people to collectively exercise their individual rights through political self-governance. The collective exercise of this right may not violate the individual exercise of it. The only legitimate purpose of government is to protect individual rights, and a government has no legitimacy without the consent of the governed. It is only in this sense that the right to self-determination may be exercised collectively, by a people choosing for themselves how they are to be governed and consenting to that governance.

The right to self-determination, unlike the absurd concept of a state’s “right to exist”, is recognized under international law. It is a right that is explicitly guaranteed, for example, under the Charter of the United Nations, to which the state of Israel is party.

The proper framework for discussion therefore is the right to self-determination, and it is precisely to obfuscate this truth that the propaganda claim that Israel has a “right to exist” is frequently made. It is necessary for Israel’s apologists to so shift the framework for discussion because, in the framework of the right to self-determination, it is obviously Israel that rejects the rights of the Palestinians and not vice versa.

And it is not only in the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territory that Israel’s rejectionism is manifest. This rejection of Palestinians’ rights was also manifest in the very means by which Israel was established.

There is a popular belief that Israel was founded through some kind of legitimate political process. This is false. This myth is grounded in the idea that the famous “partition plan” resolution of the United Nations General Assembly—Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947—legally partitioned Palestine or otherwise conferred legal authority to the Zionist leadership for their unilateral declaration of Israel’s existence on May 14, 1948.

Indeed, in that very declaration, Israel’s founding document, the Zionist leadership relied on Resolution 181 for their claim of legal authority. The truth is, however, that Resolution 181 did no such thing. The General Assembly had no authority to partition Palestine against the will of the majority of its inhabitants. Nor did it claim to. On the contrary, the Assembly merely recommended the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, which would have to be agreed upon by both peoples to have any legal effect. The Assembly forwarded the matter to the Security Council, where the plan died with the explicit recognition that the UN had no authority to implement any such partition.

The Zionists’ unilateral declaration is frequently described as a “Declaration of Independence”. But it was no such thing. A declaration of independence assumes that the people declaring their independence are sovereign over the territory in which they wish to exercise their right to self-determination. But the Zionists were not sovereign over the land that became the territory of the state of Israel.

On the contrary, when they declared Israel’s existence, Jews owned less than 7 percent of the land in Palestine. Arabs owned more land than Jews in every single district of Palestine. Arabs also constituted a numerical majority in Palestine. Despite mass immigration, Jews remained a minority comprising about a third of the population.

Even within the territory proposed by the UN for the Jewish state, when the Bedouin population was counted, Arabs constituted a majority. Even within that territory, Arabs owned more land than Jews.

Simply stated, the Zionist leadership had no legitimate claim to sovereignty over the territory they ultimately acquired through war.

Notably, the acquisition of territory by war is prohibited under international law.

Far from being established through any kind of legitimate political process, Israel was established through violence. The Zionists acquired most of the territory for their state through the ethnic cleansing of most of the Arab population, more than 700,000 people, from their homes in Palestine. Hundreds of Arab villages were literally wiped off the map.

So when Zionists claim that Israel has a “right to exist”, what they are really saying is that the Zionists had a “right” to ethnically cleanse Palestine in order to establish their “Jewish state”.

Obviously, there is no such right. On the contrary, once again, under international law, ethnic cleansing is recognized as a crime against humanity.

Zionists charge that critics of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians seek to “delegitimize” the “Jewish state”, but it matters that the unilateral declaration by the Zionists on May 14, 1948, had no legitimacy. It matters that the crime of ethnic cleansing cannot be justified or legitimized.

When this charge is leveled at Israel’s critics, what is really happening is that it is Israel’s apologists who are attempting to delegitimize the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, along with the internationally recognized right of refugees of war to return to their homeland.

Regardless of the illegitimacy of the means by which Israel was established, it exists. This is the present reality. However, the demand by the state of Israel that the Palestinians recognize its “right” not just to exist, but to exist “as a Jewish state” is simply a demand that the Palestinians surrender their rights and accede that the Zionists’ unilateral declaration and ethnic cleansing of Palestine were legitimate.

And that is why there has been no peace. There will be no peace until the rights of the Palestinians are recognized and respected. The problem for Zionists is that for the Palestinians to exercise their rights would mean the end of Israel’s existence as a “Jewish state”.

But what would be wrong with ending a fundamentally racist regime that perpetually violates international law and Palestinians’ human rights? What would be wrong with replacing it with a government that respects the equal rights of all the inhabitants of the territory over which it exercises political sovereignty and rules with the consent of the governed?

To anyone with any honesty and moral integrity, the clear answer to both questions is: nothing.

For all those who take an active role in pursing peace and justice, it is therefore to that end that we must focus our collective efforts. It starts with gaining a proper understanding of the true nature of the conflict and helping to open the eyes of all those who have integrity, but who have been deceived by the lies and propaganda that have perpetuated the violence and injustice for so long.

This article was originally published at Foreign Policy Journal.

Rate This Content:

Average rating / 5. Vote count:

What do you think?

I encourage you to share your thoughts! Please respect the rules.

  • Jimmy says:

    When Arab countries and their supporters say Israel has no rights to exist. They do not mean no country has the right to exist but rather means that they do have the right to exist and Israel does not.

    Can you see why this is discriminatory and Israel has the right to object ?

