Israel and the Right to Exist

Summary

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History As It Happens

Episode: Israel and the Right to Exist

Host: Martin Di Caro
Guest: Ian Lustick, emeritus professor, University of Pennsylvania
Date: September 26, 2025

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Overview

This episode of History As It Happens explores the complex and often misunderstood question of "Israel's right to exist." Host Martin Di Caro is joined by political scientist Ian Lustick, who challenges the prevailing discourse and argues that asking whether Israel has a right to exist is a category error. Instead, Lustick suggests we should be questioning the legitimacy of the regime that governs Israel and the future political arrangements for all people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The episode weaves historical context, current political realities, and thoughtful critique, aimed at helping listeners think more historically about contemporary Middle East conflicts.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The "Right to Exist" Question: A Category Error

• Lustick's Central Thesis: The question "Does Israel have a right to exist?" conflates distinctions between state, regime, and government and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of political categories.
  • "Whether the state of Israel has a right to exist is a category error." (12:35, Lustick)
  • Rights are not abstract; they are claims that impose duties on others. No state has an intrinsic "right to exist"—Israel exists, is a UN member, and is protected by international law.
• International Law Perspective: As Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur, argues, "There is not such a thing in international law like a right of a state to exist... What is enshrined in international law is the right of a people to exist." (06:24)

2. State vs. Regime vs. Government

• Key Definitions:
  • State: The continuing legal political entity, recognized internationally.
  • Regime: The legal and ideological order that defines how the state is governed.
  • Government: The current set of officeholders.
  • "We have state, regime, government...kind of nested categories." (14:13, Lustick)
• Change Is Possible: Historical comparison to France and South Africa, both of which maintained continuity as states while changing regimes, underscores that the Israeli state could persist under a different, more democratic regime.

3. The Israeli Regime and Its Crisis of Legitimacy

• Historic and Ongoing Exclusion: Since 1948, Israel’s “Zionist regime” prioritized Jewish supremacy and control over resources while subordinating Palestinians—a project solidified by military occupation post-1967.
  • "The regime may no longer have a right to exist... It is a legal and ideological order based on fronting as a liberal democracy, while dedicated above all to implementing and expanding the presence and success of its Jewish inhabitants." (07:54, paraphrased from Lustick)
• 2018 Basic Law: Cited as an explicit legal move to codify Jewish national rights and prevent political threats from demographically empowered Palestinians.
  • "That’s actually a sign of the weakening of hegemony that that law was passed in 2018." (23:28, Lustick)

4. Historical Roots of the Debate

• Mandate Era to 1948: British partition and the birth of Israel created lasting questions about self-determination and "right to exist".
  • "Arab leaders from surrounding countries argued the partition plan violated the principles of self determination..." (02:18, Di Caro)
• Settler Colonialism and Its Uniqueness: Lustick classifies Israel as a settler colonial state but notes a key difference: unlike settler states such as the US or Australia, Israel did not erase its indigenous population, leaving unresolved questions of coexistence and political rights. (29:41)
• The Iron Wall Strategy: Zionist leaders anticipated and counted on “rejectionist” Arab resistance, with Jabotinsky arguing that "the Arabs will fight for their land, and we would do the same." (33:52)
• Lost Opportunities:
  • The "one shot" at two states was after 1967, which was not taken, locking Israel into an occupation that eroded its democratic and liberal pretensions. (36:01)

5. Labeling and Mislabeling: 'Rejectionism'

• Loaded Terms: "Rejectionism" is a term applied pejoratively to Palestinians, but is simply another word for resistance—French Algerians who resisted French rule now are termed "patriots", not rejectionists. (42:40)
• Internal Israeli Strategy: Right-wing Israeli governments have benefited politically by empowering extremists and marginalizing Palestinian moderates, thus perpetuating the image of a lack of viable negotiating partners. (45:23)

6. Current Political Impasse and Potential Futures

• No Viable Two-State Solution: Physical and political realities now make a two-state solution essentially impossible, according to Lustick.
  • "It's impossible to get a two-state solution... There is no Palestinian regime, no sovereignty, and no government... If you want to ask, which regime is the regime of the Palestinians? It is Israel." (51:23)
• Implications of Political Inclusion: Genuine political participation for Palestinians would transform, but not destroy, the state—just as happened in post-apartheid South Africa, Germany, and the US.

7. Antisemitism and Global Repercussions

• Consequences for Jews Worldwide: The policies of the Israeli state, acting in the name of the Jewish people, fuel a rise in antisemitism globally—a dynamic seen historically with other diasporas and states.
  • "The rise in antisemitism... is almost entirely a function of what a state operating in the name of the Jewish people is doing." (53:45, Lustick)

8. What Now?

• Lustick’s Proposal: Focus on changing the regime, not eradicating the state or demonizing Jewish nationalism. A future with prosperous Jewish and Palestinian communities is possible under a new political arrangement yet to be determined.
  • "My position is that there should be a large, secure, prosperous Jewish community in the land of Israel, in Palestine. What political arrangements...are is an open question now." (53:45, Lustick)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Category Errors:
  • "If you take a triangle that is not a right triangle and treat it as if it’s a right triangle, I will get the completely wrong answer. That’s a category error." – Ian Lustick (12:35)
• On Hegemonic Regimes:
  • "Every regime tries to make itself look like a state. That means people can’t even imagine anything different." – Ian Lustick (15:59)
• On 2018 Basic Law:
  • "If something is natural and expected to be inevitable and permanent, you don’t need to pass laws to enforce it until 2018." – Ian Lustick (23:28)
• On Antisemitism:
  • "The rise in antisemitism which I think exists, is almost entirely a function of what, what a state operating in the name of the Jewish people is doing." – Ian Lustick (53:45)

