Blogging The Right to Exist

Here's one of the justifications for the genocide. Israel's right to exist. Apparently, mass slaughter of civilians and the infliction of famine upon millions of people is justified because Hamas does not recognize Israel's "right to exist".

The facile comment about this is that Israel has very literally denied the right of tens of thousands of Gazans to exist by bombing them to death. That's very true, but it doesn't speak to what is being referred to here as "the right to exist".

The right to exist is about the existence of Israel as a nation. We are talking about the right to exist for the state of Israel. And while a lot of people get hung up on land and borders - this right to exist is about Israeli people. It is the right of Israelis to be recognized as an independent and sovereign nation-state. The right of the Israelis to elect governments and determine their own future. To make decisions and choices for their country.

This is where Biden is coming from - he speaks about Israel's right to exist and his stated goal is to have a normalization process with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States - for those nations to recognize the existence of Israel as a legitimate nation.

But in the Biden-verse, the right for states and nations to exist does not extend to Palestinians. He talks of the "two-state solution" but tries to square that with Israel's outright opposition to it by suggesting that a "state" can be many different things. The Biden "two-state solution" is one sovereign state of Israel and one occupied territory without sovereignty that he calls a "state". It is a branding solution - one that ensures perpetual violence and unrest in the region. It is in fact, the status quo - but with tweaked labels.

This is just the conclusion that Joe Biden gets to because he simply does not consider Palestinians to be human beings. He really doesn't. Anything he says to indicate otherwise is immediately undermined by his actual actions. If he were to state his actual beliefs - that Palestinians are not deserving of basic human dignity and should instead be exterminated - well the war would be over. He knows that if he were to drop the mask and openly call for genocide, he would lose enough support to maintain the war. Thus he pretends that he thinks Palestinians deserve human rights - all in order to prolong the genocide campaign. 

Is this extreme? An incredibly negative view of Biden? No, it isn't. There is no other explanation for his actions - for his constant vetoes of ceasefire resolutions - and then when forced into not vetoing one, his direct efforts at undermining international law by calling the resolutions non-binding. There is no other explanation for his choice to continue to arm the IDF when he has seen for half a year now what happens with the bombs and munitions he sends to them. And Biden does not believe that Palestinians as a group deserve human rights - one of the most basic of which is the right to exist - to self-determination and freedom from oppression and occupation. That is the official position of the USA - that there is no right to exist for Palestine.

Just a reminder when these assholes talk about the "right to exist". They don't extend it to others - it's not a human right, it is a cudgel to beat down opposition to genocide.