Every State in the Middle East Has Its Sovereignty Recognized, Save Israel

Sabine Sterk considers how in the Middle East every state but Israel has had its sovereignty recognized. Only Israel’s legitimacy as a sovereign state remains up in the air. More on that discrepancy can be found here: “109 Years After Balfour: Why Is Jewish Sovereignty Still on Trial?,” by Sabine Sterk, Algemeiner, November 2, 2026:

Today marks exactly 109 years since the Balfour Declaration, issued on November 2, 1917, when British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour expressed his government’s support for establishing a national home for the Jewish people in what was then called Palestine.

More than a century later, one question continues to expose the extraordinary hypocrisy surrounding Israel. Why is the sovereignty of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and virtually every other country that was established during the transformation of the Middle East accepted, while the Jewish State must continuously defend its very existence?

Apparently, the world has developed a remarkable ability to accept borders drawn by European powers, provided those borders do not result in Jewish sovereignty. The moment that Jews exercise the same right to national independence, history is rewritten, international legitimacy becomes negotiable, and the word colonialism suddenly dominates the conversation.

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France divided responsibilities for territories that had been under Ottoman rule for centuries. Modern Syria emerged under French administration and achieved independence in 1946. Lebanon followed its own path under French influence, declaring independence in 1943. Transjordan was established under British administration in 1921, with Abdullah installed as its ruler, and became independent in 1946….

We might here remind readers that the Emirate of Transjordan was established on land east of the Jordan River that was originally to have been part of the League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine, and thus intended to become part of the future Jewish state. For reasons of state, the British closed off to Jewish settlement all of that territory east of the Jordan, amounting to 78% of the area that was originally included in Mandatory Palestine.

On May 14, 1948, Israel declared independence, and neighboring Arab armies entered the ensuing war. Israel survived because its people fought for their independence, not because Britain generously handed them a functioning country. Israel became a member of the United Nations in 1949. These are historical facts, not inventions of Zionist propaganda.

None of this means the suffering of Palestinian Arabs during the 1948 war should be ignored. But neither should the displacement of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, nor the repeated rejection of opportunities for political compromise. Historical suffering deserves acknowledgement, but it cannot become a permanent justification for denying another people’s sovereignty.

The “suffering” of Palestinian Arabs refers to their large-scale displacement from Mandatory Palestine. What Sabine Sterk does not make clear is that displacement was largely the result of Arab broadcasts, from late 1947 on, urging the Arabs of Palestine to leave the area, so that the Arab armies could enter without fellow Arabs being in the way, and that once the Jews had been slaughtered, which would not take long, those Palestinian Arabs could safely return to both their own homes, and also to the homes abandoned by the Jews. Nor does she note how many Israelis, including Haifa Mayor Shabtai Levy and Golda Meir, begged the Arabs to stay; Levy even broke down in tears when he pleaded with Arab notables not to leave.

What I find particularly offensive is the intellectual dishonesty of treating Arab nationalism as legitimate liberation while describing Jewish nationalism as inherently illegitimate. Why should national independence be celebrated throughout the region but condemned when Jews achieve it? Why is Israel expected to apologize for existing while neighboring states are judged primarily by their governments and actions?…

And why must Israel, that has been victorious in three wars that were launched to destroy it, be the one suing for peace? Why should anyone expect Israel to give up land — Judea and Samaria — to which it has a historic claim going back 3500 years (Jewish history was made there, not in Tel Aviv or Haifa), and that it needs to hold onto if it is not to exist in a state of maximum peril, with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea? An invasion force from the east could then slice Israel in two before the reservists could be called up.

The real question is no longer whether Israel has the right to exist. The question is why so many people remain determined to deny the Jewish people a right they readily accept for everyone else.

Oh, we all know the reason for that. Jews, you see….