"...I no longer support the right of Netanyahu's Israel to exist."
Which, since Netanyahu's Israel is the only Israel, strongly seems to imply that I no longer support Israel's right to exist. No. I support Israel's right to exist. I believe that the Jewish people are among the very best of humankind and that they deserve their own homeland, one that I have passionately supported. I called on the Israeli people to overthrow Netanyahu's Israel.
The extinction of a state, even an avowedly race-based state such as Israel, is a matter of utmost extreme. It does not, however, mean the extinction of the people that make up that state. The distinction between being anti-Israeli and being antisemitic is real, even for being fuzzy.
For instance, there are more Jews who live outside of Israel than within. The extinction of Netanyahu's Israel is nowhere near the extinction of the Jewish people. Not even the Holocaust, the most genocidal regime in history, the extinction of the Jewish people.
For instance, the utter and complete extinction of the Nazi German state did not extinguish the ethnic German peoples. The atom bombing and capitulation of Imperial Japan, etc., etc.
This led me to think about rights and existence generally and the right to exist particularly. Does any person or collective have a right to exist? If we do, does "exist" mean to come into being, or to continue life as individual or collective? If the former, then, we have a right to be born, or brought into being. That seems absurd. In my opinion, the Palestinian people do not have the right to a state. No people have the right to a state.
As used in Israel's case a right to exist means to "continue" to exist. But. Worldwide Jewry believed that a Jewish state had the right to be born, too. The United States midwifed the birth and has supported its offspring for 76 years and counting.
With some little exasperation, I felt that I had to look up the Merriam Webster definition of "exist".
existed; existing; exists
1
a
: to have real being whether material or spiritual
did unicorns exist
the largest galaxy known to exist
b
: to have being in a specified place or with respect to understood limitations or conditions
strange ideas existed in his mind
2
: to continue to be
racism still exists in society
3
a
: to have life or the functions of vitality
we cannot exist without oxygen
b
: to live at an inferior level or under adverse circumstances
the hungry existing from day to day
With a little more exasperation I read definition 1 a: "To have real being, material or spiritual"? Oh bother. 2, "to continue to be". That's what I'm using. Nothing about a right to be born, thank goodness.
Now this rights biz: I, having been born, have a right, as long as I don't end another individual's existence under certain aggravating circumstances, to continued natural existence. My right is granted me by the state of which I was born a member, a similar right is granted to all individual members of all states that I am aware of, and is enforced by the deterrent effect of a state-administered existence-termination event on (s)he who unnaturally terminates my existence.
So that's clear. A-hem.
What of nation-states' right to continued existence? Nah-ah. Nazi Germany did not have a right to continue to exist. The state equivalent of a mass murderer was that state.
As a matter of practicality also there is no supra-national entity nearly as effective in deterring murderers of states as there is murderers of individuals. The applicable units are the nation-state and the individual member. The state of Chad does not guarantee my right to continued existence from malfeasance on American soil by an American national.
Putting the horse before the cart, neither the United Nations nor any other supra-national body vouchsafes the right of Chad to continue to exist. Nor the United States of America, nor Israel. Nation-states are on their own, frequently in alliance with friendly states, to protect and to fight for their continued existence. It's the law of the jungle out there for nation-states.
A nation-state having no right to exist, no obligation as guarantor of a non-existent right is triggered in other states. We of a powerful, Christian-based nation-state have a geopolitical Christian charity prod to protect the good, but weak. It's a noble prod. But the United States does not have the prod to protect the bad. In my personal opinion this Israel is neither so good nor so weak that the United States should extend its protection any further than the seventy-fucking-six years we already have. Imo, this, Netanyahu's, Israel is not good at all. Nor is it weak.
I do not wish for the extermination of the people living in Netanyahu's Israel, nor of the scattered and diminished Palestinian people, nor of any people. Neither am I willing to perpetuate the existence of a state that has become fascistic, and genocidal, as was Nazi Germany and Hamas-ruled Gaza. That too is not navel contemplating philosophical nuance. Israel, Germany, Chad, the U.S.A.--no state has a right to exist. Ergo, no state has an obligation to perpetuate the existence of any other state. "...I no longer support the right of Netanyahu's Israel to exist" means that I, as only one American, feel no moral or historical prod to support Netanyahu's Israel, a state that I consider both not good, and strong enough to protect itself. And we Americans have skin, LOTS of skin, in the fight between Israel and Iran, and imo, Trump's Midnight Marshmallow droppings make Americans wherever they be, vulnerable to righteous retaliation by Iran.
Putting the case positively, if Netanyahu's Israel is to continue to exist, why then, world Jewry and Israelis should fight for its existence on their own. That is what I mean by "I am done with this Israel."
Good night...good early morning.
* "[A right to exist] is not a right recognized in international law. The phrase has featured prominently in the Arab–Israeli conflict since the 1950s.
