I have raised some serious concerns regarding Israel’s so-called right to exist. Any right to that effect will derive from its legitimacy as a state. Because Israel’s genesis and continued existence ¬ as a state, not just as its actions, conducted somehow accidentally or due to some bad apples in the government ¬ is at the moral expense of a people (Israeli and non-Israeli Palestinians) who have rights against it, then its legitimacy as a state is in doubt. But if so, then its “right to exist” is in doubt, too. This sounds right. The conclusion is confirmed by the thought that if Israel is, by its very essence, a state that excludes other people who have rights against it, then other states surely do not have duties to preserve it. No state has the duty to preserve another state that is illegitimate (which is not the same as having the duty to attack it; these are not the same duties).
Well, now. First Tony Judt, then Richard Cohen and now...Raja Halwani, Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Liberal Arts Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He specializes, and has published in, in ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of sex and love. He is currently writing a book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He's up there with that Iranian bloke.
It is so comforting to know that there really are intellectual heavyweights who just can't figure it out that Jews have a right to statehood, political sovereignty and the right to beat the hell out of anyone who uses lethal force in opposition.
Oh, he has a blog.
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