As for the Iranian President’s alleged threat to “wipe Israel off the map,” the phrase now has a life of its own, untethered to its original context. Wikipedia’s article on it, which has come out since the Flogger last discussed the topic of map-wiping, informs us that “wiped off the map” has no equivalent in Farsi. Apparently the Iranian President's words are more accurately rendered “wiped away from the page of time,” which certainly has a different tone. And there are, after all, other ways for regimes to pass into history, and affect cartography, than by being invaded.

Czechoslovakia, for example, is no more. Czechs and Slovaks parted amicably and, consequently, Czechoslovakia was “wiped off the map,” if one must put things that way. And when Serbia and Montenegro did likewise in 2003, Yugoslavia went the way of all borders. It was “wiped off the map.”

And when the Yanquis cede the Southwest to the Mexican revanchistas in a few decades (because few Euro-Americans will be left, let alone enough of them willing to inconvenience themselves, to stop it) the United States of America will, in effect, be “wiped off the map,” bloodlessly.

As an anarchocapitalist, the Flogger believes no state is justified. All states come into the world, as Marx once ludicrously described capital, “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” For that reason all states morally ought to be be “wiped off the map."

To call for a world without states, or without any particular state, however, does not entail calling for initiating violence against anyone. One does not have to be an anarchocapitalist to envision and hope for a Middle East that is more just to all of its current inhabitants, one that requires no injustice against current Israelis, but one whose map does not include Israel as we know it.

On this issue, with particular reference to Israel, Jewish philosopher Michael Neumann (whose folks as he put it "suffered greatly under the Nazis") put the practical dimension of the matter in words that repay careful reading, and with them we will close:

Israel has no legitimate foundation. If Israel collapsed simply because it lost external and internal support, nothing wrong would have happened.

Nor would it be wrong to destroy Israel as a political entity if its continued existence would have even worse consequences: limited violence might be acceptable, but not genocidal warfare. Israel has no right to exist in the sense that some means of putting an end to its existence may be justified.

But in another sense, Israel does have a right to exist. Given today’s political realities no one ought to try and wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

In some ways, the more cynical Zionists are right: Israel’s foundations, even if every single allegation of ethnic cleaning is completely accurate, are no worse than those of most other states.

Virtually no state has legitimate foundations, and in that sense virtually no state has a right to exist. In theory, therefore, everyone has a right to interfere with the existence of those states.

In practice, however, such “interference” is almost never justified. The mere fact that, say, the United States is founded on genocide, massacre, and exploitation is not sufficient reason to destroy the United States. This is because the cure of destruction is worse than the disease of illegitimate existence.

In practice, wiping out a powerful state such as the U.S. or Israel would cause even more suffering than letting it survive. More important, attacks on these states would almost certainly be unsuccessful and merely add to the evil of illegitimate existence the much more serious evil of catastrophic warfare.

So Israel, like any other illegitimate state, does for all practical purposes have the right to exist. It would be wrong to try to destroy these states, not because it would be wrong if they vanished, but because the attempt would, in fact, have dreadful consequences.

Israel’s existence is tainted, not sacred, but it is protected by the same useful international conventions that allow others, in the name of peace, to retain their ill-gotten gains.

Israel’s right to exist, as Yohoshafat Farkabi points out, can be distinguished from any right “to be born” or to come into existence.

Michael Neumann, The Case against Israel, Counterpunch and AK Press, 2005, pp. 89-90.

In an op-ed piece for today’s Los Angeles Times he discusses the reaction, including stony silence, to his latest book, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. According to its author the book

describes the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. An enormous imprisonment wall is now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers. In many ways, this is more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid. I have made it clear that the motivation is not racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine, and then to forcefully suppress any objections from the displaced citizens.

As for racism not being a motivation: Zionism is a settler movement, and settling Jews has meant displacing Arabs. It’s hard to displace by force people who enjoy equal dignity with yourself. It’s usually necessary to dehumanize those whom you would systematically mistreat. To spell out Gates’ implicit point (not his own political commitments, I hasten to stress): if the Iranians regard Zionists as proven Muslim-dehumanizers with nukes, they might very well conclude that they need nukes of their own to neutralize the Israelis'.

Everyone understands such reasoning, even if not everyone condones it. But you’re not only not supposed to talk about it, you’re not supposed to say anything that might draw attention to it. But Gates let the cat out of the bag, and the major media will now dutifully shepherd it back in.

Anyway, it’s one thing for a leftist intellectual to shine a klieg light on the Hell that Israelis have made for Palestinians. It’s quite another for a former President to do so. And when one of them does, he can forget about receiving the customary deference shown to members of his elite club.

Before Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid even hit the stands, for instance, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi clarified that Carter “does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel,” although he once did. What happened since those days? The New Republic chief editor Martin Peretz exuded his usual Zionist elegance, calling the book "tendentious, dishonest and stupid."

In a major American newspaper and with the candor shown recently by certain tenured Ivy League professors, also beloved of Mr. Peretz, Carter observed that

It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. Very few would ever deign to visit the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza City or even Bethlehem and talk to the beleaguered residents.

What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land.

Since those for whom support of Israel has the force of religious duty control those pages, however, it is not difficult to comprehend. Carter should press his implicit question: just why does Zionist-compliant behavior enjoy privileged status in America's media and corridors of power? Other than Zionist control, what are possible explanations for the united front of silence that has greeted his book?

This week, twice, the establishment spilled a few beans in front of the American people. Will they seize upon it and start snapping out of their thralldom to the Zionist enterprise headquartered in Washington?

Probably not. They’re too busy wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Peace on Earth while paying with their taxes for nukes and segregation in the land of Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Galilee.