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Important Timestamps

• [00:49] The modern framing of Israel’s right to exist and the context of current war
• [02:18] UN Partition Plan, Arab opposition, and the origins of the conflict
• [06:24] Francesca Albanese on state vs. people’s right to exist
• [12:35] Ian Lustick explains the "category error" in the right to exist question
• [14:17] Distinctions between state, regime, and government
• [23:28] The 2018 Basic Law and the legal codification of Jewish supremacy
• [29:41] Settler colonialism and the uniqueness of the Israeli case
• [33:52] The origins of "rejectionism" and Zionist expectations
• [42:40] Use and misuse of the term “rejectionism”
• [45:23] Israeli state strategy: empowering extremists, sidelining moderates
• [51:23] Lack of real Palestinian regime/government; Israel as the de facto sovereign
• [53:45] The predictable parallels in history: Germany, South Africa, US, and implications for Israel's future

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Conclusion

This episode challenges listeners to reframe the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian debate using historical perspective and political theory. Lustick’s analysis urges us to understand the difference between states and regimes, see the present Israeli crisis as rooted in historical and ideological choices, and to recognize alternatives beyond entrenched categories. The implication is profoundly unsettling but potentially liberating: political arrangements can and do change, and the future in Israel-Palestine will depend on reimagining what coexistence—and the idea of "legitimacy"—really mean.

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Next Episode Preview:
Genocide and Kleptocracy in Sudan, with guest Alex de Waal.

Transcript

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Terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891 History As It Happens September 26, 2025 Israel and the Right to Exist we are acting to keep alive.

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The possibility of peace and a two state solution. That means a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable Palestinian state.

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So then we can exist, but we can't defend ourselves after people attack us.

[B]

Do you support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state?

[A]

I support Israel's right to exist as a state with equal rights. I believe that every state why not? As a Jew, Israel does exist. Israel is a recognized member of the United Nations. Where does this question come from? What does it mean? As Israel lays waste to Gaza to eliminate Palestinian national aspirations, the world's only Jewish state is at risk of becoming a pariah state. But asking whether it has a right to exist is not the right question, says Ian Lustig. He'll explain next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.

[B]

It is a famine. The Gaza famine. It is a famine that we could have prevented if we had been allowed. The scale of deaths and destruction are beyond any other conflict in my years as Secretary General. The questions that Israel is facing and that people face when they think about Israel and Palestine are different from those they've faced in the past. It's not a question of how to get to a territorial solution of two states so that there can be peace, because that's no longer possible now. The question is what is going to be the fate of the people living between the river and the sea? And that opens up much larger questions. The General assembly of the United nations.

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Has made its decision on Palestine.

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The map shows what partition means.

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The Jewish State Colored Light November 1947 the UN votes to partition the British Mandate of Palestine in the face of Arab opposition. Arab leaders from surrounding countries argued the partition plan violated the principles of self determination enshrined in the UN Charter because it did not grant the Arab majority in Palestine the right to decide their destiny.

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Saudi Arabia? No. Soviet Union? Yes.

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Civil war Ensues Arabs advancing on the center of Jerusalem at the beginning of.

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A three day strike.

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And an orgy of wrecking, looting and bloodshed isolated police. As the historian William Cleveland wrote in A History of the Modern Middle east, the disorder within Palestine was intensified by Britain's refusal to assist in the implementation of the UN partition plan. Britain did not even wait for the General Assembly's vote and immediately announced in September 1947 the Palestine Mandate would be terminated on May 15, 1948. In the months between the announcement and the final British withdrawal, Palestine was plunged into chaos. It was a period of civil war, he says, during which the Jewish forces sought to secure the territory allotted to the Jewish state in the UN resolution. Since most of that territory was still inhabited by an Arab majority, there was quite naturally Arab resistance. However, the scattered Arab bands were no match for the disciplined Haganah forces. And by spring 1948, the major centers of Arab population that fell within the proposed Jewish state were in Jewish control. And the Arab inhabitants, about 400,000 Palestinians had fled. Latest camera records from Palestine show heavy damage in and the Arab city of.

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Jaffa as Haganah troops move up to new positions along the war scarred roads.

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During the course of the civil war, Cleveland says the IRGUN perpetrated one of its most notorious acts. It massacred 250 civilian inhabitants of the village of Dyer Yassin near Jerusalem. News of the massacre spread among the Arab population and contributed to the panic that made so many flee their homes.

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A few pitiful refugees rescue what few belongings they can. There's a rush for the boats. As the bitter strife continues in the.

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Stricken Holy Land, an Arab unit retaliated by ambushing a Jewish medical relief convoy on the outskirts of Jerusalem and killing a number of doctors. Thus did atrocity build upon atrocity in the territory that was still Britain's responsibility. So May 1948, the British exit. The state of Israel is proclaimed by David Ben Gurion. The next day, forces from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq invade.

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But bounded on all sides by hostile Arab states, Israel calls its world's newest nationals to arms. For infant Israel is threatened with brevity and the breaking of a promise that couldn't keep. With Arab invasion imminent, Hagana troops abandon underground activities to train for open war.

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Well, if you're looking for the origins of this question, does Israel have a right to exist? This is a good place to begin. Israel's Arab neighbors did not accept a Zionist state carved from Arab lands. Today, as a genocidal war rages Israel's defenders say the Jewish state is fighting for its survival against an implacable foe, Hamas, which also does not recognize Israel. So this question often leads to TV debates like this one on the Piers Morgan show, where there is more heat than light. If you believe that Israel doesn't have.

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The right of self defense, you are.

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Basically saying that Israel doesn't have the right to exist.

[B]

No, I never. Yes, you do.

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So then we can exist, but we can't defend ourselves after people attack us.

[B]

And let's just go back.

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But in some ways it is a strange question. Here's the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, answering a reporter who asked her if she believes Israel has a right to exist. Israel does exist. Israel is a recognized member of the United Nations. Besides this, there is not such a.

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Thing in international law like a right of a state to exist.

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Does Italy has a right to exist?

