Rights and nations
Another one of those “how exactly is that a right” issues.
Republican Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey said recently that “Israel is the only state in the world whose fundamental right to exist, within any borders at all, is openly denied by other states.” But Israel is the only nation with a “right to exist,” as the phrase is not commonly attached to any other country. And that’s the tell: This is not a legal concept, but a political one, available for broad interpretation and rhetorical weaponization.
I wonder if that’s true. Aren’t there claims that Cataluña is a nation? Weren’t there arguments about Pakistan’s right to exist as a nation during partition? What about Northern Ireland? Ukraine? Other former bits of what was the Soviet Union? Former bits of Yugoslavia? Rhodesia? To name only a few?
Questions of “existence” are typically left to theologians and philosophers, for good reason—pinning treaty obligations on issues of metaphysics is a recipe for confusion. So what can we say with honesty? Israel has no right to exist because no nation does; only people do. Israelis exist; so do Palestinians. They all have a right to exist but only because they are human beings. And there is no justice in securing your own right to exist by denying it to others.
But the question is about a right to exist, not existence itself. It’s an interesting question.
Another one that has that phrase applied – Palestine.
Nagorno-Karabakh and Kosovo have some things to say about that (and they’re currently under more threat than the state of Israel is). “You” were the idiots that built a nation on top of a hornets nest surrounded by enemies in the middle of a desert and then have the gall to whine about the consequences…
Excuse me, Mr. Leary. Semantics aside, the current dilemma for Israel is that they cannot coexist with Hamas, or other Islamist terrorists–not without the possibility of another October 7th hanging over their heads–because those terrorists explicitly deny Jews’ right to exist.
Hence this bloody awful quagmire.
Lady Mondegreen @ #3
They challenge the right of Jews to the land of Israel. There are many, many Jewish people living in other parts of the world who have no personal connections with Israel. Some of them have long been critical of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. I think this is too easily forgotten, or brushed aside.
I was and remain appalled by the barbarities committed by Hamas fighters in the raid that brought about this war. I am also horrified at the way Israel has been carpet-bombing Palestinian cities. It is reported that 70% of the dead are women and children.
Am I strange in that I’m not actually horrified? Oh sure I can appreciate the immorality of the acts and find much in them to condemn, I find it truly difficult to care on anything but an intellectual level about the denizens of states and nations far away. Now the geopolitics that seem to be hurtling at me and mine with visible inertia, that does bother me, but all the deaths, the suffering? Not real to me at all. Can’t do anything about it and it doesn’t really affect me (until it does).
Y’all may be just text attached to pseudonyms and the occasional little icon, but you’re a lot more real than the corpses stacking up, same as it ever was.
Well that has a lot to do with how much attention you pay, doesn’t it? I know it does in my case. I haven’t been following the horrors closely, partly because I can’t follow everything closely, but I think also partly because I don’t want to be horrified some more. I think that’s a completely shitty reason, but I also know very well that if I did pay close attention it would affect me. I remember the first time I saw Night and Fog (La nuit et le brouillard) decades ago. It affected me, to put it mildly.
I think it’s unlikely that the Hamas leadership have sincerely changed their minds since the 1988 charter.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Sure, but, to be clear, I was talking about the terrorists.
Many defenders of Israel justify the orgy of destruction in Gaza by pointing out Hamas wants to wipe Israel off the map. I wonder how many appreciate the irony of their own desire to wipe Gaza off the map.
Hamas’ open, declared, intention is the extermination of Israel’s Jewish population. And the achievement of an apocalyptic ‘end time’ in which all Jews will be killed.
To say that they ‘challenge the right of Jews to…Israel’ is evasive drivel.
Odd that no one thought of Gaza, or the West Bank as ‘Palestinian’ while they were occupied by Egypt and Jordan. ‘Palestine’ is defined by the presence of Jews.
Lady Mondegreen @ #7 and John the Drunkard @ #9
From A Document of General Principles and Policies issued by Hamas on 1st May, 2017:
John, in addition to NightCrow’s link, there is also the fact that Israel’s position might not be declared, but it is actual and ongoing extermination of Gazan Palestinians, and displacement of the others.
As for being ‘defined by the presences of Jews’ – I’ll point out that the name Palestine goes back at least to biblical times. The Romans called the region Syria Palaestina, and the Israelites themselves – the original ones – called them something that has now been corrupted to Philistine. Also I am not aware of Egypt and Jordan doing anything half as horrifying as is currently happening, hence no (or reduced) outcry back then.
Thanks, Holms.
The Palestinians are indeed an ancient people with a long association with this territory.
The Greek historian Herodotus (c.484–420 BC), who travelled widely, says:
* Historians think that Cadytis is the ancient name for Gaza.
Text from Loeb edition; translation mine, as close to the original as possible. ‘Palestinians’ is exactly what it says in the original; the Greek, transliterated, is Palaistinon (long o), ‘of the Palestinians’.
That’ll be where the modern name “Palestinians” came from.
That sounds like pointing out the obvious, but I mean lots of modern names come straight from the ancient Greeks or Romans or Persians etc.