Post

Pawel Swidlicki
@pswidlicki.bsky.social

The whole 'does Israel have a right to exist?' is such a red herring. It makes no sense to say 'no state has a right to exist' (even if that is a coherent position in the abstract) if you're then going to pivot to 'but there should be a Palestinian state'.

Pawel Swidlicki
@pswidlicki.bsky.social

Not for the first time I'm left wondering why others don't just copy/paste Mamdani's answer on this which is a good one 'yes, as a state with equal rights' as it refocuses the debate onto more favourable ground (denial of said rights) while leaving open question of whether that's one state or two.

2 reposts20 likes

Marios Richards
@mariosrichards.bsky.social

Every now and then I see people trying to argue that <someone else> must specify a two state solution on the basis "that it's only realistic option". Bit bleak, but I think that's clearly long *long* out of date - at this point, they are both within noise of each other on unrealism.

Pete Marchetto
@petemarchetto.bsky.social

I gather this rather foolish 'gotcha' question has been big in the USA for a long time now, and I've seen a few Americans ask how it's now part of the British discourse, given it was quashed in the USA a while back. Nations have conditional rights for their existence, and the condition is the...

Pete Marchetto
@petemarchetto.bsky.social

... consent of its citizenry, those over whom it holds sway and, moreover, that right does not extend beyond its internationally accepted borders, whatever the feeling of the citizens. To say 'Nations do not have the right to exist' is a potentially covert threat to their existence. However, to...

Marios Richards
@mariosrichards.bsky.social

Is worse than wrong - it's simultaneously 'saying nothing clear' ("ah, but you see, what *would it mean* for a state to have a right to exist?") and 'saying something that can be understood to be condoning ethnic cleansing' ("how dare you react to my words and not the thoughts in my head!").