The editor-in-chief of neoliberal propaganda factory the Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes, spectacularly fumbled her attempts to push out Zionist talking points during an interview with right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson.
Minton Beddoes attempted to ask the former Fox News host whether he believed in so-called ‘Israel’s’ right to exist. In doing so she functioned as the troll guarding the bridge that provides a route to acceptance within the British and US ruling class. The question serves the same role as a previous favourite — “Do you condemn Hamas?” — a litmus test to establish whether the person being interrogated is ‘one of us’.
When pushed by Carlson to define the question, Minton Beddoes immediately seemed taken aback and began to stutter and flail as she attempted to work out what her own enquiry meant. Understandably so, given that like all good propaganda phrases, it doesn’t mean anything. There is no concept in law of a state’s right to exist.
As pointed out by former UN official, Moncef Khane:
Statehood is a political reality not a legal one.
Israel and its ‘right to exist’
Prompting people on the Zionist entity’s right to exist is a bit like questions demanding whether people “support the troops”, used during the illegal 2003 US-led assault on Iraq. Well, what exactly is being asked? If it’s just “Do you wish this particular group of random people no harm?” then the answer may well be “Yes, of course” — but that would be meaningless. Why ask about this group of people rather than any other?
Clearly the aim is to insist on specific allegiance to a politically relevant group of people — in this case US soldiers — for the sake of pursuing a geopolitical goal. To entrap people into backing a war by proxy via ostensibly apolitical support for the lives of those fighting it.
The question on the Zionist settler-colony is a similar ruse — an attempt to align the answerer with the Zionist cause out of fear that replying in the negative would imply a violent desire to annihilate a ‘state’ and its people. However, one can reject the legitimacy of ‘Israel’s’ creation, and its continued existence, without the desire for any use of force.
Its birth was the result of land theft, mass murder and ethnic cleansing, followed by apartheid and genocide. Were there such a concept as a state’s right to exist, this criminal ethnostate would be the last one entitled to it.
It’s normal for states to peacefully disappear
Its end need not be one of violence, but ideally of peaceful dissolution into one democratic state for all those in historic Palestine. It is normal in other contexts to wish for a state to cease its existence without fear of being labelled a budding genocidaire.
When republicans and nationalists in Ireland say they want their country to be reunited, this necessarily involves the disappearance of so-called ‘Northern Ireland’. Only the most extreme loyalists would suggest this is a call for mass murder or ethnic cleansing.
When Koreans speak of uniting their country, everyone understands that the subsequent non-existence of North Korea and South Korea isn’t genocidal in nature.
In this regard, once again the Zionist entity is subject to special privileges, whereby questioning its fictional right to exist is seen as a call to arms, or antisemitism. In reality, the most pressing question now is not nonsense centred on whether ‘Israel’ has the right to exist. Instead it is can the world afford its continued presence?
The arrival of Zionists in Palestine has always been an existential threat to Palestinians. Since the entry of mostly European colonists, they have been subjected to brutal ethnic cleansing and, latterly, a holocaust. That alone should have made ‘Israel’s’ existence intolerable long ago. However, as Zionist violence now engulfs all of West Asia, the scale of its bloodlust now imperils the entire planet.
Zionism endangers the world
The criminals in Tel Aviv aim to rip Iran apart, causing the fragmentation of a nation of 92 million people. The destabilisation likely wouldn’t stop there, and neighbouring countries with ethnic and religious tensions would likely be similarly affected.
Europe is so racist that even minor flows of refugees have seen far-right and overtly fascist parties flourish as they blame immigrants for all social ills. That would only deepen in the event that a far bigger crisis were to emerge and vast numbers of desperate people from west Asia sought sanctuary in Europe.
The world sadly still relies on climate wrecking fossil fuels. While that is the case, destruction of the facilities that produce them is liable to cause massive economic crises globally. The Zionist entity insisted on bombing the world’s largest natural gas condensate field at South Pars. That prompted Iran to respond in kind, attacking oil production in Gulf nations backing the settler-colony.
Fuel price inflation pushes up the price of everything else. When people on average incomes struggle, there is again the potential they look to far-right demagogues for salvation.
Many democracies have already been degraded through Zionist influence, with basic rights suspended in the name of backing the atrocities of the land theft project. That process is only likely to continue in the event of further financial chaos if reactionaries take the levers of power.
Respected commentators, such as economist Jeffrey Sachs, have warned the current conflagration started by so-called ‘Israel’ may ultimately trigger terminal warfare. Sachs said:
We are probably in the early days of World War III.
The Samson option
It may not even take that for the Zionist entity to bring about worldwide devastation. Numerous Zionists have fantasised about, or actively threatened, use of the ‘Samson option’. That is, the criminal pseudo-state using its vast nuclear arsenal to attack nations across the world in the event of its own impending demise, similar to the biblical figure of Samson bringing down the temple upon himself and his enemies.
Zionist university professor, David Perlmutter, imagined a glorious nuclear wasteland triggered by ‘Israel’. In an 2022 LA Times column, he wrote:
What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of massacres but a Nuclear Winter. Or invite all those tut-tutting European statesmen and peace activists to join us in the ovens?
For the first time in history, a people facing extermination while the world either cackles or looks away — unlike the Armenians, Tibetans, World War II European Jews or Rwandans — have the power to destroy the world. The ultimate justice?
‘Israeli’ military historian, Martin van Creveld, threatened, in response to a scenario in which the world attempted to prevent forced transfer of Palestinians:
But would the world permit such ethnic cleansing? That depends on who does it and how quickly it happens. We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force.
Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: “Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.” I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.
Tucker Carlson was ultimately too cowardly or indoctrinated to challenge all premises of the Economist editor’s ridiculous question. While he pushed back on the meaning of ‘right to exist’, he interpreted an answer of ‘no’ to mean a call for the settler-colony’s destruction. He said he didn’t want that, as he had no desire for people to die. Not much more can be expected of a former Fox News host, even one with anti-Zionist tendencies.
Ultimately it will be for people of conscience and integrity on the left to decisively shift the Overton window on so-called ‘Israel’, to the point where its peaceful dissolution, achieved by constant external pressure, becomes the accepted mainstream wisdom.
‘Israel’ has no right to exist, but the people of the world do. Their fate may depend on ending the settler-colony’s continued malign presence at the earliest opportunity.
Featured image via the Canary
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