States do not have rights. States, after all, are just organizations with a monopoly on the means of coercion within a certain territory. They are not natural, and certainly do not enjoy any natural rights. At their best, states can be used to protect the rights of the people who live within their borders. States are usually not at their best, however. Usually, state powers are employed to violate the rights of the people unfortunate enough to live under the power of state operatives. These victims of the state include both the state’s residents as well as innocent victims living in other, weaker states.
A common phrase used by Israeli propagandists, however, is the phrase “Israel has a right to exist.” This is phrased vaguely on purpose. What is meant is this: “The State of Israel has a right to exit.” And, of course, it does not have a right to exist, just like the corporation known as “The United States government” does not have a right to exist.
Do Israelis have a right to exist? Of course they do, just as Palestinians have a right to exist. That, however, is a separate question.
Recently, Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur in Palestine, was asked the usual propaganda gotcha question by Canadian regimist reporter Bryan Passifiume. She provided some clarification:
Passifiume: Does Israel have a right to exist?
Albanese: Israel does exist. Israel is a recognized member of the United Nations. Besides this, there is not such a thing in international law like “the right of a state to exist.” Does Italy have a right to exist? Italy exists. Now, if tomorrow, Italy and France want to merge and become Ita-France, fine, this is not up to us. What is enshrined in international law is the right of a people to exist. So, the state of Israel is there, it is protected as a member of the United Nations. Does this justify the erasure of another people? Hell no. Not 75 years ago. Not 57 years ago. Surely not today. Where is the protection of the Palestinian people from erasure, from annexation, from illegal annexation, from apartheid?
The question here is similar to that addressed by Ludwig von Mises in his work on the right of self-determination. Mises favored a right of individuals to collaborate and form organizations for the mutual protection of their rights. In practice, this meant a right to secede from one polity and form another, separate polity. These organizations often take the form of states. But this does not mean states have rights. For Mises, the right of self-determination—which is similar to the “right of a people to exist” as mentioned by Albanese here—allows “a people” to secede and form their own states.
To this, one could come back and say “well then, the Israeli people have a right to exist, right? The Israeli people have a right to form a state separate from the Palestinians?” Yes, that is true, but this right is no different and no more important than the same right enjoyed by the Palestinians who lived in what is now the State of Israel before the British state and Lord Rothschild essentially invented Israel on paper in the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
This is the important fact that is generally ignored by advocates of the Israeli state: If the Israelis have a right to from a separate state and to defend their territory with force, then the Palestinians have that same right. That is, if the Israelis have a right to self-determination, so do the Palestinians.
The fixation on the State of Israel and its “rights” is part of the propaganda designed to deny that that Palestinians could possibly exercise their own rights of self-determination. In practice, the question of “does Israel have a right to exist?” is asked to justify war crimes. Albanese recognizes this, as can be seen in her answer.
This question, by the way, is often accompanied by a second propaganda statement: “Israel has a right to defend itself.” This statement is virtually always accompanied by an explanation of why the State of Israel is not bound by any international laws of warfare or by any moral provisions of Just War Theory. “Israel has a right to defend itself,” as generally used, is code for “Israel can do whatever it wants in war.”
