Democrats losing all credibility in denial of overwhelming evidence..

[Dill]

(04-03-2024, 02:49 PM)hollodero Wrote: Dill Wrote: [url=http://thebengalsboard.com/Thread-Democrats-losing-all-credibility-in-denial-of-overwhelming-evidence?pid=1470670#pid1470670][/url]"Israel has a right to exist as part of a two-state or one-state solution to the Palestinian problem. It doesn't have right to exist as an ethnic state which occupies territory gained in war with intent to cleanse and annex."
There is no "cannot exist" in that statement. Just a recognition that in current international law (and humanitarian ethics), there is no "right" to territory seized in war. (And no "right" for any state to "exist.)

Since this debate goes nowhere anyway, I will restate that I understand an uneasy feeling about the underlined part. It's odd to me how one would muse about something like "right to exist" in the first place and then set conditions for said right, like being part of a x-state solution, having the right intents or fufilling conditions for multiethnicity, or not living up to initial ideas. Seems wording like that is not brought up for other states, not even north korea or younger ones. No one would claim Croatia or East Timor doesn't have the right to exist in particular versions. And might values lie as they do, Israel does still exist in its current form and given the surroundings, I too wonder whether statemets like "does not have the right to exist as state which does this and that [aka things they are probably deemed guilty of]" are appropriate under any context.

Yow! Didn't want to get back into this today, but I'd like to offer some perfunctory clarification/backstory. To the first bolded.

1. The notion of a state's "right to exist" first pops up in partial, specific forms in the 17th century with the liberal revolution, whose reps. declared absolute monarchy an illegitimate state form. In the 19th century, a more general (if vague) ethical notion of a right of peoples and states to exist emerges as various nationalists begin constructing national/ethnic identities from within empires and the like (one very close to home for you lol).  Zionism is rooted in that push for nationalist identity, though the idea maybe originated with non-Jews who thought it a way to get them out of Europe. 

2. It's not "brought up for other states" now, as you recognize, because it is not part of international law. No state, therefore, violates IL by "existing" in the sense one could violate IHL by committing piracy or war crimes. No one brings a charge before the ICC that "X state has no right to exist but here it is existing in contravention of the law." But people do question the legitimacy of governments, in the liberal tradition, according to whether they represent their citizens or not. Your EU sets conditions on admittance along these lines, so the idea cannot be wholly unfamiliar to you. Few think NK is a legitimate state, in this sense.

3. To the second bolded, you might want to know, then, who brings up and pushes front and center this "right to existence" whose appropriateness you question and doesn't seem to be an issue anywhere else. That would be the State of Israel. E.g. in the 70s, as a condition for peace dialogues, Israel demanded that the PLO recognize its right to exist. Which it finally did, in 1993 https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-205528/, on the assumption that the Israelis would then work in good faith towards a two-state solution. They didn't. This seriously compromised the PLO, because Palestinians see such recognition as a call to legitimate their dispossession, and PA then worked with Israel to police Palestinians, as the settlements continued. This was the major impetus for Hamas and its source of support. It will not "collaborate" with the occupier. 

And of course, all of the various right wing governments of Israel cannot bring them selves to recognize any "right to exist" of a Palestinian people,* because of the complications of legal/political equality which would follow. The demand that Israel's "right to exist" be acknowledged was just a lever to use against the PLO in the UN and with the US--until the PLO gave in. Oh wait, they did? Well then here are some more conditions.

4. E.g., As the PA tried to keep the "Roadmap to Peace" alive after 2000, Ehud Olmert came up with a nifty new tactic for the Annapolis Conference in 2007. Require the PA to recognize Israel as JEWISH state, another condition sure to split and weaken them, and strengthen Hamas. There is an eye towards the international community too--what, the PA won't recognize a JEWISH state? So it's really just about anti-semitism?  http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/124218. SSF was repeating the tactic on the Superthread when he asked if I recognized Israel's right to exist. You can make propaganda hay with the answer, where people don't know the backstory; the propagandist can associate it with calls for the literal destruction of all Jews and the like. 

So hopefully you understand now why I am musing on one-sided Israeli demands for a "right to exist" and conditions for such rights, which it denies others.  And why no one kept talking about Croatia or East Timor's "right to exist" once they existed.

Well I have to run. I'll just close saying that my statement you quoted is worded so that to disagree with it is to disagree with the assertion that Palestinians have the same universal rights as everyone else, and that Israel should recognize and honor the right of the Palestinian people to exist and have state, if it wants the same recognition for itself. It has no right to hold millions of Palestinians under the gun while daily appropriating their land and homes. I don't think it should be welcomed into the community of nations as a partner in good standing until it resolves the occupation. You'd see that position clearly enough if SSF quoted his "evidence" for my alleged anti-semitism.

Thank you, by the way, for sticking to the "surface" of my beliefs, limiting your inferences to what I've actually written, as opposed to ruminating on dark hidden motives others may project into them. My statements are not calls to violence or destruction, but a prescription for ending such without denying the human rights of one side.

* E.g., https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-minister-says-no-such-thing-palestinian-people-2023-03-20/
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-minister-says-there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-palestinian-people-/3145118
https://peacenow.org/page.php?name=they-say-we-say-the-palestinians-are-not-a-real-people
https://www.wrmea.org/1998-march/zionism-at-100-the-myth-of-palestine-as-a-land-without-people.html