[B]

Italy exists now.

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If tomorrow Italy and France want to.

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Merge and become it a France, fine. This is not up to us. What is enshrined in international law is the right of a people to exist.

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So the state is there, the state of Israel is there, is protected as.

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A member of the United Nations. Does this justify the erasure of another and other people? Hell no.

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The political scientist Ian Lustic says this question is a category error. Writing in Foreign Policy, he says the real question, the one that deserves the attention and debate of both Jews and non Jews, is whether the regime in Israel that has ruled the state since its inception has lost its right to exist. Has it, in other words, lost its ability to demand that others respect and defer to the decisions its governments make. The Zionist regime, says Lustig, is a legal and ideological order based on fronting as a liberal democracy, while dedicated above all to implementing and expanding the presence and success of its Jewish inhabitants. From 1948 to 1966, Arab Israeli citizens were ruled by a military government that helped engineer the expropriation of the vast majority of their lands since 1967. Lustig goes on to say the now more than 5 million Palestinian Arabs in the west bank and Gaza Strip have been living under one or another version of military occupation and losing their water and land resources to expropriation by Israel and by Israeli settlers. Unrepresented in the governments that control their movement and their access to the outside world, denied any avenue of political mobilization and systematically immiserated, they are daily exposed to violence from Israeli soldiers and civilians that is at best disruptive and humiliating and at worst genocidal. So again, this is what Ian Lustig means when he argues the regime may no longer have a right to exist. The regime is not the state. There are important distinctions between state regime and the current governing coalition. It may cease existing altogether after the next elections. But again, here's what Lustig means People all over the world may no longer feel it is their duty to accept as legitimate and binding the decisions and policies of governments produced by the Israeli regime. That is the operational meaning of the right of a regiment to exist. So keep that in mind when we speak to Ian Lustic, emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Paradigm from Two State Solution to One State Reality. Our conversation next. But remember, you can skip ads, get access to the entire catalog of 500 episodes instead of only 40 episodes, and get bonus content by going to historyasithappens supercast to subscribe.

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Ian Lustic welcome back.

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It's my pleasure to be here under.

[A]

Distressing circumstances, as has been the case every time you've been on the show. But you're raising really important underlying historical political issues with your latest essay in Foreign Policy, the Question of Israel's right to exist. We hear this term, this question, all the time in debates. I singled out a sentence in your essay. Whether the state of Israel has a right to exist is a category error.

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What is a category error? We all know that the Pythagorean theorem applies to a certain kind of triangle, right angle triangle. If I apply that theorem to a right triangle, I'll get the right answer. But if I take a triangle that is not a right triangle and I treat it as if it's a right triangle, I will get the completely wrong answer. That's a category error. I have treated something as if it's one kind of thing when it's really something else, and so I can't think clearly about it. As a result, I will make errors or absurdities. As a result. The reason I wrote this essay now is because, as you say, the question of Israel's right to exist is intensifying as a result of Israel's transformation toward pariah status in the world. So it's very important to understand what is actually being threatened with non existence when one talks about states. Political science understands this in a more nuanced way than most people. There are different categories that Systems fit into. And when you ask, does a government have a right to exist? You're asking about whether, in the context of a system of laws in a regime, a particular government was legally created. If President Trump tries to remain president after this term, it will not be a government that has a right to exist under the terms of the American constitutional regiment. But a regime is that legal order. It might not have a right to exist either, but that doesn't mean the state that the regime is in doesn't have a right to exist.

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So we have state, regime, government, right.

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Kind of nested categories. And what I'm trying to do in this essay is provide the intellectual equipment that people need to actually say what they really think and to see the options that remain. When you pose the question, does Israel have a right to exist? The questions that Israel is facing and that people face when they think about Israel and Palestine are different from those they've faced in the past. It's not a question of how to get to a territorial solution of two states so that there can be peace, because that's no longer possible now. The question is, what is going to be the fate of the people living between the river and the sea? And that opens up much larger questions.

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Now, the current Israeli government and many ordinary Israeli citizens would say they are fighting a war for the survival of their state. That is not true. Hamas cannot destroy the state of Israel. I think what you're getting at here is this is not about an existential struggle for the state of Israel that was created in 1948. But framing it that way can have a very pernicious effect. I mean, we can all see what's happening in Gaza. The annihilation of the Palestinian national project, you know, the recent recognition of Palestine by some European countries notwithstanding, what's happening on the ground is what matters. So you say here regimes can become evil without contaminating the states within which they operate. Is it possible that the State of Israel and its regime are seen as one? Because the Zionist regime, which, of course, has changed over time, it's the only one the State of Israel has had since 1948. Its purpose was to establish, you know, a Zionist government of Jewish supremacy or domination of the land.

[B]

Okay, let's go back a little bit to what you said about, well, Israelis have the sense that their state is at stake. Why is that? Let's look at the relationship between regime and state. Every regime tries to make itself look like a state. It's not just a regime. We are the only way this country can Be. That's the objective of a regime, to establish itself hegemonically. That means people can't even imagine anything different. So the United States, our founding fathers tried to create a regime in which people couldn't imagine we would be a monarchy. It wouldn't be the United States now, in fact, we could be a monarchy and it would still be the state of the United States. It would just be a royal state instead of a liberal democratic state. But a regime tries to make it seem impossible, absurd. Now, the Zionist project, in the hands of the particular people who produced it and constructed it and created the state in 1948, they created a regime, a particular version of Zionism. They were successful in promoting the idea that this is the only way the state of Israel can be. I've written separately, I've written a long essay on the strange thing that the most common sentence in Israeli political discourse is will the state survive? That's actually the most common way that any article in Israeli press about politics is framed is survival of our state is at stake. And this has been true almost ever since Israel has created. What they actually mean, though is can the regime of Jewish Zionist predominance and control of resources subordinating Palestinians? Can that remain? And what I'm trying to do is explain, you don't have to feel that way. That in fact, breaking down the hegemonic idea that a particular regime is the only way a state can be is part of what the equipment I'm providing can do. Let's look at France. France has had many regimes. The Napoleonic regime, the monarchical regime, the First Republic, the Second Republic, the Third Republic, the Fourth Republic, and now the Fifth Republic. Each one of those regimes promoted itself as if it was what would be France forever. But they've changed quite a bit. And that can be true in Israel, Palestine as well.

