Right to Exist

FrontPage magazine reported A friend of mine asked me how I would answer the following question: "By what right does Israel exist?

The last 65 years of Arab hate-speech, hate-preach, and hate-teach make it pretty clear that some significant part of the Arab world really does not want Israel to exist.

Most of them also believe that Christians have no right to exist either. They think that Islam is the only legitimate religion, and all others (Judiasm in the case of Israel, Christianity in the case of the US, Hinduism in the case of India, have no right to exist)

That same segment really does the best it can to end Israel's existence, with 65 years of terror war punctuated by 3 major attempts at invasion, conquest, and destruction. The rhetoric of annihilation and the diatribe of genocide match the actions of these same Arab states, whose commitment of massive resources to the destruction of Israel is an implicit rejection of Israel's right to exist....

In my opinion.... no country in the world and throughout all of history has a right to exist. No country in the world exists today by virtue of its 'right'. All countries exist today by virtue of their ability to defend themselves against those who seek their destruction.

Take Tibet, for example, and Israel for the opposite example.

Tibet did nothing to threaten or anger China. No aggression, no threat of aggression. But in 1950, China invaded Tibet and ended Tibet's existence as a nation. The world did nothing (except create some bumper stickers). As with all nations, Tibet had no right to exist. It existed only as long as it was not attacked. When it was attacked and could not defend itself adequately, nor garner support for its continued existence from the world's family of nations or from the world's governing body, it ceased to exist.

The same would be true of Israel, except that Israel has defended itself adequately.

More than adequately, IMHO. In the Six Day War they really kicked a$$

Israel's continued existence is not by right, but only by its ability to defend itself against the Arab and Moslem world that seeks her destruction. And if it were ever unable to defend itself, it would soon share Tibet's fate. Or worse.

All nations throughout the world and across history came into existence by virtue of their ability to conquer some other country or people or tribe or indigenous inhabitants. Violence, murder, war, rapine, conquest, massacres, burning, looting, pillaging, and sometimes even genocide: those are the costs of nation creation in the real world, throughout all of history.

The only known exception to this gallery of historical horrors is the modern state of Israel. Israel came into existence by virtue of:

1. its ability to buy land with the help of world-wide Jewish and Christian Zionists
2. its ability to reclaim deteriorated waste land
3. its ability to organize itself in its pre-state existence into a viable well-governed cohesive society with a developing and expanding economy and an effective defensive force.
4. its ability, via lobbying and political leveraging, to get the world governing body to vote it into existence

In sharp contradistinction to the manner in which all other nations have been created, Israel came into existence by legal, peaceful, constructive processes....

So why pick on Israel? Because the question has nothing to do with an inquiry into Israel's rights or lack thereof. It is simply a mechanism for the launching of an anti-Israel diatribe. Its real purpose is to open an avenue of attack, to bash Israel, de-legitimize her, denigrate her; and ultimately to justify the Arab world's desire to destroy her.

In the absence of any inquiry into the right of infinitely more reprehensible societies—Russia, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, Mauritania, Sudan, inter alia, come to mind—why condemn Israel as a rogue state with no right to exist? Why not start with the worst offenders?

Why de-legitimize Israel for a conquest (which actually did not happen, but that's a different article) that was far less destructive than that of the Arab states whose Jihad in the 7th to 9th centuries racked up tens, if not hundreds, of millions of casualties and destroyed four ancient civilizations (Byzantine, Coptic, Sassanian, and Berber). Why not start with the most horrific of conquerors? Because the purpose of the question is to attack Israel and justify those who attack Israel!

The bottom line is that if you think Israel has no right to exist, you are right. And I'm sure that Hitler would agree with you wholeheartedly.

Ted Belman: blogged Paul Eidelberg, in his great treatise, Jewish Statesmanship, posits the same thing. Why? Because it is self evident. This being the case, why is Israel weakening its ability to defend itself in exchange for an acknowledgement of its right to exist or even a peace agreement. It wouldn't be the first time that the Arabs have violated an agreement or an acknowledgement. There is no such thing as a right to exist because there is no one to enforce the right. A nation must have the power to exist.

I believe they are doing it for strategic reasons. Sharon is not withdrawing from Gaza because he does not believe in settlements (he is the father of the settlement movement), but because he hopes that the weakneed Europeans will see it as a reasonable action, and then he will allow the Palestinian State to be formed with the promise to live in peace with Israel. He knows there is not a chance they will keep their word.

In July 1922, the League of Nations entrusted Great Britain with the Mandate for Palestine. Recognizing "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine," Great Britain was called upon to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine-Eretz Israel (Land of Israel). Shortly afterwards, in September 1922, the League of Nations and Great Britain decided that the provisions for setting up a Jewish national home would not apply to the area east of the Jordan River, which constituted three-fourths of the territory included in the Mandate and which eventually became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.



The resulting map provides an area (then called Palestine) which would have been a defendable area for the state of Israel. I don't see how the 1967 boundaries are really defensible (although Israel has done a good job defending them). But they just encouraged the Arabs to try to take over the rest and control all of the area. If they agree to living in peace with Israel to get a Palestinian State, and then immediately violate that agreement (which they will), hopefully Israel will push them back across the Jordan, and get a defensible State of Israel.