A\u00a0fierce debate broke out this week across the Atlantic that will be familiar to Americans, one that jousted over the hollow notion of Israel\u2019s \u201cright to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n
On\u00a0the British political show\u00a0Peston,\u00a0its eponymous host\u00a0Robert Peston asked\u00a0far-left\u00a0Green Party leader Zack Polanski\u00a0directly: \u201cIsrael has a right to exist? Yes or no?\u201d<\/p>\n
Polanski, who is Jewish,\u00a0replied<\/a>, \u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0believe any country has a right to exist. People have a right to exist,\u201d then blamed \u201csemantics\u201d about state existence for part of what he called the Israel-Palestinian \u201cmess.\u201d<\/p>\n It was similar to questions that have been asked of many leftist politicians, including New York City\u2019s\u00a0socialist Mayor\u00a0Zohran Mamdani, a staunch critic of Israel and an advocate for the Palestinian cause.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike Polanski,\u00a0Mamdani\u00a0had\u00a0said “yes,”<\/a> but demurred when asked \u201cas a Jewish state.\u201d\u00a0An \u201cequal one,\u201d\u00a0the mayor clarified.\u00a0<\/p>\n More recently, conservative\u00a0commentator\u00a0Tucker Carlson took\u00a0fierce\u00a0issue with the \u201cright to exist\u201d\u00a0phrase<\/a>\u00a0in an interview with\u00a0The Economist, asking,\u00a0skeptically: \u201cWhat does\u00a0that\u00a0mean?\u201d<\/p>\n The left-wing commentator Mehdi Hasan has repeatedly rejected the notion that Israel has a right to exist,\u00a0and in a post on X<\/a> he endorsed Polanski\u2019s view:\u00a0\u201cPeople have a right to exist, not\u00a0states.\u201d<\/p>\n The trap is that Polanski\u2019s literal point is defensible.\u00a0But\u00a0the politics built from it are often evasive\u00a0of the more sinister beliefs that underpin too much of the opposition to Israel, which stretch well beyond robust criticism of\u00a0a government.<\/p>\n Bad Law and Worse Politics<\/p>\n International law does not treat states as immortal persons with an existential entitlement.\u00a0<\/p>\n The\u00a0Montevideo Convention<\/a>\u00a0on the Rights and Duties of States\u00a0describes statehood through a permanent population, defined territory, government, and capacity to enter relations with other states.\u00a0Israel certainly meets those requirements.<\/p>\n The\u00a0U.N. Charter<\/a>\u00a0protects states against the threat or use of force against their territorial integrity or political independence. And Israel certainly faces such threats, from its enemies, be they Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, or others.<\/p>\n But human rights law starts somewhere else: The\u00a0International Covenant<\/a>\u00a0says rights derive from human dignity and that all peoples have the right of self-determination.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n So\u00a0the tidy answer is that Israel, like\u00a0the\u00a0U.S. or\u00a0Britain\u00a0or\u00a0France, does not\u00a0possess\u00a0a mystical \u201cright to exist.\u201d Individuals have rights, not\u00a0states.\u00a0<\/p>\n The serious answer, however,\u00a0is that Israelis have rights that become hollow if their collective self-government\u2014a state as\u00a0established\u00a0under international law\u2014can be treated as permanently provisional.<\/p>\n That is why Polanski\u2019s\u00a0remarks\u00a0are\u00a0both technically interesting and politically thin.\u00a0He may dismiss the\u00a0semantics as theater. But he\u2019s a protagonist of it himself.<\/p>\n Israel Is Already Real\u00a0<\/p>\n Israel declared independence on\u00a0May 14, 1948<\/a>, after the end of the British Mandate, and the U.N. General Assembly admitted Israel as a member state\u00a0almost a\u00a0year\u00a0later\u00a0on\u00a0May 11, 1949.<\/p>\n The U.N. resolution admitting Israel passed by 37 votes to 12, with nine abstentions. Today,\u00a0Israel\u00a0has broad diplomatic recognition, including ties with all five permanent members of the\u00a0Security Council<\/a>.<\/p>\n Israel\u00a0is\u00a0now\u00a0a multi-party\u00a0parliamentary democracy with independent institutions\u00a0and the rule of law, even if, as the rights group Freedom House<\/a> points out, there is political\u00a0pressure on the judiciary and discrimination against Arab and other minorities.<\/p>\n There are two truths\u00a0in that. Israel is a functioning\u00a0and legitimate\u00a0state whose citizens vote, litigate,\u00a0protest\u00a0and organize. But Israel\u2019s state conduct can still be condemned,\u00a0investigated,\u00a0and constrained\u00a0by other powers.