SHOSHANA BRYEN: Israel Has Rights Beyond The ‘Right To Exist’

NY mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani told listeners of the first mayoral debate, “I believe Israel has a right to exist” — but, according to the NY Post, when the moderator prompted, “as a Jewish state?” he replied merely, “as a state with equal rights.”

Friends of Israel got angry over the wrong part of the answer.

Mamdani wants Israel to be a state with equal rights. And Israel is one, so we’re good. And he doesn’t want it called a “Jewish State.” OK, but although the majority of Israelis are Jewish, Israel has no state religion. Mamdani, by the way, appears to have no similar problem with the twenty-three countries that have Islam as their state religion. So, he’s ill-informed, which is a different problem.

But more worrisome in fact is his casual agreement that Israel has “a right to exist,” which he, and many others, including Jews, believe is the standard for not being an anti-Israel bigot.

That isn’t even a low bar; it is an insult to the international mechanism by which Israel became a state and lives today as a democratic, free, multicultural, multireligious country in which the 20% of Israelis who are not Jewish have full civic and religious rights.

Israel was established by a U.N. mechanism for post-colonial independence in areas that came under League of Nations control in the aftermath of World War I, when it was determined that the Ottoman Empire had no right to exist, having chosen the wrong side of the war. Just because the Arab states of the time didn’t agree with the League and the U.N.’s decision on Palestine didn’t make the British Mandate or the later State of Israel less legitimate in its modern origins.

What about the other countries of the post-Ottoman era? Iraq or Jordan, say, both created out of whole cloth. What about Lebanon or Syria, both former French colonies? From 1945-1960, post-colonial Africa and Asia saw more than 30 new countries emerge. Today, the U.N. brags that since its founding, “80 former colonies have gained their independence.”

It is true that some people in some places don’t want those countries to exist — there’s a lot of turmoil out there — but in no case do these states feel the need to say, “I have a right to exist.”

Israel should insist on the rights the U.N. gave it, as it gave rights to other states. U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 181 defines in great detail the protected status of Jerusalem and defines in great detail the democratic nature of the Palestinian Arab state that was supposed to emerge.

True, UNGA resolutions have no actual force. This may be why Arab violations of the resolution, including the desecration of Jewish patrimony on the eastern side of the city, were entirely ignored. Or it may not be the reason.

So, try U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 of Nov. 1967, following the Six-Day War, when the U.N. rightly understood Israel’s Arab enemies as the aggressors.

The preamble refers to the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East in which every State in the area can live in security.”

Acquiring territory by aggressive war is not, in international law, the same as acquiring it in defense. And security is security, not the permanent threat of indiscriminate rocket fire, rape, torture or kidnapping.

The resolution “affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, which should include the application of both the following principles:

“(i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

The “recent conflict” is now 58 years in the past. Israel withdrew from more than 90% of the territory by returning the Sinai to Egypt under the terms of a peace treaty. Gaza was specifically excluded by Egypt. Jordan rejected the return of Judea and Samaria under the terms of the Jordan-Israel treaty. Syria rejects any conversation about peace, treaties or the future of the Golan Heights.

And then, the crux of the matter:

“(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”

This is precisely the position the Abraham Accords countries have taken. It is far from a wobbly “right to exist” at the sufferance of others. Israel’s life is not an “are not!” vs “am too!” argument with regional bullies or meddling superpowers.

Israel has rights well beyond the “right to exist.”

Friends of Israel should demand that the U.N. Security Council put its muscle—such as it is—in service of the resolution it passed in 1967. The U.S. government should notify states or parties that do not accept the resolution that American political and military support will not be forthcoming the way it has been—take note, Jordan and Qatar. The U.S. should notify the Palestinian leadership as well. The fact that there was none in 1967 doesn’t change the requirement to terminate its claims and state of belligerency. It is the only way forward for them. Friends of Israel should demand that Congress adopt the language of the resolution as American policy.

And Mandani should be asked whether he supports UNSCR 242 and, if not, why not?

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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