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You say here it is therefore proper to ask whether the regime in Israel any longer deserves to exist. What is crucial to note, you say, is that neither asking that question nor coming to a negative conclusion means that one judges Jewish nationalism to be illegitimate or inherently exclusionary. You know, on the other side of this, there are people who do believe Zionism to be illegitimate, that it's a colonialist project from day one. Sometimes I push back on that and say, no, there's more to Zionism than that. It's also a national liberation movement. Each side in this debate, if you want to call it that, or really a conflict, blurs the lines between these distinctions you're making.

[B]

Well, the idea is every national movement, everyone, including the Palestinian national movement, Arab national Movement, German national movement, all have very, very different versions of themselves. And each one of those versions tries to be the only way our nation can be. You've got liberal nationalist versions of Arab nationalism, you've got Islamist versions of Arab nationalism, you've got organic fascist versions of Arab nationalism. And the same thing with Zionism. And so there are binational, non state, idolatry oriented versions of Zionism and Jewish nationalism. In fact, Jewish nationalism includes Bundist Yiddishist movements that involved thinking of the Jewish nation as speaking Yiddish in Europe and having cultural autonomy. There's certainly a vigorous tradition of binationalist Jewish nationalism, meaning Jews look for a home in a country like Palestine where they can exist alongside others with national rights and national recognition. So there are many versions of what any national movement can be. What the Zionist project in Israel, that particular one, did, is to create the image that being oppressive of Arabs being under siege is the only way we can survive, the only way we can be a Jewish national movement where we can be a state. And I'm basically providing the equipment to open up a wedge in that idea so people can say, there's something that I'm revolted by in Israel's behavior that leads me to feel that somehow it doesn't have a right to exist. And I'm saying, well, you can say that it's the regime that doesn't have the right to exist, not the country with all the people in it. And that, I think, is a better place for people to gravitate towards because they can put the focus on what is really the issue, which is this legal and ideological structure that has failed to produce any government capable of making peace.

[A]

Because the sense I get from listening to Israel's defenders in the United States and in Israel itself. Just now, before we connected, I caught a clip of a member of the Knesset on an Israeli TV program saying, the point is to make Gaza one unlivable, uninhabitable. Voluntary migration is the euphemism that is used drive out the inhabitants and also to de facto take over or annex the West Bank. And the sense I get from listening to this type of talk is that you need to have this regime to ensure the survival of the state, the survival and the safety of Jews in their own state amid a sea of hostile neighbors. And I know you're trying to separate those two ideas.

[B]

And what I would say, Martin, you need the regime in order to ensure that this kind of government that speaks this way will continually Be reproduced. That's what you need the regime for. Not to ensure the survival of the people who live there. Because remember, half the people who live in the country are Palestinians. What that regime is necessary for is to make sure that governments like this, that are so distasteful to so many keep getting reproduced. That's why one can ask whether the regime any longer should be considered to have a right to exist now. You could ask. Many people will ask, well, wait a minute. Can there be in Israel anything like what we've thought of Israel as being, which is this place that puts first and foremost the security and rights of Jews, that privileges them? And no, it won't be that. Israel, just like the Germany we have today under the Federal Republic, is not like a Germany that ever could have been imagined before. It's not militarist, it's not aggressive. That's what I mean by a change in regime. The South African regime that we have is not like any South Africa regime that ever existed before. But the country is still the same. Sometimes states disappear. There was no Yugoslavian seat at the un. Okay, but South Africa changed its regime. The South African seat at the UN remained. The Iranians changed the regime from the Pahlavi royal imperial dynasty to the Islamic Republic. The Iranian state Membership in the UN remained Israel, or Israel. Palestine could remain in the un, but it could have a different regime. Of course, that leads to the question of how do you get different regimes? But that's another question.

[A]

So what is the Import of the 2018 Basic Law in this context? Because the Israeli governments have been moving in the opposite direction of the one you're saying they need to move into so we can imagine this different kind of Israeli state.

[B]

So that's a very good question. I said earlier that the point of every regime is to make itself hegemonic. It's a natural way. This is the only way the country can be. You can tell when hegemony is being weakened because people start to worry other versions of this are being imagined. And therefore they have to create legal barriers so that they can protect it. If something is natural and expected to be inevitable and permanent, you don't need to pass laws to enforce it until 2018. And everybody knew that Israel is, you know, you can say it's a democracy, but everybody knows it's really a Jewish state. And that's more important than any democratic or liberal values. But because of the effect of the annexation of the west bank in Gaza, that is because Israel really rules this whole area with half the population Arab in the long run. You can't be sure that just as Arab citizens of Israel inside the Green Line who vote have become politically important and we're part of a relatively moderate government, very, very briefly, that it scares the daylights out of the right wing in Israel, that someday the west bank and Gaza Palestinians could get emancipated and enlisted in Israeli politics, make an alliance with the secular moderates and actually transform the country. So instead of relying on the hegemonic idea that of course that could never happen, this is a Jewish state. They pass a law in 2019 as one of many, many laws that are being passed in order to move toward a South African model where you use laws to explicitly create and enforce a reality, in this case that only Jews have rights to national self determination in this country, that settlement of Jews throughout the country is a national mission, and that Arabic is no longer a national language, an official language of the state. And that in the process of passing this law, you can see just what the agenda was. Because amendments to it that celebrated democracy or said that all citizens were equal were all rejected by the framers and by those who passed the law. So that's actually a sign of the weakening of hegemony that that law was passed in 2018. It's in order to try to look ahead 10, 15 years when Jews will start to advocate for the emancipation of west bank and Gaza Arabs. They'll be able to vote. The right wing does not want them to be able to be citizens in this state. And this is one of the barriers they're erecting. Another barrier, by the way, is to try to get rid of as many as possible. And that's what you were mentioning before, through creating Gaza as uninhabitable and turning most of the west bank into a free fire zone.

