JOHNSON – What does Israel’s ‘right to exist’ actually mean?
THE CONVERSATION always, always comes back to one line, one phrase, one talking point. Do you or do you not support Israel’s right to exist? You’ve all heard that line before, right? It’s the go-to move.
If you don’t support Israel’s right to exist, you’re an extremist, you’re an antisemite.
In Israel’s eyes, if you do not immediately acknowledge this recognition, you actually want to wipe Israel and millions of Israeli Jews off the map. Even many critics of Israel are often left frantically conceding; “Yes, of course I support Israel’s right to exist.”
But we should ask ourselves if we actually accept this concession automatically, and what does it mean?
Debating this phrase and Israel’s actions, does NOT mean you have to concede on this point, and it certainly does NOT mean that you are yet another oppressor of the Jewish faith, no better than the ancient Romans themselves.
The Israeli ‘right to exist’ … standing on its own … is a BS argument. Let’s look at three alternate ways to look at this discussion.
Number one: The ‘Right To Exist’ Where?
Where does this right to exist actually apply?
Israel is the only country in the world that refuses to define its borders. So, if you want to recognize Israel’s right to exist, does this right of Israel’s extend into Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, all of which are considered illegally occupied territory under international law?
And yet all of which are claimed by the current government of Israel as Israeli land.
So right to exist where? If Israel one day decided to invade Egypt again or Jordan, or Palestine/Beirut itself (which might be happening right now), do they have a right to do so, due to their ‘right to exist’? Where is the line where Israel does not have a right to exist’?
Israel intentionally keeps this vague.
If you draw a border and tell others about it, you’re supposed to stay within it. That’s not a thing Israel wants to do.
Number two: What Is This ‘Right To Exist’?
Where does it come from? What international order, law or perception sanctions this?
Let’s be clear here. States don’t have a right to exist. No such natural or legal right exists on the planet.
People … individuals, absolutely have a right to exist. Human beings have that right. Not states, not countries.
States by their very definition change their composition, their governing structures, their ideologies, their regimes, their borders, and they do it all the time, and have throughout history. They’re not fixed for eternity, never have been.
The USSR broke up into Russia and 14 other new states. Yugoslavia broke up into Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and the rest. Czechoslovakia split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Nazi Germany came and went. Macedonia, Rome, The Kingdom of Egypt, Kush, Gupta, Mughal and English empires … we could all go on.
They had no ‘right to exist’, they just did exist through conquest, absorption or any number of empire building practices.
More recently, what happened to the USSR’s “right to exist”? Or Yugoslavia’s or Czechoslovakia? I mean, think about it – does today’s UK have a ‘right to exist”? And if so, does that mean Scotland, for example, can never vote for independence? Would we say to Scots who voted in a referendum to be independent from the UK, “Sorry, you can’t leave. That would be going against the UK’s right to exist.”
Of course not. That would be daft. Again, people have rights, not states.
To be clear, states will profess a right to peace within their borders in regards to sovereignty and the actions of neighbours (like Ukraine, etc), but an actual right to exist in the first place is not the same thing as that.
To repeat, there is no right for countries to exist, nor any right for any country to continue to exist. None whatsoever. This is not an argument based on historical reality.
And number three: Palestine’s ‘Right to Exist’
If Israel has a right to exist as they claim, does Palestine have a right to exist? Because last time I checked, Israel exists. As a matter of fact, it’s a country with sovereignty. It’s literally on the map with its undeclared borders.
Over at the UN, it’s Israel that is a full member state, not Palestine. And it’s the U.S., by the way, blocking Palestine’s right to exist at the UN as a full sovereign member state, and does so under pressure by Israel who by keeping the legitimization of Palestine at bay, maintains the legal grey area of being able to hold Palestine in an apartheid situation.
If Palestine had legitimate status in the UN, the UN would have to act against Israel’s actions there,… and Israel can’t have that, so pressures the U.S.’s veto power, to maintain the status quo,
lobbing out Israels ‘Right to exist’ when needed to keep critics at bay.
In a world where Israel is accused of committing genocide in Gaza, ethnically cleansing Palestinians in the West Bank, and denying refugees their legal right of return, prioritizing debate over Israel’s right to exist … while ignoring Palestine’s … is both absurd and, frankly, racist.
This entire discourse is clear propaganda by supporters of Israel. Have you ever heard this phrase used in any other context other than in the context of defending Israel? Do we talk about Belgium’s right to exist? Luxembourg’s right to exist, South Africa’s right to exist? America’s? Even in Canadas recent tumultuous 51st state hub bub … did we actually discuss this term as a phrase of debate logic?
Of course not, because it’s all demonstrable BS. It doesn’t make sense. States don’t have this right, individuals do.
So … moving forward, don’t be cowed when the Israel ‘right to exist’ gotcha is thrown in your face. Don’t be browbeaten or intimidated or guilted into giving Israel a pass. As that’s what they want, a pass so we all back down and don’t retaliate.
A pass on Israel’s actions, its apartheid practices, its endless war crimes, and yes, its ongoing genocide in Gaza. This isn’t about Israel’s existence, it’s about legitimizing crimes against humanity, and having language to do that without immediate consequences.
