10 June 2011, The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk (UK)
Legitimacy in international relations relates not to a single idea but to overlapping concepts, one of which is appropriate conduct
Peter Beaumont
Last year the Israeli Reut Institute published a report examining what it said was the agenda for eroding Israel's legitimacy in the international arena – an aim, it argued, whose end was to turn Israel into a "pariah" state and challenge its "very legitimacy of its existence as a Jewish and democratic state".
It was not alone. As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz remarked at the same time, "delegitimisation of Israel" has become the "new buzzword in the world of pro-Israel activism." So much so, Haaretz noted, that prominent organisations including the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee had all outlined plans how to fight it. On Friday a story in the same paper detailed Israeli officialdom's worries that UN recognition of a Palestinian state in September would "delegitimise Israel and foil any chance for future peace talks".
Others have gone further, contending that "delegitimisation" has become the face of the new antisemitism, manipulated, as the Reut Institute claimed, by a minority.
All of which, however, leads to a question: precisely what is meant by legitimacy in an international context?
It is unclear enough as a concept that Robert Kagan was able to argue in the New York Times in 2004 that "the struggle to define and obtain international legitimacy in this new era may prove to be among the critical contests of our time".
One of those who has studied this field is Ian Clark, author of Legitimacy in International Society. "The core principles of legitimacy," he writes, not only "express rudimentary social agreement about who is entitled to participate in international relations" but also – critically – "appropriate forms of their conduct".
The reality is that the notion of legitimacy in international relations relates not to a single idea but to overlapping concepts that defy the simplistic definition being applied by those Haaretz describes as being involved in "pro-Israel activism".
First is the notion of the sovereign integrity of countries as states recognised by the international community and enshrined in international law. It is this legitimacy that recognises Israel's right to exist and participate in international forums.
It is the same legitimacy that Egypt or Tunisia or even Libya enjoys within its international boundaries.
A second notion of legitimacy – familiar and well-studied from Hobbes onwards – is the legitimacy a government claims through the support of its citizens, in the case of a democracy via an electoral mandate, to represent for a period of time the policies of a given state. In other words, an internal legitimacy represented on an international stage.
But simply because a government and state is "democratic", however – or because it enjoys a large mandate – does not mean it is immune from committing questionable and illegal acts.
The third crucial notion of international legitimacy is Clark's category of "appropriate forms of ... conduct".
It is in precisely in this area that the government, a regime or series of governments of a state can be seen to relinquish legitimacy both through its acts and how they are perceived over a period of time.
For Israel, that means specifically illegal occupation, settlement building and a disproportionate use of force that historically has claimed the lives of too many Palestinian civilians in the name of defence.
The distinctions are crucially important because in the deliberate conflation of the competing spheres of legitimacy by some of those who support Israel, they are making an essentially undemocratic argument utilising Israel's right to exist as an argument for impunity.
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NETANYAHU'S ISRAEL IS ON COURSE TO BECOME A PARIAH STATE
20 May 2011, Haaretz (Israel) הארץ
Netanyahu heads for Washington as Israel to stop Israel's collision course with all our allies, who are no longer prepared to listen to his arguments about the country's security.
By Zeev Sternhell
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to Washington at what may be the last chance to turn the establishment of a Palestinian state from a global anti-Israel campaign into a joint Israeli, American and European project. The establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state is today a necessity, just as Zionism was a necessity. And about half of Israeli society apparently agrees with Western public opinion and Western governments on the principle that Palestinian Arabs have the same right to independence and sovereignty as do Israeli Jews.
Were Netanyahu a leader worthy of the name, one who understood the deep processes taking place under his nose and tried to make the most of them, he would not think and speak like a leader of the Betar youth movement. But on his upcoming trip to the United States, Netanyahu will prefer to rely on AIPAC, an organization that represents the right-wing minority of American Jews and symbolizes the Jewish community's disappearing past. There, just as in the Likud Central Committee, it is still possible to talk about the Land of Israel as belonging to the Jews alone.
It is precisely this approach, which ignores the rights of the Palestinians, that drives young people, intellectuals and liberals away. At universities, in the media and in the cultural world, these groups are already displacing the conservatives. The extent to which the Jewish right has lost its sway even in its stronghold, New York, can be gathered from its failure to prevent American playwright Tony Kushner from getting an honorary doctorate from the City University of New York.
Another incident, which was not publicized in the media but is even more significant, involved an attempt to prevent a young pro-Palestinian lecturer from getting a position at Brooklyn College. Under pressure from the pro-Israel right, the planned appointment was canceled by the school's president. But when the academic staff rose up in arms, the lecturer was given the job. If the right is unable to get the results it wants even in Brooklyn, it is easy to imagine its plight in other places.
