A Philosophical and Legal Analysis
The concept of a “right to exist” as applied to states, ideologies, and abstract entities represents a fundamental philosophical error that obscures the true nature of rights, enables political manipulation, and contradicts established principles of international law. Rights belong exclusively to sentient beings capable of moral consideration, not to ideas, concepts, or political arrangements. When consistently applied, this principle exposes the hypocrisy inherent in selective claims of existential rights and reveals how such claims serve to legitimize violence while delegitimizing resistance.
I. The Categorical Error of Abstract Rights
Ideas Have No Inherent Rights
States, religions, and ideologies are organizational concepts—products of human thought and collective agreement. They exist through practice and belief, not through any inherent claim to perpetual existence. Christianity, Zionism, democracy, or any other idea persists only as long as people find it compelling, useful, or meaningful. To claim that such concepts have “rights” is to commit a category error, confusing abstract ideas with entities capable of moral consideration.
The Natural Process of Ideological Selection
Ideas operate in a meritocratic system where good ideas are adopted and bad ideas are rejected based on their ability to solve problems, provide meaning, or resonate with human experience. This natural selection of ideas requires no special protection or guaranteed permanence. Pantheons of gods like Zeus, Poseidon, and Jupiter, were central to the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome and once dominated vast empires but have declined without anyone needing to claim they are “wronged” by obsolescence. The same principle applies to all ideological systems—they rise and fall based on merit, not rights.
Consistency Demands Universal Application
If we grant that ideas have rights, we must extend this protection to all ideas equally. Christianity’s alleged “right to exist” would necessarily include atheism’s equal right. Zionism’s claimed rights would require granting identical rights to anti-Zionist resistance. The framework becomes incoherent when applied consistently, revealing its true purpose: creating special immunity for preferred beliefs while denying protection to opposing viewpoints.
II. Rights Belong to People, Not Concepts
The Constitutional Foundation
The American Bill of Rights exemplifies proper rights attribution by protecting individual human beings—their ability to speak, believe, assemble, and think freely. The First Amendment protects people’s right to practice religion, not religion’s right to exist. This distinction preserves human agency and dignity while allowing ideas to compete freely in the marketplace of thought.
Personal Self-Determination vs. Territorial Sovereignty
Authentic self-determination consists of the right to honor one’s personal relationship with personal ideas, particularly theological ones. This requires no displacement of others or claims to exclusive territorial control. True self-determination should be compatible with others’ equal rights. When “self-determination” requires denying others their basic autonomy, security, or connection to their homeland, it has ceased being self-determination and become colonialism.
The Fundamental Principle of Human Equality
No race, ethnicity, or group possesses inherent rights that supersede another group’s rights. Historical persecution, religious chosenness, or indigenous claims cannot justify creating hierarchies of human worth. The moment we accept that one group’s rights systematically override another’s based on group identity, we abandon the principle of human equality that underlies all legitimate rights discourse.
III. Colonialism Disguised as Rights
External Imposition, Not Organic Development
Zionism originated as a 19th-century European political movement that sought to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, where a thriving multi-religious society already existed. Historical records show that by the mid-19th century, Palestine’s population of approximately 600,000 included Muslims (80%), Christians (10%), and Jews (5-7%) who had coexisted as part of an integrated indigenous culture for over thirteen centuries. Judaism was already an integral component of Palestinian society, not an absent element requiring restoration.
The Zionist project was therefore not about Jewish people returning to an empty land or rescuing a displaced population, but about imposing a European nationalist political ideology on a region where Jewish life already flourished within an established multicultural framework. This transformation required displacing not only Palestinian Muslims and Christians, but also restructuring the existing Palestinian Jewish community according to foreign nationalist principles—a process that meets the definition of colonialism regardless of the persecution that motivated European Jewish migration.
The “When in Rome” Principle
Fleeing persecution affords no special rights to restructure uninvolved societies according to one’s preferences. Suffering injustice does not automatically grant the right to impose solutions on third parties. When in Rome, one adapts to Roman customs rather than expecting Rome to reshape itself around newcomer preferences. This principle applies universally, regardless of the severity of persecution that motivated the displacement.
