Today’s quiz: Nearly 200 nations hold membership in the United Nations. How many have a right to exist?…
This is it.
One hundred and ninety-one nations, and only one lacks the “right to exist” in the eyes of fellow states.
No other country even has a “right to exist.” No other country needs one.
Next up: What does a country have to do to lose its inherent right to exist?
A cautionary note. This is a trick question.
If you answered genocide, arguably the worst-case scenario, you’d be way wrong.
No one questions Turkey’s right to exist. This after the deaths of more than a million Armenians beginning in 1915.
Nor did they expect Cambodia, which under the Khmer Rouge may have killed 2,000,000 people, to lose its membership in the community of nations.
Pakistan has no right-to-exist issue. This, after Bangladesh, 1971. The Rape of Nanking during Japan’s wartime occupation of China? Japan gets to stay on the map.
Germany? Let’s not even go there.
So why is it so hard for some people to recognize the right of Israel to exist?
A. The Jews have no need of – and therefore no right to – a state of their own because, as it is, they own everything, in particular the banks and the mass media, and because everything they don’t own, they somehow control.
B. The occupation of Palestine is the greatest crime in the history of man’s inhumanity to the innocent.
C. The very existence of Israel constitutes the signal humiliation of the Arab Muslim peoples in the modern era.
D. Only Muslims are allowed to conquer, occupy, claim, annex and govern territory, especially in areas where they have conquered, claimed, and annexed in the past.
E. No Muslim state is genuinely willing to help the Palestinians, so, in the end, Israel will have to do so.
The correct answer is, of course, “Yes.”
…In the meantime, in small increments and, at times, for the wrong reasons – like being told we should be erased – we’re heading gradually toward true membership in the community of nations. Like it or not.
It’s only a matter of time before we’re like all the others. We’ll exist without any right to. Just like all the others.
This particularly struck a cord with me because when I write about Israel, I can generally count on getting an eccentric email from someone laying out various crimes, real or imagined, that Israel has committed, and claiming Israel has no right to exist, because these are “unique.” If I’m in the mood, I write a polite email back pointing out that even accepting the author’s dubious interpretation of the facts, the sins attributed to Israel are hardly unique, and that one could just as easily say that (Jordan, Saudia Arabia, Lebanon, Germany, the U.S., Russia, Ireland, the U.K., and more, depending on the “unique” sins alleged, have all come up) has no right to exist. Not once has such an author written back. Like religious fanatics, they believe in their own truth, and facts and reason aren’t permitted to get in the way, and proselytizing their vision, not critical thinking, is their modus operandi. It’s entirely possible there are fanatics on the pro-Israel side who are equally obnoxious and wrongheaded, but they are not polluting my inbox.
UPDATE: Reader DTHardy provides some anecdotal evidence of “unique” Israeli crimes:
On November 11, 2005, Israel stuck a gun in my belly, demanded my wallet, and thereafter used stolen credit cards in violation of Arizona Revised Statutes 13:504(B), 13:702(A)(1) and possibly the Hobbes Act.
As no other sovereign has done this to me (the Maldive Islands DID leave a flaming bag of dog crap on the porch and laughed when I tried to stomp it out, but that was at most trespass and disorderly conduct, and the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta mooned me as he drove by, but he is only a sovereign in the most technical of terms) Israel is obviously committing unique crimes. And I want my driver’s license back.
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