[A]

I want to dive into the historical origins of the right to exist question. But, you know, your comment there raised an issue in my mind. I want you to help me understand this. On the one hand, some Israeli defenders say the allegations against Israel, that it's an apartheid state, or that it's committing war crimes in Gaza, or that's propaganda. Those are smears. It's anti Semitism, it's Hamas propaganda, et cetera. But then we look at this 2018 Basic Law, or we can listen to what Israeli government leaders say their intent is in Gaza and the west bank, and we can of course, watch the behavior with our own eyes. It's being live streamed every day. So there's a disconnect there.

[B]

Sure. There's a disconnect.

[A]

Yeah. I say, I'm not repeating Hamas propaganda. I'm repeating what I heard an Israeli government official say.

[B]

You know, the South Africans, when they were isolated from the world, if you read South African propaganda, it was, the entire world is crazy. We're the only ones that understand that we're fighting for Western civilization to defeat the Communists. And we're the only ones that understand. If you watch Israeli television or listen to Israeli media, almost all of it, not all of it, but almost all of it. There's a kind of hypnotic trance that most Israelis are in who accept the government line. It seems like the entire world is crazy or anti Semitic. And only Israelis realize the obvious truth that they're not doing anything wrong. They're just fighting for their survival. You know, the Germans had propaganda, the Russians have propaganda, the Chinese, and they all say the same thing. That's not unusual, that there would be a tremendous gap between a state that is operating in a way that relies entirely on violence with no real political agenda, and what it says it's doing. There's a tremendous gap. What makes it so painful for I'm Jewish. It makes it very painful to see a state that declares it's operating in the name of Jews doing what these kinds of distasteful regimes have been doing throughout history. And since we are in a culture where we have friends, we have whole communities of Jews and evangelicals for that, unused to being able to think of themselves as part of a community that's doing things that are really, really bad, even evil, it's very hard for them to readjust their thinking and see they can still honor themselves as Jews. They can still think of Jewish nationalism as a positive thing without embracing this particular version of Zionism that we see operating in Israel.

[A]

So historically here. I remember the first time you were on my show, Ian, we did an episode about the year 1948. This was shortly after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. And we wound up starting, really in the British Mandate period in the Balfour Declaration. So my next question is the origins of the right to exist and this idea of Palestinian or Arab rejectionism. We have to go back to the Mandate period. Right. For instance, the 1921 Haycraft Commission of Inquiry. This was one of many British reports that came down during the Mandate period that tried to get to the. The bottom of why the Arabs of Palestine were resisting Zionist immigration or Zionist takeover of Palestinian or Arab land. So is that the right place to start? And what do you make of this term Palestinian Rejectionism.

[B]

Let's start with the idea of settler colonialism, which you mentioned earlier. Delegitimizing Israel by calling it as a settler colonial state. Well, it is a settler colonial state, but that doesn't delegitimize it because so many states, including the United States, are settler colonial states. The difference between Israel and other settler colonial states, the main important difference, is that Israel did not annihilate or render demographically and politically irrelevant its aboriginal population. Like the United States did, like Canada did, like Australia did, like New Zealand mostly did, like the South American states did, some that didn't do that. And that means they're left with a problem that other settler colonial states didn't have. I mean, imagine if there were 350 million Indians, that is Native Americans in Mexico and Canada, who yearn to return to their ancestral homes inside of the United States. American history would have been quite different, and we might not even be in the same country. Let's also have to talk about the meaning of a right to exist, a meaning even of right. People don't often think about what they mean when they say, I have a right to this. But it's very important to understand that when you say I have a right to this, what you're really saying is that everyone else has a duty to defer to what I want. In this domain, my rights mean your duties. For example, when a child says to an older sibling, you can't use that toy. It's mine, what do they mean by that? The other sibling can just take it. But if they say, it's mine, that means I have a right to it. You have a duty not to use your strength to take it from me. If that child has a right to it, it's because the other child feels that he has a duty. If you don't have that feeling of duty, there is no right. So what generates that feeling of duty in others? To recognize that something exists, even though the power exists to destroy it. The only thing that produces that is not a formula. It's not who was there first or how many people you have, or how well you use the land. It's a natural belief that nobody questions. If nobody questions it, if there's a hegemonic belief that that's yours, that's the best right you have to it. That's the only way you can generate right now. When Israel came into existence by the skin of imperialism's teeth at the very last minute, when it could have is it created a situation where it's inevitable that People would challenge its right to exist because actually under Wilsonian self determination principles, all the peoples in the Ottoman Empire were supposed to have an equal right to self determination and the Palestinians were obviously discriminated against. In fact, the findings of the Wilsonian, the King Crane Commission that went to find out what did the people in the Ottoman Empire want in Syria and Palestine, those findings were repressed. They weren't allowed to to be presented to the Versailles Conference because they said they reject Zionism and they want a Syrian state or a Palestinian state. So then it was up to Israel to figure out a way, despite the difficult circumstances of its birth, to create a hegemonic idea in the Middle east that it had a right to exist. What is bizarre in this case is that it actually had an opportunity to do it. That's what the two state solution was. That's what the proposal of all the Arab states, that if Israel would withdraw to the 67 borders and accept the existence of a Palestinian state, they would accept the idea of Israel existing and it would be over. But Israel didn't do that for reasons that we can go into another.

