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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/12/renouncing-israel-on-principle/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/12/renouncing-israel-on-principle/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Renouncing Israel on Principle</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/spere5astasp6fr/"
rel="nofollow">Steven Salaita</a> - December 12, 2019</span></div>
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<p>When anti-Zionists discuss the Middle East, the topic
of Israel’s existence rarely arises. It’s almost
exclusively a pro-Israel talking point. We’re focused on
national liberation, on surviving repression, on
strategies of resistance, on recovering subjugated
histories, on the complex (and sometimes touchy)
relationships among an Indigenous population
disaggregated by decades of aggression. That a colonial
state—or any state, really—possesses no ontological
rights is an unspoken assumption.</p>
<p>“Do you recognize Israel’s right to exist?” pretends to
honor the downtrodden, but it is an altogether different
proposition, transforming sophisticated ideas of
liberation into a crude test of political
respectability. Prioritizing the state as worthy of
relief, as something to which we automatically owe
deference, subsumes life to the imperatives of capital.</p>
<p>The fundamental goal of the question is to attribute a
sinister position to dissidents. It accomplishes that
goal even when the dissidents haven’t promoted
destruction. Mere defense of Palestinian life is enough
to evoke the settler’s existential fear. For people
socialized into orthodoxy, Israel is synonymous with
progress, technology, and production. Affirming its
existence is an endorsement of the status quo; no matter
how ludicrous as a moral premise, in capitalist spaces
it is a perfectly sensible demand.</p>
<p>There are plenty of reasons to eschew the demand. The
first reason is practical: we don’t advocate for the
destruction of human communities, but of ideologies
conducive to racism and inequality. It’s both insidious
and unethical to conflate Jewish people (of any national
origin) with the existence of a violent, rapacious
polity. That sort of conflation is a grave disservice
to activists and intellectuals devoted to a better
world—and to the communities for whom a better world is
a necessity of survival. Nobody has ever asked me to
affirm another nation-state’s existence, a demand I
would likewise decline. Zionists constantly single out
Israel for special treatment.</p>
<p>Moreover, it is remarkably impudent for champions of a
state founded on the destruction of Palestine and now in
its eighth decade of ethnic cleansing to ask the victims
of its malevolence for recognition. Even worse,
recognition is only the tip of the demand. We’re also
being asked to legitimize apartheid and ignore the
routine commission of war crimes. The upshot is to
validate Israel as a militarized object of Western
imperialism—in other words, to affirm the existence of a
deeply antihuman entity.</p>
<p>Let’s consider the demand in context of North America,
where it’s most frequently issued. Those of us
operating in this geography haven’t the authority to
abdicate nearly 80 (and arguably 100) percent of
historical Palestine. It’s not any Westerner’s
prerogative to relinquish Palestine under the pressure
of a spuriously humanistic insistence by Zionists that
their perfidy be excused because it will somehow make us
more responsible citizens.</p>
<p>I am happy, eager even, to affirm the right of Jewish
people to live in peace and security, wherever that may
be, a right all humans deserve in no particular order of
worthiness. But I won’t ratify Israel’s bloody founding
or its devotion to racial supremacy. Ultimately, when
Zionists demand that you affirm Israel’s right to exist,
what they really seek is affirmation of Palestinian
nonexistence.</p>
<p>Beyond these philosophical, political, and practical
factors, there’s a worthy psychological reason to refuse
the demand. Zionists are the bully in this supposed
conflict and enjoy nearly universal support in centers
of political and economic power. They have more funds,
access to corporate media, and the backing of the US
military. Palestinians, however, hold one form of power
that doesn’t require money, platforms, or weaponry: the
ability to withhold legitimacy from Israel. It is a
small power, without a material apparatus, but it is
power, nevertheless, one that only a fool or opportunist
would relinquish. When an oppressor makes submission
the basis of civic responsibility, insolence is the only
dignified response.</p>
<p><em>This essay first appeared on Steven Salaita’s
website: <a href="https://stevesalaita.com/">No
Flags, No Slogans</a>.</em></p>
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