Instigator / Pro
28
1468
rating
3
debates
0.0%
won
Topic
#1755

Israel has no "right to exist"

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
6
51
Better sources
12
34
Better legibility
9
17
Better conduct
1
17

After 17 votes and with 91 points ahead, the winner is...

Barney
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
2
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
Six months
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
119
1810
rating
49
debates
100.0%
won
Description

We will be debating Israels "right to exist". Does israel have a valid claim to the land?
Pro will be debating that Israel has no "right to exist"
and Con vice versa

Round 1
Pro
#1
I shall demonstrate in two argument
1) The term “right to exist”
2) Israels foundationTo clarify this debate will be about Israel’s legitimacy and if the country should be able to have been formed in the first place.
 
  The term “right to exist”
First of all the frequently used statement “Israel has a right to exist” is a misguided claim, as it holds no real value, unlike self-determination, the term “Right to exist” has not been recognized under international law[1], and is in itself an absurd concept. Now self-determination refers to the “right of a people to determine its own destiny, in particular, the principle allow a people to choose its own political status and to determine its own form of economic, cultural and social development”[2]. Although, this right cannot disrupt or affect the existence of individual rights, so it is the people who are choosing how they want to be governed[3]. And with that in mind, it is obvious that Israel is obstructing the rights of the Palestinians by merely existing.
Israel’s foundation
Israel has no legitimate/valid claim to the land they occupy.  I would not put it past my opponent Ragnar to use resolution 181 in this debate to ridiculously legitimize Israel. Therefore, I have chosen to address this in my first argument.
First, the General Assembly had no authority to split Palestine against the will of its inhabitants[4]. Because both people did not agree upon this plan it did not have any legal effect. Therefore, the matter died in the Security Council after it was forwarded there, because the UN had no authority to implement such separation.

The Zionists call this the “Declaration of Independence” although a declaration of independence needs the people declaring their independence to be sovereign over the territory in which they wish to exercise their right to self-determination. Which the Zionist weren’t.
When Zionist declared Israel’s existence, Jews owned less than 7% of the land in Palestine
[5]
.


So, the Zionist leadership had no legitimate claim to sovereignty over the land, they ultimately acquired through war. Which is prohibited under international law[6]
So, the foundation of Israel is built not through a legitimate process that some Zionist may claim but through violence. The Zionist acquired most of the territory for their state through the ethnic cleansing of most of the Arab population, more than 700,000 people, from their homes Palestine. Hundred of Arab villages literally wiped off the map.[7]

Con
#2
Preamble:
Burden of Proof
Applying literacy to the debate title and description, pro is making the positive claims:
  1. The people of Israel (be they Jewish, Arab, or other) have no human rights, and
  2. The people of Israel have no claim to their land.
That or he is claiming the land itself is evil and has no right to exist, and implicitly must be destroyed in violation of the Law of Conservation of Mass [1].

Definitions
Pro, for clarity, please define precisely what you mean by Israel. Do you mean the human beings, the earth beneath them, or something else entirely?

Tense
The resolution is worded presence tense, so that will be my primary focus. Pro attempting to move the goalposts [2] to generations ago is noted but meaningless; as he has not upheld his BoP until he proves Israel has no right to exist in modern times. Had he wished to debate Israel had no right to exist when originally founded, he should have started a debate specifically on that.


My case:
Going to keep this brief…

Human Rights
I take for grated that the assumption of human rights are the status quo, and do not need to be defended until such a time as pro offers some reason they do not exist (or evidence that the people of Israel are all space lizards, thus outside the bounds of human rights).

Defense of Human Life
The only reason we are having this debate about people living in that region (assuming pro means people instead of land), is the people of Israel (Jews, Arabs, and others) defended the area from an attempted mass genocide of every man woman child within the region back in 1967 [3].

Defending Human Rights
Not that this matters to the resolution; but in case anyone fell for his off-topic appeal to pity [4].

Pro claims there’s ethnic cleansings against Arabs, but to believe that you principally need to dismiss that Arabs can be citizens. Then dismiss the various Arabs serving high in the Israeli government, their voting rights, etc. Instead of being killed or exiled as pro claims, here’s how Arabs are really treated in Israel:
Arab citizens of Israel enjoy the full range of civil and political rights, including the right to organize politically, the right to vote and the right to speak and publish freely. Israeli Arabs and other non-Jewish Israelis serve as members of Israel’s security forces, are elected to parliament and appointed to the country’s highest courts. They are afforded equal educational opportunities, and there are ongoing initiatives to further improve the economic standing of all of Israel’s minorities” [5].


Rebuttals:
The term “right to exist”
As per pro’s own words, he has all but conceded this debate. With his support for the right of self-determination, he affirms that the people of Israel (Jewish, Arabs, and others) have the right to be Israel if they so choose, which as evidenced by us talking about them, they do so choose:
Self Determination: “right of a people to determine its own destiny, in particular, the principle allow a people to choose its own political status and to determine its own form of economic, cultural and social development.”

Further if by Israel he means the land... It does not force people to live there, they may come and go without it offering any direct interference. It’s mindless dirt they chose to put under their feet.

Israel’s foundation
If Israel means people: The people of Israel and Palestine choose to remain split, as pro affirms is their right. Not to mention, the land was legally recognized as theirs by the former owners (and most civilized countries) in 1948 [6], rather than through war as pro claims.

If Israel means land: The lands are not actually split in any meaningful way to the land. There’s no gaping crevice in the earth which leads straight to the void of space, instead there’s continuous earth.

Plagiarism
Pro has chosen to plagiarize his case. “Zionist leadership had no legitimate claim to sovereignty over the” and “they ultimately acquired through warfrom the start of his final segment were copy pasted from the Foreign Policy Journal [7], he merely changed one word in between, even stealing stole the italicization. It is safe to assume the rest of his case is likewise a hodgepodge of plagiarism, with a word changed out here or there.

Why pro wants supporters of Palestinian independence to look so bad, I can only guess; but it speaks volumes about his level depravity.


Sources:
  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_mass
  2. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts
  3. http://sixdaywar1967.blogspot.com/2010/09/six-6-day-war-1967.html
  4. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_pity
  5. https://www.adl.org/resources/fact-sheets/response-to-common-inaccuracy-israel-is-an-apartheid-state
  6. https://www.science.co.il/israel-history/
  7. https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/03/15/why-israel-has-no-right-to-exist/

Round 2
Pro
#3
Forfeited
Con
#4
Key things:
  1. Pro has plagiarized his case, and
  2. Forfeited every round after the first (technically a FF).

He has posted his R2 in the comments but offers no denial of having plagiarized his whole case. There is further no denial of having done this debate in a depraved attempt to demean actual supporters of Palestinian independence.

I won't waste the valuable time of voters with a further response, when the outcome is a foregone conclusion.