[A]

Yeah, this is the post1967 going back though, if you don't mind, to the mandate and then 1948, the 1947 partition vote in the U.N. it is often said, well, the Arabs had a chance. The Arabs did boycott the vote in the un. And then we know of course was it five Arab states invaded to try to squash the Israeli state in the crib, if you will. So I see this cited to this day, that there was an opportunity for something here in 47 and the Palestinians or the Arabs rejected Israel's right to exist.

[B]

They did. And they did exactly what the Zionist movement expected and believed. That from a Zionist point of view, that's exactly what Jews would have done had they been in the place of the Palestinian Arabs. In the 1920s, the leaders of the Zionist movement, both on the right side and the left side, came to the conclusion that actually they had nothing to offer the Arabs of Palestine that the Arabs of Palestine could ever accept. Therefore negotiating with them at that time didn't make any sense. They proposed instead the strategy was the Arabs will do what any, and I'm quoting Jabotinsky here, what any native people will do, any aboriginal people, whether the tribes of the Sioux or anyone else, they will fight for their land. And we can't expect anything different. We would do the same. They're a normal people. So how do you eventually get to the peace that the Zionist Leaders thought in the end was necessary. The only way to do it is to build an iron wall so strong that every time the Arabs would attack, they would get defeated painfully, over and over and over again. And eventually, eventually the argument was the Arab world would split into extremists and moderates. The moderates would say Zionism is not just, but we'll take half a loaf and we'll live with it. The idea would be that Zionism would make an alliance with the moderates, isolate the extremists and create peace. What happened was that over time, Israel did defeat the Arabs painfully, over and over again. And the Arabs did split and the moderates emerged and asked for negotiations for a two state solution. But in the meantime, the Jews did what a normal people did, which was to expand their demands. We no longer want an equal relationship. We want to dominate the whole of our land, land of Israel, which, whose borders we aren't even going to define because they're so large. So that was one of the key reasons why the one chance that this settler colony had to actually make itself permanent and accepted was blown. There are other reasons, but that was, I would say, the main one.

[A]

So you're referring to 67 instead of occupying the lands that were taken in the 67 Six Day War in June, that Israel should have pulled back after the war ended.

[B]

And many Israeli intellectuals and far seeing analysts said that right away that the occupation would destroy the idea of a liberal democratic Jewish state. Whether it was really liberal democratic at that time is another question, but would really destroy the possibility of some kind of liberal Zionism. And they were absolutely right. My point is that it's almost a superhuman expectation that any state would not see its political agenda expand under the circumstances of fighting an enemy and suffering casualties and then winning all the time. So the argument that why should we give them at the negotiating table what they can't get at the battlefield just keeps winning arguments.

[A]

What role does Greater Israel ideology play in what you just said there? Especially today when you look at the people in the Netanyahu coalition on the far right, in their view, this land belongs to them, period. Right. The Bible says so that's it.

[B]

Well, remember when I said that every national movement has different versions of itself? In the 1950s and 60s, David Ben Gurion, who was the first prime minister and the leader of the Zionist movement, he thought that the main enemy that he had was the right wing Zionist under Begin, who was the godfather of the currently coup government. Netanyahu can trace back right to Begin and Jabotinsky Ben Gurion thought that they were his main enemy. He actually called Begin a Hitlerite leader.

[A]

Wow. I did not know that he called Menachem Begin a Hitlerite leader.

[B]

Wow. So his strategy was to say, look, we have a state, it's small, I created it, and we can honor its borders as the important achievement of Zionism, and to look at the west bank as stony ground, foreign territory, things that we don't want. Okay? And he actually rejected a proposal at the end of the 1948 war by his top general that would have conquered the entire West Bank. He thought that if the issue of the territories, if the issue of the whole land of Israel was on the agenda, that the right wing, his right wing competitors would have an advantage. So if they closed off that issue, if they said that the issue of boundaries is closed, this is Israel and this is the Jewish state period. Then Begin and his followers would not have the grounds to be able to win elections after the Six Day War. The unintended consequence of that victory and not getting out of the territories quickly was that the right wing could resurrect the issue of, see, we really, the Jews, are here to liberate all, all the land of Israel, settle it all, and bring the Messiah. As a result, all those ideas which had been almost vanished within Israel in the 1960s, late 50s, now returned and given American unconditional support. And given what I call the Holocaustia political culture, those ideas became the ideas that winning politicians could use. And that has shaped the Israeli political trajectory since then.

[A]

Well, speaking of begin, during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Reagan got on the phone with Begin. This was when Israel was laying siege to West Beirut. Reagan told Begin, you're committing a holocaust there, which Begin did not appreciate because he had lost family members in the Holocaust. Your comment about what Ben Gurion said brought that anecdote to mind.

[B]

Israel must have learned that there is no way it can impose its own solutions on how hatreds as deep and.

[A]

Bitter as those that produce this tragedy.

[B]

If it seeks to do so, it will only sink more deeply into the quagmire that looms before it. There's another part of that conversation with Reagan that we should mention for our listeners. And that is that what Begin said the opposite. He said, no, it's Arafat. I'm after Arafat. He's like Hitler in his bunker. The idea of seeing all of Israel's conflicts, all of Israel's objectives, all of Israel's struggles as just a renewed struggle with Nazis is something that Begin gave to Israeli political culture. That's still there. All Gentiles are almost somehow latent Nazis. And it's very, very difficult politically for winning politicians to say we should trust Gentiles, we should trust Palestinians, we're going to make peace with them. Because this idea that the world is fundamentally anti Semitic in a potentially Nazi way has gripped Israeli political culture since.

[A]

The late 70s when Netanyahu was doing English language interviews in the American Press. After October 7th, he brought up the Nazi analogy quite a bit. The Hamas are the new Nazis. So imagine now the Allies are fighting the Nazis.

[B]

They've invaded France after they were attacked by the Nazis. They go into the cities of Germany.

[A]

Obviously the Nazis are fighting within civilian quarters and civilians get killed.

