Do Syria and Jordan Have a Right to Exist?

The great Mark Steyn, whose last name is not scary but seems to end Jewishly (although he is not Jewish), writing in the August 28 issue of National Review:

Earlier this year, I chanced to be at a public meeting with the great Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post.  Afterwards, a gentleman from the audience casually made some allusion to some or other aspect of the Jewish calendar, at which I looked momentarily befuddled.  And so Caroline helpfully explained to him that “Mark’s not a Jew, but he plays one on T.V.”

By which she meant that, as I publicly “defend” Israel . . . and as I have a suspiciously Jewish-sounding name, I’ve been routinely assumed, at least since 9/11, to be a Jew.  I’m honored to be so mistaken.

* * *

. . . I am [presumably] a Jew, because, after all, only a Jew could “defend” Israel, right?  I don’t really “defend” it on anything but utilitarian grounds:  Every country in the region — Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia — dates as a sovereign state from 60-70 years ago.  The only difference is that Israel has made a go of it.  So should we have more states like Israel in the region or more like Syria? . . .

And the minute people start arguing about going back to the “1967 borders” or the “1949 armistice,” I figure, Why stop there?  Why not go back to the 1922 settlement when the British Mandate of Palestine was created and rethink London’s decision to give 78 percent of the land to what’s now Jordan. . . . [W]hy should 40- or 60-year old lines on a map be up for perpetual renegotiation but 80-year-old lines be considered inviolable?

A longer excerpt is here.  At SteynOnline, he links to a recent article about him (“Scourge of the Jihadists”) that includes this quotation on “disproportionate Israel:”

If, say, some fellows in Mexico had kidnapped California state troopers and were lobbing rockets randomly into residential areas of San Diego and Los Angeles, even La-La-Land libs would be demanding the US respond.

It’s only the Israelis the world wishes to deny the conventional rights of sovereignty. In other words, it’s the legitimacy of the state that’s at issue. In effect, Israel has become the geopolitical version of the European Jew, who’s allowed to operate a store in the town but not to exercise full ownership rights.

In the old days, Jews faced property restrictions; now they face sovereignty restrictions.

The full text of Steyn’s “Espying the Jew” is here.

UPDATE: Ocean Guy has a very interesting comment on this: Re-Drawing the Map. See also David Bernstein on “Does Japan have a right to exist as a Japanese state?”