The Flogging (Flood's Blog)

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.

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