[B]

In fact, many of them were killed. Millions were killed.

[A]

Who do you protest against?

[B]

Protest against the Nazis, or do you protest against the Allies?

[A]

History, as it happens, continues. You know, back to the history here, Ian. So I mentioned before the Haycraft Commission of Inquiry, 1921, it actually dismissed the idea that anti Semitism, to your point, was the driving force behind Arab resistance to the Zionist settlers. Instead, it pointed to the Zionist takeover, potential takeover of Palestine, as the basis for Arab reactions. But this is where the historical origins or the notion of Palestinian rejectionism takes root. Now, the reasons, maybe they were legitimate or not, depending on which side of this issue you lie on. But after 1948 and then with the rise of the PLO and Yasser Arafat, that was also Palestinian rejectionism, was it not? For a couple of decades there, from bases in Egypt, then Jordan, then Lebanon, until the PLO was exiled, Arafat's movement was trying to reclaim all of Israel, did not recognize Israel's right to exist as a state through armed resistance and terrorism. It was in 1988, finally, when the Palestinians recognized Israel's right to exist, which is about 40 years ago, yet we still hear this today, that the Palestinians are rejectionists. I suppose that's true when it comes to Hamas, but it seems like that's an inaccurate generalization.

[B]

Well, first of all, it's a loaded term. You could look at it another way. France took over Algeria in the early 19th century. Repeatedly there were outbreaks of revolts by the Muslims there against French rule. Over and over again. In the 1950s, there's another one. The FLN rose up. And you could call these Arabs who kept revolting against France rejectionists. They were rejecting French rule. Now, you could also say that the French never extended opportunities for equality to them. Had they done that, maybe they wouldn't have rejected. But yes, they were rejecting, rejecting, rejecting, until finally they threw the French out of Algeria. So we don't call them rejectionists because in the end they succeeded. We call them Algerian patriots. Rejectionism is just a word that's used to give a bad connotation. If it was on our side, we would think of as perseverance, heroic resistance, resilience, never willing to give up, and so on. So I don't really take that label very importantly. But I do want to mention that the word came into being in the early 1970s. How did it come into being? It came into being because there was a division among Palestinians and in the Arab world between what was called the acceptance front and the rejection front. The acceptance front were those groups, including Fatah and Jordan and Egypt, who were willing to accept the idea of there being in Israel a Jewish state. But only in the 1949 Armistice nines they were going to accept it. The rejectionists said, no, we are going to continue to fight for what we think is just, which is Arab rule over the whole country. Now, that split is what the Zionists always wanted to see between extremists and moderates. And the idea was always that the Jews would then reach out and negotiate with the moderates. But as I pointed out, political changes inside the Israeli community led them to instead say, oh, those moderates are lying. They're just wanting to destroy our country in phases. We don't believe them, so we have to keep fighting and to keep what we have conquered. That's where the term rejectionist came into use.

[A]

That's interesting. Well, the opposite has been true recently. Netanyahu rejected the moderates and was negotiating with the extremists, sidelining, marginalizing the Palestinian Authority, which has accepted Israel's right to exist for decades now. Was the PLO announced the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas, who is ruling like a dictator himself. Hasn't been an election in 20 years, but not to get into that at the moment, but yeah, Netanyahu to split the Palestinian leadership.

[B]

Insiders know that the typical strategy of Israeli governments, particularly on the right, is precisely that the main enemies are the moderates. If you look at who was deported from the west bank in the 1970s and 80s, they were the moderates, mayors, the people who wanted to negotiate. And the idea of trying to get the Arabs to reject an offer to make it look like they're the ones who are doing the rejecting. You do that by focusing on the extremists and ignoring the moderates. That's the opposite of what the Iron Wall strategy was supposed to do, but it's politically natural thing to do.

[A]

Even within Hamas or what's left of Hamas today, there are factions, aren't there, who would say we'll accept Israel or we'll call a truce provided Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders.

[B]

Right? Right. So just as was true, as I've said, is true of every national movement, it was also true of the Islamist movement in Palestine. Could have taken many, many forms. In fact, I mentioned that there was an Arab political party inside Israel who was actually in the government. The leader of that party was an Islamist trained in the same schools as Hamas. There's no real ideological difference among them. But Hamas, those people have very different ways of being. The ones that survived the all out assault are the most extreme. The people that you wouldn't want to deal with ever. And they're the ones who led this attack on October 7th. We have to remember that Hamas was originally the Islamist movement was subsidized by and protected by the Israeli government because they saw it as a useful tool against the plo. Netanyahu was Hamas in a way, biggest supplier for the last decade or so. By keeping Hamas in power and in Gaza, he could have an excuse why not to negotiate with the Palestinians. Because it was a division between the PA in West bank and Hamas in Gaza. So how could you negotiate with them when they didn't even know who they were? That entailed Netanyahu rejecting a series of agreements between Hamas and the PA that would have produced a united delegation. So it's just a constant desire to privilege the extremists.

[A]

Well, in the 1980s, around the time of the first intifada. 87, 88. That is when the PLO did recognize Israel. Right.

[B]

By the 19 mid-70s, it was very obvious that the PLO, the main part of it, was willing to deal with Israel and accept Israel's existence on the basis of a two state solution, but different formulas. Changing the charter, announcing that it was renouncing terrorism, formally abiding by American demands. These were stretched out through 1988, but it was very apparent in the late 70s already that that was true.

[A]

Yeah, I mentioned that because. Because at the same time Israel had to change its laws to even allow its officials to speak to the plo. Has any Israeli government, and we've been talking about state regime, government, has any Israeli government since 1948 believed a Palestinian state has a right to exist?