<\/p>\n The phrase \u201cright to exist\u201d muddies that distinction by making Israeli sovereignty sound like a prize that must be earned anew every time the government there takes action that draw condemnation from other states or international bodies.<\/p>\n The legitimacy of a state does not by extension legitimate\u00a0all of\u00a0its\u00a0actions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Israel’s Founding Is No Exception<\/p>\n Modern Israel\u00a0had a violent birth\u00a0in 1948\u00a0after the Nazi horror of the Holocaust.\u00a0It\u00a0was\u00a0established\u00a0amid civil\u00a0conflict, interstate war within the region, and the mass displacement of Palestinians\u00a0in an event they remember as the Nakba.<\/p>\n None of that should be airbrushed\u00a0by Israel and its supporters, nor should the causes and complexities be simplified\u00a0by its critics.<\/p>\n But it also does not make Israel historically singular.<\/p>\n India and Pakistan, for example,\u00a0were created by\u00a0the Partition\u00a0of India\u00a0in 1947,\u00a0a brutal event that saw\u00a0about 15 million people<\/a> cross the new borders. Death\u00a0estimates\u00a0range from 200,000 to 2 million.<\/p>\n Pakistan\u2019s legitimacy is not\u00a0generally argued\u00a0from the death toll of partition, and India\u2019s sovereignty is not normally put on trial because of the violence of its birth.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are plenty of other examples in both recent and distant history.\u00a0Israel\u00a0shouldn\u2019t\u00a0get a cleaner history than everyone else, of course. But\u00a0it\u00a0shouldn\u2019t\u00a0get a uniquely impossible standard either.\u00a0<\/p>\n The useful question\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0whether 1948 was morally tidy.\u00a0Plainly, it was not, and there are many unresolved questions about justice for the Palestinians who were displaced.\u00a0<\/p>\n The better question is\u00a0this: What rights\u00a0do\u00a0living people have now?\u00a0<\/p>\n Palestinians Don’t Lose Rights When Israelis Keep Theirs<\/p>\n The strongest Palestinian case, despite the views of many of their Western\u00a0advocates,\u00a0is\u00a0not that Israeli citizens should live under a permanent veto on sovereignty.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0a\u00a0simple\u00a0truth\u00a0that Palestinians\u00a0possess\u00a0their own right to self-determination.\u00a0<\/p>\n The\u00a0International Court of Justice<\/a>\u00a0said in its July 19, 2024, advisory opinion that Israeli policies violated the Palestinian people\u2019s right to self-determination and the prohibition on\u00a0acquiring\u00a0territory by force.\u00a0<\/p>\n That finding is damning for the Israeli state,\u00a0but\u00a0not a license to fantasize about\u00a0eliminating\u00a0it.\u00a0The same law that rejects conquest in the West Bank also rejects conquest of Israel.\u00a0<\/p>\n The U.N. Charter\u2019s ban on force is not an \u00e0 la carte rule, and the\u00a0ICJ summary<\/a>\u00a0shows\u00a0self-determination\u00a0is a legal right of a people,\u00a0not just a slogan to be\u00a0wielded\u00a0by\u00a0the geopolitically fashionable.<\/p>\n Government accountability belongs in the argument over what Israel does. It does not answer whether Israelis are entitled to maintain national self-government free from annihilation.\u00a0<\/p>\n If you deny Israel\u2019s\u00a0supposed\u00a0\u201cright to exist,\u201d\u00a0you are really saying\u00a0something else:\u00a0Israelis, and so Jewish people, do not have the same right to self-determination as others.<\/p>\n Given the emphasis on Palestinian self-determination, the\u00a0double standard\u00a0is obvious.\u00a0<\/p>\n The logic of Ukraine and Taiwan<\/p>\n We have other examples beyond the Palestinians where self-determination\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0questioned in the Western world.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the U.N. General Assembly reaffirmed Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity and deplored Russia\u2019s aggression as a violation of Article 2(4) of the Charter\u00a0United Nations<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nobody\u00a0translated that into a\u00a0metaphysical\u00a0argument\u00a0about\u00a0the human rights of the\u00a0Ukrainian state. The claim was simpler: Ukrainians have the right to preserve their self-government against conquest.\u00a0<\/p>\n The same logic shadows Taiwan, where the Taiwan Relations Act treats any nonpeaceful effort to\u00a0determine\u00a0Taiwan\u2019s future as a matter of grave concern and commits the United States to help Taiwan\u00a0maintain\u00a0a\u00a0sufficient\u00a0self-defense\u00a0capability<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n