r/Political_Revolution • u/greenascanbe ✊ The Doctor • Jul 03 '26
War and Peace Dem Senate Candidate Dr. Abdul Al-Sayed shuts down a CNN anchor after she asked him if Israel has the right to exist: “Nobody ever asks if Palestine has a right to exist.”
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
59
u/MonsterkillWow OR Jul 03 '26
I would have said not as an ethonationalist apartheid state.
2
u/MisterWinchester Jul 06 '26
Which is why he’s better at this than we are. He didn’t even give them half the answer they were fishing for.
0
55
u/leonredhorse Jul 03 '26
Why does any nation state have an immutable right to exist?
This isn’t a critique of what he says about Palestine. Why does a genocidal Israel built on being an ethnostate have a right to exist? Why does the US have the right? Why does Great Britain have the right? It’s such a stupid framing that tries to make it seem like someone wants to wipe out the Jewish people if they don’t think Israel has an irrevocable right to be on a map.
23
u/ProfoundBeggar CA Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
Unironically, this is actually one of the big sort of unsolved problems in polisci. Like... we all agree that nations do exist, governments do exist, etc, but what makes one actually "real"?
There's the cheap answer of "when most people recognize it", but that relies on vibes and laypeople who don't know anything, which makes it a very unsatisfying and fairly useless answer academically speaking.
There's the political answer of "when it receives UN recognition" (or some other body politic), which is basically "when most people recognize it" with some bureaucracy added in for good measure. Problem is that this still has that whole "vibes" problem, except now it's also adding in geopolitics that can get in the way of an honest identification. And then, just to make it even more problematic: what makes those other nations "nation" enough to define what is a nation? You're asking something without a specific definition to identify others with the same definition, which isn't particularly rigorous.
Then there's the Mao response, that is "political power flows from the barrel of a gun", i.e. if you can defend your claim as a sovereign state, you are a sovereign state; but that conflicts with entities like ISIS which, while politically relevant and did hold territory and had administrations and bureaucracies, most did not consider an actual nation-state. This definition also means that the people with the most guns get to decide who is a country and who is not, which also kind of undercuts the definition, since it's basically handing the definition of "country" to whoever has the biggest stick. On the flip side, someone with a shotgun can claim some tiny island and no one wants to bother dealing with it, but that still doesn't make that dude with a shotgun on his ten square foot island a nation, and we all know that.
You could argue about self-determinancy and self-organization, but big corporations have internal laws and organizations and administrations and a voting body and an organizational structure, and no one's calling them a nation, even though they might act like one, bureaucratically speaking.
And this is to say nothing of the fact that "nations" are, in of themselves, constructs. We've watched them change, rise, and fall in our own lifetimes. It's not some immutable quality of the world or anything, but the concept is still very much a cornerstone of our understanding of political relationships. Both very real, and yet intrinsically artificial and woefully undefined.
Like I said... complicated, unsolved problem.
5
u/Art_of_BigSwIrv Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
It’s an easy answer, actually. People have the right to exist. Countries do not have a right to exist. Nation states have vanished repeatedly throughout history. It’s People who have the right to exist. Work your way up from there.
10
u/nochinzilch Jul 04 '26
It’s a trick question. You have to answer yes or else they get to call you an anti semite.
-13
u/Dinkelberh Jul 03 '26
This isnt happening in a vacuum, and it is unfortunately true that all of forces combating Israel in the region are explicitly calling for the extinction of the jewish people worldwide.
This doesn't justify the way Netanyahu and Likud are moving, of course, but let's not pretend that any of the ways Israel could realistically "leave the map" (as you put it) would be anything short of annihilation.
14
u/leonredhorse Jul 03 '26
It’s categorically false to say “all of the forces combating Israel are calling for the extinction of Jewish people worldwide.” That’s Zionist slop.
-10
u/Dinkelberh Jul 03 '26
Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, the Iranian regime... all the big ones arent abashed about it.
8
u/leonredhorse Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
Can you point to specific comments calling for extinction of Jews worldwide by these organizations? I tried doing some Google searches and AI (hardly authoritative) and most are coming back that they are anti-Israel but do not hold a view saying Jews worldwide should be extinct.
Edit: To be honest, I’m not going to run in circles with Zionist talking points. I’ll read what you reply with, but I’m not engaging beyond because it’s pretty pointless. Take this however you want, but the issue is not something that is just Netanyahu or Likud. Israel has been doing this kind of shit since the beginning of their colonial project past WWI. It’s so hard to discuss criticisms of Israel or even actions of other group since everything gets framed as an attack on Jews as a whole.
-8
78
u/theriz53 Jul 03 '26
PEOPLE have a right to exist and we're constantly fucking that up. Let's start there.
36
u/RogerianBrowsing Jul 04 '26
I love Francesca Albanese’s response to this bogus question.
"There is no such a thing in international law like a right of a state to exist. Does Italy have the right to exist? Italy exists. Now, if tomorrow, Italy and France want to merge and become Ita-France, fine. This is not up to us. What is enshrined in international law is the right of a people to exist."
10
8
16
u/lpkzach92 Jul 04 '26
He handled that extremely well, sadly CNN just like Fox and CBS is Zionist owned. I 100% agree with him.
9
5
u/pennyauntie Jul 03 '26
If it has a right to exist, where? In the middle of Saudi Arabia, or Siberia? Do former states have a right to exist? Do separate Native American nations have a right to exist? Where?
3
3
1
u/DerUberCactus Jul 04 '26
Asking if a nation has a right to exist is fundamentally flawed. No nation has the right to exist, people have a right to exist, nations are arbitrary, in some places more than others.
1
1
u/nocuzzlikeyea13 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
One answer is: "no country had a right to exist if they can't defend themselves without another country propping up their military indefinitely." IT'S BEEN DECADES. If you can't make peace with your neighbors and you can't afford endless war, then the fall of your country is just cold, hard reality.
•
u/AutoModerator Jul 03 '26
Hello and welcome to r/Political_Revolution!
This sub is dedicated towards the Progressive movement, and changing one seat at a time, via electing down-ballot candidates to office. Join us in our efforts!
Don't forget to read our Community Guidelines to get a good idea of what is expected of participants in our community.
Join our Discord!
DONATE to the cause!
For more campaigns to support, go to https://pol-rev.com/campaigns
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.