[B]

That's a good question. I would say that the labor led governments in the 1990s had elements within them that favored that. People like Yossi Bailin and the Shimon Peres government negotiating in 1994. Government. They really did want that. I think that even in the Oslo period, Rabin was torn about it. I think toward the end of his life he was starting to accept the idea that there would be. But what he thought of as a Palestinian state was not what most Palestinians thought of as a Palestinian state. But I think Shimon Peres had definitely come around to that idea. But you never had a government that officially and genuinely accepted it. Now, it's true that Netanyahu at one point used a formula in which he said that in principle he would accept it, but with all these restrictions that made it impossible.

[A]

That's the only time in his career where he leaned in that direction. He just recently said, there will never be a Palestinian state. And the deal that Arafat did not go along with in 2000, Camp David with Ehud Barak. Ehud Barak, thank you. That was not a Palestinian state either. But you see, that issue keeps coming up. Today. Even people will say, oh, the Palestinians had their opportunity in 2000 and they turned it down.

[B]

Instead of going into the details of Camp David, which we could do, let's look at this question that keeps bothering you and bothering someone. Wait a minute, this. Didn't the Palestinians have their chance? They missed it. They could have had something, so it's their fault. That whole argument is kind of silly if you think about it, because the world we're in doesn't matter. The world we're in, whether it was because Israel was intransigent or the Arabs weren't accommodating enough. Whatever the reason, we are now in a certain situation, and that situation is one country non democratic, from the river to the sea. What are you going to do now? It doesn't matter, okay? You still got 7 million Palestinians living between the river and the sea and 7 million Jews. So what are you going to do?

[A]

And it's not clear that that deal would have survived anyway because of the outstanding issues, Jerusalem, refugees, et cetera, that never had been really handled in the decade of the Oslo process. My final question to you, Ayan, is can we even make a distinction today on the Palestinian side between state, regime, government? The Palestinian state has been recognized by many countries, not just recently, going back decades, but it exists more in theory than in reality. Palestinian regime, I mean, the Palestinian Authority is not a very effective government, if you want to call that a regime or not. Or maybe the current government under Mahmoud Abbas I don't know. I'm struggling to see these distinctions on that side.

[B]

It's all smoke. It's all smoke, all the talk. I mean, I'd like to see France and Canada talking about recognizing a Palestinian state, but it's a metaphysical statement. It's a way of doing something Israel doesn't like and maybe getting Netanyahu to give more food to the Gazans. It has the same intellectual and political weight as members of Congress who for decades ignored the fact that a two state solution was crucial. If you're going to protect Israel and Apollo now say, oh, we were all for a two state solution, don't blame us. They say it because it's a safe political harbor. They feel they won't be criticized by the Israel lobby or others because after they're taking a sophisticated position. But it's impossible to get a two state solution. So there's nothing to do for it. There's no cost to be paid for saying that. What is really the question is, and there is no Palestinian state in the sense there's no Palestinian membership in the un, okay. There is no Palestinian regime, no system of legal or ideological order that reproduces governments over time. And there's no sovereignty and there's no government. Certainly in Gaza Strip there isn't. And in the west bank there's no Palestinian entity that you can go to to solve problems or adjudicate, basically an arm of the Israeli security services. So if you want to ask which, which regime is the regime of the Palestinians? It is Israel. They are living in a non democratic regime. That's their regime. The struggle is to change that regime. And possibly one way to do it is in the long run, including their political participation in the regime that will then change it. That's how the American system has changed from slavery to a black president. In Britain, for example, it took 120 years to integrate Irish Catholics into the political system and then see half of IRA lncc. There are a lot of changes that can take place.

[A]

This takes us back to the very first issue we raised here and that is if Arabs were allowed political participation in the system, just as Israeli Jews are allowed, well then we don't have the state of Israel anymore. That's the argument. I'm not saying I agree with it. Then we cannot have the state or the regime that we knew.

[B]

And that's right. We don't have the Germany we used to have. We don't have the South Africa we used to have. We don't have the America we used to have and we won't have the Israel we used to have. But that's not. What I'm trying to say is that's not a bad thing. This regime is not only bad for Arabs, it's bad for Jews. The rise in antisemitism which I think exists, is almost entirely a function of what, what a state operating in the name of the Jewish people is doing. If you ask what caused the outbreak of anti Japanese sentiment in the United States that led to the incarceration of 100,000 Japanese Americans, it was what the Japanese state was doing in the name of the Japanese people. It wasn't anything that the Japanese in the United States did. So it's perfectly natural, unfortunately for when a state does something in the name of a people, that people is going to get punished, that that state is operating in a barbarous way. And it is. So when we look forward to the future, what we have to think about is and what we can most productively think about. And it's not what all Palestinians are thinking about. Many Palestinians do think there should be no state there and no political community with Jews in it. That's not a position that I think is useful. I don't identify with it and so on. My position is that there should be a large, secure, prosperous Jewish community in the land of Israel, in Palestine. What the political arrangements that make that possible are is an open question now. And that's the question that needs to be answered by future generations. Just so this bold new venture today, this brave gamble that the future can be better than the past must endure. Two years ago in Madrid, another president took a major step on the road to peace by bringing Israel and all her neighbors together to launch direct negotiations. And today we also express our deep thanks for the skillful leadership of President George Bush. Ever since Harry Truman first recognized Israel, every American president, Democrat and Republican, has worked for peace between Israel and her neighbors. Now the efforts of all who have labored before us bring us to this moment, a moment when we dare to pledge what for so long seemed difficult to even to imagine, that the security of the Israeli people will be reconciled with the hopes of the Palestinian people. And there will be more security and more hope for all.

[A]

On the next episode of history as it genocide and kleptocracy in Sudan. Our guest will be Alec of all, one of the foremost experts in the world on what's happening in Sudan, its third major civil war since independence. That is next. As we report history as it happens, make sure you sign up for my newsletter. It is free. Go to Substack and search for history. As it happens. Marketing is hard. But I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now, and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads, go to libsynads. Com. That's L, I B S Y N Ads. Com. Today.