When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, it was done so with the approval of the United Nations. But today, Israel's enemies routinely challenge the legitimacy of its very existence. So, under international law, who's right? Israel? Or its enemies?
Of all the countries that have come into existence in the last century, no country's birth certificate is more legitimate than that of Israel. One reason is that many of the men who founded the country—Theodore Herzl, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, David Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, and Yitzchak Shamir—were either lawyers or had legal training. They were obsessed with "making it legal."
Unlike almost every other country, lawyers, not generals, were the midwives of Israel's birth—or more accurately re-birth, since it had existed as an independent country twice before in history. Step by legal step Israel moved legally toward nationhood...
The phenomenon of questioning the very right of Israel to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people cannot be explained on legal grounds or on any other rational basis, for that matter. So, then, how can this worldwide attack on Israel alone be explained? Alan Dershowitz explains.