I said why I said that the state of Israel has no rights, I said it over and over again, I said that no state has rights, including the one I live in, including the Nazi state, including such other self-declared "states" as ISIS(L) and a number of others. I said why that is the case, over and over again. I also said why I would not make an exception for the United States or Israel because to declare that states have rights has been one of the most dangerous venues through which those who govern and mistake themselves as being the embodiment of that state use an assertion of such "rights" to murder and oppress people in huge numbers. I would certainly include the United States in the list of countries in which that has been done, is done and will, no doubt, be done. I will not pretend that Israel is not also a place where that has happened and happens now. I'm under no obligation, personal or moral to carve out the unique exception in that for Israel, I think the large majority of those who acquiesce in allowing that exception are caving in to a form of blackmail which Simels is attempting to practice on me.
I would certainly not say that Israel is the worst of the offenders but it is far from the least offending state. I have no illusions about its special status as a moral force, it's a country which, after decades of constantly being in a state of war is, unsurprisingly, devolving into a military state. Whenever a country is as beleaguered as Israel has been, that is almost a certain result. It's no surprise that the same is true of Palestine, the Palestinian people have certainly been beleaguered for as long and not only by Israel but also its patron, the United States.
If an American tried to force me into granting an exceptional moral status to the United States, using similar forms of thuggish coercion, I'd tell them to go soak their head, or something like that. I'm certainly not going to say anything less to an American who tries to pull that same black mail on me over Israel, a country which certainly has no more of a claim to my allegiance than the United States does. No country in the Middle East, Europea, Africa,.... has the right to make those kinds of demands. They're certainly not going to get me to give in to such an attempt.
In his essay, Vietnam The Logic of Withdrawal, the American historian Howard Zinn devoted a chapter going into extensive detail about the fact that no nation can be trusted, every government practices immorality. The United States becoming enmeshed in the civil war in Vietnam was a result of the same kinds of moral postures, made far more of phony, sentimental, even cloying assertions of moral rectitude sold with the most vulgar of PR tactics. The appeal to the experience of the fight against fascism and Nazism was put to some of its most horrible use in the campaign to sell that war to the American people. It did so at the very same time it was engaged in one of the most sustained series of moral and legal atrocities in 20th century American history. And considering that history, that's saying a lot. The same tactics are used to silence the critics of the Israeli government and military and to coerce the silence of most people on that topic through some of the most thuggish intimidation there is. I will point out that there is probably more robust discussion of what the Israeli government does wrong in Israel than is allowable in the United States, the country which provides so much of what the Israeli government uses to commit what would be called a crime if any other country did it.
To assert that states have rights is extremely dangerous. To assert that a country has rights very quickly turns committing crimes and even the most appalling immorality into a pose of moral rectitude.
I am not morally obligated or required to like the state of Israel or the Israeli government, those have no rightful claim on my love or devotion. The people who live there do, the people in the occupied territories, in Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, etc. all of them can claim a moral right to my respecting their rights, not the governments that rule them, not the state. I don't especially like any of the governments in the Mid-East, Israel included. But my liking any of them or even disliking any of them less than others is of exactly no importance in preventing people getting killed and having their rights violated in appalling ways. The only people who have benefitted from the status quo are the lowest, dirtiest of politicians, war profiteers and terrorists. Frankly, I don't like any government that tries to maintain that status quo because of that, including the government of the United States. I'm fed up with it, the least I can do is stop lying about it because some asshole like Simels is going to accuse me of antisemitism over it.
Hate Update: Lewis Black knows you? He has my condolences.
Hate Update: Lewis Black knows you? He has my condolences.
How many states which have been obliterated over time, had the 'right to exist'?
ReplyDeleteWhat of the First Nations? No such right? All gone, gone under the sod; destroyed by Europeans, removed to reservations and controlled by the laws of others.
African states? Middle eastern states invaded by the U.S.? No right to exist, or a right we simply swept aside when convenient?
"Right to exist"? The concept has no meaning. Murderers are not punished for violating a "right to exist" of an individual. Indeed, it borders on the concept used by anti-abortion groups, to argue a "right to exist" that attaches to fetuses. But it is not a right recognized by courts, by international law, or by common sense.
It is, as I say, a phrase completely devoid of meaning.