The notion of a Jewish right to self-determination, understood as the right of Jews to have ‘their own’ state, i.e. one created and run primarily for the benefit of Jews, is one of the props proponents of Zionism deploy to justify the existence a state of Israel – hence, the ‘right’ of Israel to exist. The notion is founded on the misuse of the idea of ‘rights’ which, in broad terms, adhere to people, not to political constructs, such as states.
The claimed ‘right’ is a false construct, an entirely fallacious proposition, and necessarily racist, this for the straightforward reason that a specifically Jewish state requires, as an indispensable condition of its own existence, the reduction and/or removal of the pre-existing, indigenous Palestinian population, and the usurpation of their land.
It is foundational for the Zionist state that it cannot fulfil itself as a Jewish state except by culling the Palestinian population to as near to nil as it is possible to achieve.
We see how the need to fulfil this indispensable condition – the removal of as many Palestinians as possible – goes to the question of whether Israel had and has genocidal ‘intent’ when laying waste to Gaza, now extending its reign of terror and displacement to the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Article two of the Genocide Convention defines genocide as involving ‘specific acts committed with intent [my emphasis] to destroy a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, such as killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, inflicting destructive living conditions, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children.’
Given that removing, or radically reducing, the indigenous population of Palestine constitutes the sine qua non, the indispensable condition, enabling Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, this points to Israel’s will and necessity – its intent – to commit genocide. This logically locked into the very being and rationale of the Israeli state.
That Israel is a Jewish supremacist state is codified in its Basic Law. Two clauses affirm:
‘The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people’
‘The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.’
The settlements are on stolen Palestinian land and are exclusively for Jews.
State self-determination
There are examples of new states being formed. Some arise from the collapse of empires, others by self-determined splitting. The Czech Republic and Slovakia are examples of two independent states formed as a consequence of the voluntary break-up of a previously united Czechoslovakia. But in these cases, and others, the populations of the new entities were historically of that place. The newly formed states were of the indigenous people, and not the result of strangers coming from afar to colonise land not there’s. As is the case with Israel.
Non-state self-determination
From a different perspective, it is wrong to limit the idea of self-determination as referring exclusively to state formation – the right of a particular people to form their own state. Self-determination of people, of groups, of nations, of communities can exist and flourish within existing state boarders, for example, the Sami Parliament in Norway, Sweden, and Finland, which gives the indigenous Sami people a voice in cultural and regional governance.
The notion, then, of a Jewish right to a specifically state-orientated form of self-determination is simply a category error. There is no such right for any state. This is quite distinct from the right of people to exist and flourish simply by virtue of being human. The rationale for this position is well set out by Craig Mokhiber here [1].
Palestinian right to self-determination
In contrast to the purported but unjustified assumption of a Jewish right to a a state stands the rooted right and necessity of Palestinian self-determination. In contrast to the Israeli state, an artificial entity founded by European, Ashkenazi secular settler-colonists, Palestinian’s right to self-determination emanates from their historical and contemporary presence on their land over countless generations. This in stark contrast to the Jewish-European project of usurpation of what for the colonisers was foreign land. Recognising this, illuminates at least one aspect of the moral argument against the fantasy project known as the two-state solution. The ‘solution’ requires that Palestinians accept the meagre gruel of some 22% of the land that is rightfully theirs.
That ‘solution’ is in any case wildly impractical, over and above that Jewish settlers have consumed vast acreages of Palestinian land. Is it really to be conceived that younger generations of Palestinians will accept the two-state fantasy of being corralled within perhaps 22% of the land between the river and the sea? And that Israel will sit quietly next to a Palestinian state and not flex its muscles when it decides that some infringement to it interests has occurred?
Under any two-state dispensation, a still Jewish supremacist state will dominate the region. It will, no doubt, continue to discriminate against its 20% or so Palestinian Israeli citizens, this required by virtue of its founding ideology and its Basic Law highlighted above
What next?
Israel is stuck. It has no vision of a future that sees beyond its apparent capacity to disrupt the region at will. Violence is its universal panacea for the ills that it believes afflict it. Killing and maiming its native language. It lives by the sword, and all the indications are that it cannot release itself from this mode of existence.
It is a nation that has debased itself, possibly beyond redemption. From a therapeutic standpoint, it needs to be rescued from itself. But it has not the internal resources to undertake the task. And its notional friends are incapable of furnishing aid, for they too are also trapped in redundant notions and fantasy solutions, adherence to the two-state fallacy being a clear example of this.
But perhaps the grossest moral and practical failing of all is the insistence of Israel’s so-called friends – here we include the British state – that a Jewish supremacist state can have any form of ethical legitimacy. Until Israel, and particularly its Jewish apologists, decouple themselves from the perverse, unethical notion that is Jewish supremacy, there will be no peace to be found between the river and the sea.
And it will be Israel’s ‘friends’, not least the Jewish Establishment, and Jewish Zionists, who will be held to account for propping up a racist, violent state.
[1] https://mondoweiss.net/2026/07/no-israel-does-not-have-a-right-to-exist-quite-the-contrary-actually/
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