Israel's "Right to Exist" and other nonsensical things

<--Some day, I hope to be featured in an HonestReporting communique

So, as many of you know, I can be a bit of a grammatical stickler (92% according to my last test, though I think the Brits were mistaken about the question I got wrong). And on occasion, my stickler-self joins forces with my anti-Zionism, and I start complaining (free registration required) about the nonsensical phrase: Israel's right to exist.

Turns out, though, that someone beat me to the punch here, and did a far better job than I could have done. That somebody is named Sarree Makdisi (I guess it should be noted that this article is at least partially based on John Whitbeck's longer editorial in the Christian Science Monitor, but I think Makdisi's is better), and he wrote a rather good editorial in the LA Times:

First, the formal diplomatic language of "recognition" is traditionally used by one state with respect to another state. It is literally meaningless for a non-state to "recognize" a state. Moreover, in diplomacy, such recognition is supposed to be mutual. In order to earn its own recognition, Israel would have to simultaneously recognize the state of Palestine. This it steadfastly refuses to do (and for some reason, there are no high-minded newspaper editorials demanding that it do so).

Second, which Israel, precisely, are the Palestinians being asked to "recognize?" Israel has stubbornly refused to declare its own borders.

Now I think of myself as a reasonable man (note: others may disagree) so, even though I know that this editorial will surely provoke heated reactions from the American Zionist community, I expect those reactions to address the actual article. Enter HonestReporting, which released a communique entitled:

A radical UCLA professor questions Israel's "right to exist".

What makes him radical is just as mysterious as the reason they use a period at the end of a title, but I digress. He is not, in fact, questioning Israel's right to exist (though I fully support placing that phrase in quotation marks); he is questioning the sensibility of the phrase "right to exist". The former implies an acceptance of the concept and a rejection of the instance. It also implies that HonestReporting is illiterate, stupid, and/or malicious.

Seriously, read the LA Times article and then the HonestReporting article and try and find one place where the HR article actually addresses the arguments made by Makdisi.