Their real goal is to delegitimize the Jewish state
It has become a cliché to point out that there is a difference between criticism of Israel and denial of its right to exist. The former is well within the boundaries of acceptable discourse, as it is with any country; the latter is not, as it entertains the possibility of dismantling a sovereign state (that just so happens to be the world’s only Jewish state), which is not considered a legitimate geopolitical option in any other context. But the distinction can be elided by disguising rejection of Israel’s right to exercise sovereignty — including the right to conduct defensive wars — as mere criticism of its conduct.
Not everyone attempts the disguise. Open Israel-haters like U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese deny that Israel has any right to self-defense, because they consider it an illegitimate state to begin with. Some call Israel’s military actions “genocide” not because of Israel’s conduct but because the war occurred within “the system of settler colonial apartheid that the Israeli government has built and maintained over the past seventy-five years,” as the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace wrote less than a week after October 7.
These extremists deny that Israel has any right to wage war against Hamas, even after October 7. Even if Israel killed only Hamas terrorists, and destroyed only weapons caches, and conducted a miraculous operation without harming a single civilian, Israel would still be in the wrong. Indeed, on this view, Israel could escape such condemnation only by accepting violence against its citizens or ceasing to exist — in other words, by forfeiting its most basic obligations as a sovereign nation. It is easy to see why most other Israel-haters would avoid making such an argument outright: When it is that easy to identify, it is easily dismissed as extreme, immoral, and, frankly, impractical.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the National Review (paywall)
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Tal Fortgang is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He was a 2023 Sapir
Fellow.
Photo by MOUNEB TAIM/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images