  • Jimmy says:

    You say

    “However, the demand by the state of Israel that the Palestinians recognize its “right” not just to exist, but to exist “as a Jewish state” is simply a demand that the Palestinians surrender their rights and accede that the Zionists’ unilateral declaration and ethnic cleansing of Palestine were legitimate.”
    ……………………
    Would you say the same if Israel demanded that the Palestinians recognize its “right to self determination”

    That it ‘is simply a demand that the Palestinians surrender their rights and accede that the Zionists’ unilateral declaration and ethnic cleansing of Palestine were legitimate.’

  • Jimmy says:

    You say

    ” But the Zionists were not sovereign over the land that became the territory of the state of Israel.”

    This is correct. But nor were the Arabs sovereign over the land that became the territory of the state of Israel. Property ownership does not make you sovereign.

    And the Israeli declaration of sovereignty in no way negated Arab property ownership. Had the Arabs not tried in a criminal act of aggression (which was condemned by the Un secretary general) to crush the Israeli state at birth, no Arab property would have been lost.

    https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/letter-from-secretary-general-trygve-lie-to-the-powers-on-the-situation-in-palestine

    Writing in his book In the Cause of Peace (New York, 1954), Mr. Trygve Lie said: “The invasion of Palestine by the Arab States was the first armed aggression which the world had seen since the end of the war. The United Nations could not permit such aggression to succeed and at the same time survive as an influential force for peaceful settlement, collective security and meaningful international law” (p. 174). In this spirit, he addressed the following letter to the Foreign Secretaries of the Big Powers on 16 May 1948:

    • Property ownership does not make you sovereign.

      What a bizarre statement.

      And the Israeli declaration of sovereignty in no way negated Arab property ownership.

      But you just acknowledged they had no claim to sovereignty over the land. Also, the campaign of ethnic cleansing certainly negated Arab property ownership, although not their property rights or their right to self-determination.

      “The invasion of Palestine by the Arab States was the first armed aggression which the world had seen…

      How could Arab states entering Palestine to help Palestinians be “armed aggression”? By the time the Arab states intervened, 300,000 Arabs had already been ethnically cleansed from their homes in Palestine. That campaign of ethnic cleansing was armed aggression.

  • Joseph says:

    I was not familiar with the operation of ‘Rate This Content’ and in clicking the first star I unintentionally gave your article a 1 out of 5 rating rather than the 5 out of 5 I think it deserves. I was unable to reverse my rating. Sorry about that. I fully agree with your argument.

    • No problem. I was able to manually adjust it to reflect your intended rating, and I also noticed a setting while I was at it to enable an option to prevent accidental ratings, so now after selecting a rating, you have to additionally click a button to submit it. Thanks for letting me know! If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have noticed that setting, which in hindsight I should have had in place from the start. Also thanks for reading and providing me with your feedback.

  • Roslyn Ross says:

    Please do not refer to Jews and Arabs. Jews are a religion and Arabs are a culture. Either call Jews Europeans and the Palestinians Arabs or talk about Jews and Christians and Muslims. Israel constantly uses the Jew/Arab labels because it wants to pretend Jews are not a religion but a people. Do not support them in this.

    • You are mistaken. While there are Jews who identify as such strictly due to conversion to Judaism, a person can also be Jewish by virtue of their ancestry. And while there are Arabs who identify as such due to speaking the Arabic language, a person can also be Arabic by virtue of their ancestry, i.e., they are a member of the Semitic peoples of the Arabian Peninsula. I do not belittle people their self-identity much less their ethnicity.

  • Reader says:

    I think you are a genius, and that your work on vaccines and the FDA crimes deserves a Nobel Prize for peace, however, your stance on Israel makes me sick.
    Yes, I admit I am guilty: Jewish, even Israeli.
    That does deprive me of my basic human right. We, the Jewish people, were, are, and will be the owners of the holy land of Zion.
    Yes, I am truly sorry you see things the way you do, but then – you are entitled to think whatever you want to. I totally respect you, really.
    I would like to conclude by stating that had the Americans encountered the kind of hatred and murderous activities we have had for the last 102 years – they would have annihilated the Palestinians. Nothing less.

    • I appreciate the respectful nature of your objection, but inasmuch as you express your repulsion of my position on the Israel-Palestine conflict, your objection is premised on you own faith rather than identification of any factual or logical errors in my analysis. If you cannot identify any errors in my analysis, the right thing to do would be to reconsider your own position. The hypothetical argument that people other than Jews in the same position would have perpetrated outright genocide against the Palestinians is no justification for the ethnic cleansing of most of the Arab population from their homes in Palestine by the Zionists. And if I’m honest, the fact that you are trying to justify that crime against humanity makes me sick.

    • Wyatt says:

      I have a question: Why have jews encountered such hatred and been subjected to such murderous activities for the last 102 years? Go ahead and think about it, but then read the next part.

      Do you know about the Ringworm Scandal? The Knesset acknowledged in 1994 the Israeli government’s deliberate, often lethal and always mutilating amount of irradiation given to tens of thousands of Arab and Sephardic jewish children during the first decade of Israel’s founding. This, being just a few years after the Holocaust and the eerily similar treatment of Ashkenazi children in the concentration camps. The pretense was that the radiation was going to kill ringworm parasites, but the amount of radiation given was both far in excess of what was needed and was known to have deleterious effects on humans, let alone children.

      Now, given this information, go ahead and respond to the first question.

      • I have not heard of this ringworm scandal before. If you have links to documentation, please share. Regarding your first question, I do not understand hatred against Jews for their being Jewish any more than I understand hatred against Palestinians for not being Jewish.

  • >
    Share via
    Copy link