Force, Expansion, and Hypocritical Justification
Israel was created through force, expanded through war, and subsequently claimed inherent rights to exist and defend itself. Yet those who seek to reverse this process through similar means are denied equivalent rights. This represents a fundamental double standard: if violent displacement creates legitimate rights, then violent counter-displacement should be equally legitimate. If military conquest generates a “right to defend,” then military resistance should generate an equal “right to resist.”
IV. International Law and the Inversion of Rights
Legal Rights of Resistance and Occupier Obligations
International law creates a complete inversion of the rights framework commonly presented in mainstream discourse. Not only do occupied peoples have the explicit right to resist occupation, including through armed struggle when other avenues are exhausted, but occupying powers possess no legal right to claim self-defense against resistance from occupied populations.
More fundamentally, international humanitarian law imposes extensive positive obligations on occupying powers to ensure the welfare of occupied populations. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention and related instruments, the occupying power must “administrate the territory for the benefit of the local population” and ensure “as normal a life as possible in the occupied territory.” The occupier has legal duties to ensure that the basic needs of the population are met, including supplying food, medical supplies and other basic goods needed to allow the population to live under adequate material conditions.¹
This means that under international law, occupying forces have no defensive rights but extensive welfare responsibilities, while occupied populations have both the right to resist and the right to expect their occupiers to ensure their wellbeing. The occupier’s violence constitutes illegal aggression, while the occupied’s resistance represents legally protected exercise of self-determination rights.
Legal References:
¹ Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, Article 55; Hague Regulations of 1907, Article 43; Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, Article 69. See also International Committee of the Red Cross, “What does the law say about the responsibilities of the Occupying Power in the occupied Palestinian territory?” (2024), available at: https://www.icrc.org/en/document/ihl-occupying-power-responsibilities-occupied-palestinian-territories
The Discourse Inversion
Mainstream political discourse completely inverts these legal principles by granting moral and legal legitimacy to occupying forces while criminalizing resistance as “terrorism.” This inversion serves political interests by legitimizing ongoing violations of international law while delegitimizing legal resistance to those violations.
Selective Application of Legal Standards
The hypocrisy becomes clear when we observe how legal standards are selectively applied. Actions deemed “self-defense” when performed by preferred parties become “aggression” when performed by their opponents. Rights claimed as sacred for one group are dismissed as illegitimate for others. This selective application reveals that “rights” discourse has been weaponized to justify predetermined political outcomes rather than establish consistent moral principles.
V. Conclusion: Toward Honest Rights Discourse
The concept of a “right to exist” as applied to states and ideologies represents intellectual dishonesty in service of political manipulation. True rights discourse must focus on the rights of actual human beings—all human beings equally—rather than abstract claims about state entities or ideological systems having inherent rights to particular territories or political arrangements.
Genuine self-determination requires no displacement of others. Legitimate resistance to occupation enjoys protection under international law. And no group’s historical suffering justifies the systematic violation of another group’s fundamental rights. When we strip away the rhetorical camouflage of “existential rights,” we can engage honestly with questions of justice, equality, and human dignity.
The Israeli case study reveals the ultimate consequence of accepting fabricated rights claims: the creation of what can only be described as a criminal enterprise masquerading as a legitimate state. A government formed by terrorist organizations using coercive force, operating in systematic violation of international law, supporting illegal settlement expansion, developing clandestine nuclear weapons programs, conducting preemptive attacks on neighbors, and consistently breaking ceasefire agreements would be universally condemned as a rogue terrorist state if these same standards were applied consistently. Yet the selective application of international law based on geopolitical interests rather than legal principles allows such entities to not only escape sanction but receive unprecedented support from major powers.
This double standard exposes how “rights” discourse has been weaponized to create immunity for systematic criminality while delegitimizing legal resistance to that criminality. When the same actions that trigger severe sanctions against other nations are overlooked or actively supported when performed by strategic allies, we witness the complete corruption of international legal frameworks in service of political convenience.
The path forward requires abandoning the philosophical error of abstract rights, recognizing the equal humanity of all people regardless of group identity, and applying legal and moral standards consistently rather than selectively. Only by exposing criminal enterprises disguised as legitimate states, and holding all entities to the same legal standards regardless of their geopolitical utility, can we move beyond the manipulative deployment of rights language toward genuine principles that serve human flourishing rather than political power and systematic oppression.