To this must be added the international pressure for an academic and economic boycott of Israel, which has been generated by the recognition that there is no other way to force Israel to end the occupation. Closer to home, Deutsche Bahn's withdrawal from the project to lay a railway line between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem should have caused a shock. But here, we prefer to avoid reality.
Because of its blindness and imperviousness, Israel is gradually turning from a source of pride and an object of admiration into a nuisance, if not an object of outright hostility.
This is how, with our own hands, we turned the problem of the occupation into an issue for the entire Western world, and the Palestinians into the West's proteges: Faced with an occupying power that is simultaneously unresponsive and self-righteous, the West feels moral and political responsibility for the Palestinians' fate, just as in the past, Western public opinion felt deep sympathy for the Jewish state.
This feeling of responsibility has increased in recent years, after it became clear that the Israeli right has no intention of responding to Palestinian demands for freedom and independence. Under the guise of security considerations and the war on terror hides the real, ideological reason: In the right's view, recognizing the equal national rights of the Palestinians means forgoing exclusive Jewish ownership of the Land of Israel. From the point of view of members of the Israeli rejectionist front, recognizing the equality of Jewish and Arab rights on both sides of the Green Line is tantamount to betraying Jewish history.
But since the number of people who are still prepared to buy an argument of this kind is diminishing worldwide, Israel is on a collision course with all our allies and supporters. And at the end of this road, it is liable to become a pariah state.
Netanyahu heads for Washington as Israel to stop Israel's collision course with all our allies, who are no longer prepared to listen to his arguments about the country's security.
By Zeev Sternhell
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to Washington at what may be the last chance to turn the establishment of a Palestinian state from a global anti-Israel campaign into a joint Israeli, American and European project. The establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state is today a necessity, just as Zionism was a necessity. And about half of Israeli society apparently agrees with Western public opinion and Western governments on the principle that Palestinian Arabs have the same right to independence and sovereignty as do Israeli Jews.
Were Netanyahu a leader worthy of the name, one who understood the deep processes taking place under his nose and tried to make the most of them, he would not think and speak like a leader of the Betar youth movement. But on his upcoming trip to the United States, Netanyahu will prefer to rely on AIPAC, an organization that represents the right-wing minority of American Jews and symbolizes the Jewish community's disappearing past. There, just as in the Likud Central Committee, it is still possible to talk about the Land of Israel as belonging to the Jews alone.
It is precisely this approach, which ignores the rights of the Palestinians, that drives young people, intellectuals and liberals away. At universities, in the media and in the cultural world, these groups are already displacing the conservatives. The extent to which the Jewish right has lost its sway even in its stronghold, New York, can be gathered from its failure to prevent American playwright Tony Kushner from getting an honorary doctorate from the City University of New York.
Another incident, which was not publicized in the media but is even more significant, involved an attempt to prevent a young pro-Palestinian lecturer from getting a position at Brooklyn College. Under pressure from the pro-Israel right, the planned appointment was canceled by the school's president. But when the academic staff rose up in arms, the lecturer was given the job. If the right is unable to get the results it wants even in Brooklyn, it is easy to imagine its plight in other places.
To this must be added the international pressure for an academic and economic boycott of Israel, which has been generated by the recognition that there is no other way to force Israel to end the occupation. Closer to home, Deutsche Bahn's withdrawal from the project to lay a railway line between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem should have caused a shock. But here, we prefer to avoid reality.
Because of its blindness and imperviousness, Israel is gradually turning from a source of pride and an object of admiration into a nuisance, if not an object of outright hostility.
This is how, with our own hands, we turned the problem of the occupation into an issue for the entire Western world, and the Palestinians into the West's proteges: Faced with an occupying power that is simultaneously unresponsive and self-righteous, the West feels moral and political responsibility for the Palestinians' fate, just as in the past, Western public opinion felt deep sympathy for the Jewish state.
This feeling of responsibility has increased in recent years, after it became clear that the Israeli right has no intention of responding to Palestinian demands for freedom and independence. Under the guise of security considerations and the war on terror hides the real, ideological reason: In the right's view, recognizing the equal national rights of the Palestinians means forgoing exclusive Jewish ownership of the Land of Israel. From the point of view of members of the Israeli rejectionist front, recognizing the equality of Jewish and Arab rights on both sides of the Green Line is tantamount to betraying Jewish history.
But since the number of people who are still prepared to buy an argument of this kind is diminishing worldwide, Israel is on a collision course with all our allies and supporters. And at the end of this road, it is liable to become a pariah state.
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