by PM&I correspondent Rick Congress
According to the Israeli government, its PR agency aka The New York Times, ardent Zionists, and holders of elective office standing in mortal fear of AIPAC, the trump argument is always "they don't recognize Israel's right to exist. You can't negotiate, have trade with, countenance, deal with...Them. Them, being the Palestinians, Hamas, Iran, all the Arabs, anti-Zionists, self-hating Jews...whoever is the target of the latest polemic.
Does "right to exist" have any standing under international law? Is a condition of enduring existedness the right of every state or government? The best answer to this question is another question.
"The right to exist? With what borders? To exist as a permanently expansionist state that also has to right to steal land from the Palestinians, who make up about half of the total population currently under the de facto jurisdiction of the ontologically needy state of Israel.
Don't the Palestinian people have a right to exist as a People? The national/Zionist ideology followed by Israel's government and also, it seems, by the majority of the Jews of Israel is based on negating the existence of the Palestinians. How about some existential reciprocity here?
In most states a citizen is a citizen, case closed. But in Israel citizenship doesn't have much standing. 20% of the citizens of Israel are Palestinians. They aren't Jews so they don't really count. Netanyahu el al harp on Israel as a Jewish state, for all the Jews of the world. When the Palestinians don't swear fealty to the state of all the Jews, who want to get rid of them, they are denying Israels "right to exist." they have to deny their right to exist because Israel's right to exist, according to the Zionist regime, depends on the Palestinians not existing.
Artists who refuse to perform in Israel until they stop stealing land from Palestinians and indiscriminately killing them, among other things, are "cultural terrorists" who pose an "existential threat" to Israel.
Did the Apartheid state of South Africa have a right to exist? Most of the world came around to the conclusion that it didn't. It was abolished and now there is a newly created state of South Africa.
Abraham Lincoln and the United States of America didn't concede a right to exist to the Confederate States of America. Was that wrong?
How about Czechoslovakia? Yugoslavia? both in a current state of not existing.
Then there's another aspect of this issue: REALITY.
DEEDS NOT WORDS
Hamas has stated publicly and several times that it doesn't recognize Israel as a legitimate" state. But it does see the obvious, that it does exist whether Hamas likes it or not.
Hamas has also said publicly many times that they would sign a 30 year truce with Israel and would go along with a two-state solution if the majority of Palestinians voted for it.
The much ignored fact is that Hamas and Israel observed a ceasefire for six months June to November of 2008 (no rockets fired and no Israeli air or ground attacks--which had been constant in the years before the Gaza Invasion of December 2008). The truce ended when the IDF staged a ground attack in November 2008 and killed six Gazans. Then rockets were fired and the all out massacre of Gaza by Israel began in December.
If Israel wanted peace and two states it would take Hamas up on its truce and two state offers. but no, first Hamas has to declare that Israel and all of the land of Greater Israel is the Jewish only state. Not only do they have to declare it they have to have it tatooed on their face and cut off their big toe. And if they agree to this, then Israel will think of new demands.
Israel just isn't happy unless it has an existential threat to keep their adrenaline pumping.
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