“Israel has the right to exist”
“Israel has the right to exist”
“Israel has the right to exist”
it’s a weird phrase, people don’t say this about any other country
Random pen question I've been thinking about: how do you respond to this? I have responded in two separate ways:
Both of these ended in the other person not really saying much of anything, seemingly because they didn't have a response. Is there something better I'm missing?
People who parrot the "right to exist" line are usually either so far gone down the propaganda pipeline that you alone will not be moving them on the issue or, worse, they're a full blown ideologically driven Zionist cynically trying to equate their fascist pet project with the existence of humans inside and outside of Israel.
And honestly before Oct last year I think a lot of westerners, especially Americans, could plausibly fall under the former. Maybe they saw pictures or heard a news story from Israel's various criminal murder campaigns, looked into it just a tiny bit, and immediately got smacked with the "wow! Seems like you don't think Israel has a right to defend itself or exist!" And a lot of well meaning liberals will throw their hands up and go "no no no I'm sorry! I didn't know!" and never talk about it again due to the way Zionism has fairly successfully tied Israel to Jews as a people (which is antisemitic as fuck) and so Israel is regarded as "not your business" if you aren't Jewish. Your acceptable choices are ignoring/avoiding it or being pro-Israel... nothing else.
But since October, where there was very little excuse before, there is NO excuse now to claim ignorance. As much as I try to attribute people's actions to ignorance rather than bad intent, I can't do so anymore on this issue. I simply refuse to accept anyone who can parrot the right to exist BS doesn't know exactly what Israel has been doing for 75 years and especially the last 20 or so and especially especially the last 9 months. We all see the videos/pics, everyone who didn't know before knows now at least a general REAL history of how Israel came to be, so if they're falling back on right to exist it's for a specific reason. They're trying to do what the intent of that phrase is which is to sort of humanize the state of Israel, to make it a person basically, and that "person" represents all Jews in the world. If you wish to see that state dismantled then you're explicitly saying you want Jews to not exist. Obviously this is all antisemitic (the biggest irony in all this) as fuck and basically just early 1900s nationalistic insanity that, yes, you'd be hearing from Nazis or perhaps the fucking KKK.
So, no matter what you say or do, you aren't pushing those people who are fully committed to equating a nation state with a group of people. To them you might as well just be saying "Jews don't have a right to exist." They're so far down in their racist dark places that many of them probably do believe this to a large extent, or they're just totally cynical right wing pieces of shit who revel in being able to murder people AND being able to silence you with false claims of antisemitism. Either way, like I said, you won't be moving them.
The only thing that can probably move them is making it fully untenable to be a Zionist. It needs to have the same stigma as openly calling yourself a Nazi or openly supporting Rhodesia. It used to be very popular to support Rhodesia amongst far right wing types. Ask people under 30 or maybe even 35 what Rhodesia was now days and you'll get a lot of "huh? Never heard of it" responses. Just gotta keep pushing to cut off aid to Israel, keep pressuring private industry/unis to divest, and finally to enact sanctions and remove all political protections at the UN. Once Zionists are totally isolated from the world it'll all crumble and you'll never hear another dumbass say that right to exist line.
That's where I'm at with that stupid phrase. Don't debate them, just force them to stfu. It will take a lot more time and effort, but they're losing, they know they're losing, and I dunno. Fuck their dumb little racist slogans in the end.