Does Israel Have the Right to Exist?
Does Israel Have a Right to Exist?
A Statement by Miko Peled
Founder/President
Palestine House of Freedom.
November 11, 2025
Executive Summary
The question of Israel’s “right” to exist is a very sensitive one and how it’s framed matters a great deal. The phrase “right to exist” when discussing states rather than people is itself highly debated in international relations and political philosophy. In the context of Palestine this question has been a stumbling block when discussing Palestine as a free democratic state in which all who reside on the land enjoy equal rights. The eight decades in which Israel has existed is one full of wars, refugees, assassinations and enormous human suffering.
Here’s a balanced explanation of the issue:
1. States vs. Peoples
People are generally recognized to have a right to self-determination under international law. States, however, don’t have a moral or intrinsic “right to exist” — they are political entities that are created, changed, or dissolved through historical and legal processes. For example, the USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, South Vietnam, Rhodesia, all ceased to exist; no one argues whether or not they “had a right to exist,” but political circumstances had changed and they no longer exist.
2. The Israeli Palestinian Context
The claim that Israel has no right to exist, is based on the fact that Israel’s establishment in 1948 involved massacres, displacement and dispossession of close to one million Palestinians. The creation of the State of Israel left Palestinians stateless, denied rights, and with no framework of protection. This is referred to as “The Nakba” or catastrophe by Palestinians. Recognizing Israel’s “right to exist” means giving legitimacy those injustices, all of which constitute crimes against humanity. Furthermore, “Israel” has been declared by all the major human rights organizations as a state that practices apartheid and genocide.
Supporters of Israel’s legitimacy, or right to exist, argue that Jewish self-determination — like any people’s right to national self-determination — necessitates Israel’s existence as a sovereign state. This claim rests on the false assumption, created and disseminated by the Zionists, that Jewish people are a nation in the modern sense. This assumption is in direct opposition to the Jewish definition of Jews as a religious group. A Jewish person, according to Jewish law, is someone who was either born to a Jewish mother or converted to Judaism.
The People of Israel
One of the most notable Jewish Rabbis and scholars, Saʿadia ben Yosef Gaon, or Said bin Yusuf al-Fayyumi (892–942), whose interpretations of Jewish law are still studied and revered, famously said, “The people of Israel are a nation that is united only by its religious laws.” This has been confirmed by other Jewish scholars, both ancient and modern. Today, the most notable of these is Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, who currently lives and works in the U.S. and has written extensively about the subject.
In other words, Jewish people are a people united by their faith, not language, culture, land or any other modern national symbol. The connection and yearning that Jewish People express for the Holy Hand are religious, and are not about seeking sovereignty. In fact, Jewish law prohibits Jews from exercising sovereignty in the Holy Land.
Israelis are a people whose identity was created by Jewish Zionists who colonized Palestine.
3. International Law and Recognition
In spite of its many crimes and violations of international law, The State of Israel does exist as a sovereign member of the United Nations, recognized by most countries. The claim that Israel “does not have a right to exist” isn’t a legal one so much as it is a moral and political one. It challenges the legitimacy of a state that was founded through terrorism, it is not a democracy, and it has a history of being a violent and destabilizing force in Western Asia and North Africa. In other words, legitimizing an apartheid, genocidal regime by referring to it as a state is a political choice that is determined by one’s values. If one recognizes its legitimacy, one must accept the crimes and violations of international law that it perpetrates.
In Conclusion
Israel has existed for close to eight decades, so there is a history we can refer to. Considering this history, rather than being a state, Israel ought to be viewed as a regime that has occupied and taken over historic Palestine, renamed it and now controls all of it. It came into being after a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. It was established as an apartheid regime, and it is currently committing genocide. So, the question should be
framed as, “Does this regime, called Israel, have a right to exist at the expense of Palestinians, and in violation of the rights of Palestinian people.”