🚨A powerful testimony by Gaza journalist Tareq Abu Azzum : When something is affirmed too insistently, it inevitably summons its opposite. So there is little wonder that many states repeat, day after day, that Israel has a right to exist. But before invoking the opposite, we should ask: what exactly is meant by Israel’s “right to exist”? And why Israel alone? Does anyone ever ask about America’s right to exist, or Russia’s? And what about Palestine’s right to exist? Has anyone ever asked whether Palestinians have a right to exist, or is their existence simply not considered worthy of the question, even as it is erased day after day? There is something far from innocent about this question. Does Israel’s existence require the erasure of another people who have lived on this land for thousands of years? Why is Israel’s right to exist framed as though it depends on Palestine not existing? That amounts to accepting the principle that one existing people may be erased for the sake of another. Isn’t that a double standard? Israel’s “right to exist” is not really about its physical existence. Israel exists as a matter of fact. Rather, it speaks to a psychological condition it has carried since its birth, an enduring sense that it is a state that cannot survive on its own. This is not an appeal to metaphysics. It is a reality we encounter every time we hear the phrase “Israel’s right to exist.” It is like being asked whether you have the right to sit in your own home. That is not a natural question, is it? You do not have to beg anyone for the right to sit in your own home. It is your home. You only ask whether you have the right to remain in a house when you doubt that it truly belongs to you, when you need others to affirm your ownership. You seek reassurance from those who helped you take it, asking them to confirm that you are entitled to something you know, deep down, was never truly yours. Believe me, every time I hear them say that Israel has a right to exist, I feel strangely reassured. Reassured that this state itself feels temporary. Because after this war, there is little more Israel could have done to ensure its survival than what it has already done. And yet after all of that, it still trembles.