Over an entire generation or two, this phrase ‘right to exist’ has been implanted into our consciousness as an accepted, normalized and reasonable cloud of rhetoric created by Israel to justify the following dual direction of justification for its actions;
1. To absorb land that did not and still does not belong to them insofar as international law allows, and to continue doing so, as todays headlines suggest,
2. Instills into the international order zeitgeist that any comment, statement, speech, action, or any intent to hold Israel accountable for its war crimes is nothing but antisemitic racism directed at removing Israel’s “right to exist”.
The next time you hear this phrase, start paying attention to how effectively this is used and how it shuts down debate. … and begin to notice how the world has been played.
David Johnson is a Kamloops resident, community volunteer and self described maven of all things Canadian.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Israel does not do everything right by a long stretch. However, when Hamas and Hezbollah, with the backing of Iran and tacit support from the UN dedicate themselves every single day to erasing Israel and killing Jews, is Israel not permitted to defend itself? The October 7 2023 attack by Hamas will go down in history as particularly egregious and brutal, however doesn’t even receive mention anymore by and large, after only two and a half years. Hamas and Hezbollah launch rockets into civilian areas of Israel on a daily basis, and not a peep from the UN, cited often in the article, or other international media. But if Israel fires back, there are numerous articles about atrocities and censure from the much-vaunted but useless UN, almost like a dog whistle response. Can anybody give a good reason why Iran, a brutal regime that massacres its own citizens in the tens of thousands, is on the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee? Even here in Canada, pro-Palestinian protesters, including some of our university professors and students, with police protection, can stand on a street corner and yell “death to the Jews” and “death to Israel” with zero repercussion or consequence it seems, which is shameful. That is way over any free speech line, imaginary or real, and ought to be punished the same way any other hate speech is. I support Israel’s right to defend itself. I do not support the killing of civilians and non-combatants, however when those non-uniformed combatants are hiding behind women and children in schools, mosques and hospitals, it is often impossible to differentiate between the two.
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A Globe and Mail newspaper columnist wrote how during a post-10/7/23 concert at Vancouver’s Hollywood Theatre, “a band member said something about a free Palestine. This, according to attendee Hanah Van Borek, led to a few shouts from the audience: ‘F— the Jews!’ It was clearly audible in her area of the crowd, a person who was with her confirms, but nobody around them shut this down. There were some cheers of support, though. ‘My whole body went into shock,’ says Ms. Van Borek, who is Jewish.
“Ms. Van Borek left the venue and explained why to security staff. She says a worker encouraged her to go back inside and reassured her she was safe. ‘Nobody will be able to tell that you’re Jewish,’ he said, according to Ms. Van Borek. (Oy.) She did return to the show, but Ms. Van Borek was — and is — rattled. She supports the band’s right to make political statements. It was the shouts from this group — and the silence around them — that were alarming.”
[The essay was posted October 26, 2023]
I’ve long been, and still am, vocally critical of the (to put it mildly) clear decades-long maltreatment of and large-scale violence against the general Palestinian populace by the Israeli government and security/defense agencies — and, with few exceptions, the Western mainstream news-media’s seemingly intentional tokenistic (non)coverage of it. Nevertheless, I, likely due to not having Jewish heritage thus experience, never expected the level of anti-Semitic assaults in the West since the shocking 10/7/23 Hamas attack against Israel.
It’s plainly blatantly wrong for them to be mistreated and even terrorized, let alone suffering it supposedly for what is committed overseas. And it should be needless to say that Western-world Palestinians and Muslims similarly must not be collectively blamed and attacked for the acts of Hamas violence in Israel or Islamic extremist attacks outside the Middle East.
Immediately after the 10/7/23 attack, great insensitivity was publicly shown by some crazy-angry pro-Palestinian activists towards the many who were freshly mourning the Israeli victims, especially when considering that many or most young Israelis and Jews elsewhere likely were not accustomed to such relatively large-scale carnage committed against Israel.
Particularly concerning about all of the highly publicized two-way partisan exchanges of verbal fury, especially via social media, is: What will young non-Israeli Jewish, and Palestinian, children living abroad think and feel if/when they hear such misdirected vile hatred towards their fundamental identity? Scary is the real possibility that such public outpour of blind hatred may lead some young people or even children to feel misplaced shame in their heritage.
I even read that there has been an increase in the rate of suicide among younger or teenaged Jews/Semites since 10/7/23. I find it hard not to feel for them, as they (likely) didn’t ask for the horrors that have happened or are currently happening.
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Selective accountability for violations of rights and freedoms remains a persistent issue in international affairs. Powerful states or those with strong alliances often face less consistent scrutiny than weaker ones, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere. This double standard undermines the universality of concepts like self-determination, prohibitions on forced transfers, and protections against aggression.
Sustainable progress would benefit from mutual recognition of legitimate security and national rights on both sides, rather than zero-sum narratives rooted in early 20th-century imperial redrawing.
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As you said, nations come and go hence it is only a matter of time Israel goes too…their current and recent actions pretty much guarantees that without much room for debate.
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