National borders have been a fundamental issue in the Middle East for a century. The year marks the hundredth anniversary of the secret British-French Sykes-Picot agreement which carved up Middle Eastern parts of Ottoman Empire in anticipation of a Turkish defeat in World War I.[i] As with most Asian and African territories, twentieth century Middle Eastern borders were fixed on a basis of settlement, great power politics and war. For those who work for the destruction of the state of Israel, the question of its borders is irrelevant. But everyone else, the nature and viability of Israel’s borders is a crucial issue. Israel’s current borders include the original areas marked for Israel in the United Nations’ partition Resolution 181 of 1947, some additional territory gained after the War of Independence and retained by Israel in the cease-fire agreements of 1949, and the territories occupied as a result of the Six Day War of 1967 (minus the Sinai peninsula which Israel returned to Egypt following the signing of the peace accord of 1979). The legitimacy of these borders has provided much ammunition for anti-Israel warriors. International law and history, however, are clear–not only does Israel have a right to its own land and the occupied territories until a final peace treaty is declared but has a legitimate legal claim to “all of the hotly disputed areas of Jerusalem (including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and even potentially the Gaza Strip (though not the Golan Heights.”[ii] Law professors Abraham Bell and Eugene Kontorovich have written a brilliant article, “Palestine, Uti Possidetis Juris and the Borders of Israel,” which demonstrates the justice of this statement.[iii] The international law concept principle of “Uti possidetis” provides that new countries should get the same borders as their former colonies or dependicies had. As Konrovich use the term, uti possidetis , “as a rule of customary international law, is applied to all cases of state formation, from decolonization in Africa, to the collapse of the Soviet Union to the separation of Czechoslovakia. Moreover, the doctrine trumps claims of self-determination, and any other kind of equitable objection to the fomer administrative boundaries.”[iv] Bell and Kontorovich in their law review article demonstrate that, notwithstanding contemporary and later protests, every other mandatory boundary line was adhered to and accepted and became the border of the successor state, accepted by the international community, except for the borders of Israel. None of the other mandatory countries had single religious or ethnic populations; all were made to accept legal precedent. The exception to the rule: Israel.[v] Which brings us to other kinds of borders, the ones on which e-journal Borderlands focuses. Last year it published “The ‘Right to Main: Disablement and Humanist Biopolitics in Palestine,” by Jasbir Puar. Professor Puar has been recently in the news because of her talk at Vassar where she raised accused Israelis of harvesting the organs of Palestinians, invoking the ancient blood libel against Jews and claimed that her personal observation was that 95 percent of Palestinians were permanently disabled.[vi] Puar writes almost unintelligible Orwellian double speak language devoid of normal meaning. Her article’s summary states that “Israel manifests an implicit right claim to the ‘right to maim” and debilitate Palestinian bodies and environments. . the policy of maiming is a productive one, a form of weaponized epigenetics.”[vii] “Epigentics” just to clarify, means “relating to, or produced by the chain of developmental processes in epigenesis that lead from genotype to phenotype after the initial action of the genes. [viii] Also note the use of the word “implicit,” modifying the ‘right to maim’. In other words, Israel’s right to national self-defense, the most basic legal right of any government, has been turned into indiscriminate mutilation. Just like terrorists who hide behind civilian hospitals, Puar hides behind incomprehensible language and misused concepts to launch an attack which would be laughable if it were clearly written. The concept of “borderlands” has become a staple of academic study during the last twenty years. You can have imagined borders, removed borders and borders of the mind. There are scores of books with “Borderlands” in their titles, academic journals on Borderlands and even an Association of Borderland Studies. There is much to admire in what used to be known, more plainly, as transnational studies. But in the hands of anti-Israel forces, borderlands is just one more weapon in their unbending crusade to destroy Israel. [i] At the time what we think of as the “Middle East” was known as the Near East, the Middle East being the accepted term for the Indian Sub-Continent The terminology changed gradually in the 1940s and 1950s as the Anglo-American wartime usage of ” Middle Eastern Command” took root. [ii] Eugene Kontorovich, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/, March 10, 2016. See also, Diane B. Kunz, “Israel: Facts, Not Fiction,” http://www.brandeiscenter.com/, March 1, 2016. [iii] Forthcoming, the Arizona Law Review. [iv] id. [v] In addition, the British government, kicked Israel, alone of all the successor states, out of its financial bloc, known as the sterling area. In the event, Israel was probably better off. [vi] Ziva Dahl, “Vassar Jewish Studies Sponsors Demonization of Israel…Again,” http://observer.com/2016/02/vassar-jewish-studies-sponsors-demonization-of-israel-again/ [vii] Jasbir K. Puar, “The ‘Right to Maim: Disablement and Inhumanist Biopolitics in Palestine,” Borderlands e- journal, volume 14, Number 1, 2015, www.borderlands.net .au. [viii] Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epigenetic