Think of a country. Any country. Let's say Zimbabwe. Can you imagine anyone suggesting about Zimbabwe that its right to exist as a country entitles its government to do whatever it wants with impunity? It seems unlikely, since Mugabe's regime is freely criticized throughout the democratic world and, to the best of my knowledge, those questioning Zimbabwe's right to exist are few. Let's try Australia. Does the fact that Australia is widely thought to be a legitimate sovereign state and one that has a democratic polity mean that it is immune from committing questionable or illegal acts? Has anyone ever suggested this? Again, as far as I know, not many. And yet Australia was part of the 'coalition of the willing' which went to war in Iraq, an action seen by a lot of people as questionable, and by some as illegal even. Or we could take the US. Right to exist generally accepted, one of the world's democracies - and yet condemned by many across the globe for the Iraq war.
So you might wonder why Peter Beaumont should go to the trouble of arguing that Israel's right to exist doesn't mean that the Israeli government can act with impunity. But this is what he does go to the trouble of arguing. Peter's argument draws on a set of distinctions from Ian Clark's Legitimacy in International Society showing that legitimacy is not a single and simple idea but a number of 'overlapping concepts'. Peter mentions three: the sovereign integrity of a country, amounting to possession of a recognized right to exist; the internal legitimacy of a state vis-à-vis the people within its jurisdiction (and established within democracies electorally); and a more general reputational legitimacy in the eyes of the world, based on 'appropriate forms of... conduct', and undermined (one may presume) or even forfeited by legally or morally wayward courses of action. Using these distinctions, Peter concludes that Israel's legitimacy in the first and/or second meanings doesn't automatically yield its legitimacy in the third meaning. Hence the country's right to exist doesn't justify rejecting criticism of it as in itself unacceptable through being delegitimizing of the very existence of the state.
I say that you might wonder why Peter should go to this trouble, because though there are doubtless people defensive of Israel's reputation who do try to block all criticism of the country by misrepresenting it as delegitimizing in the crucial meaning here (i.e. directed against the existence of Israel as such), this is a futile plea, persuasive to very few. You can tell that it is by simply considering the huge volume of criticism to which Israeli policy is subject - over the occupation, over the settlements, over the negotiating stance of the Netanyahu government, and much more - plenty of this criticism coming from people, including avowed Zionists, who do not in any way question Israel's right to exist but rather affirm it. So... You want to criticize Zimbabwe, Australia, the US, any country? Go ahead. And you want to criticize Israel? Bevakasha, as the word is.
However, you could play Peter's three legitimacies the other way. You could say that while some people, by whom very few are persuaded, attempt to block all criticism of Israel on the grounds that it delegitimizes the very existence of the state, there are plenty of others who run together criticism of Israeli government policy with, precisely, either attempts to challenge the legitimacy of the country's existence or attempts to single it out for especially unfavourable treatment (as in the disproportionate attention given it in the UN Human Rights Council and in boycott and divestment campaigns), or both. What does Peter think of this sort of fudging of the distinctions he has carefully drawn? Well, he doesn't say. The only mention that delegitimizing Israel's existence receives from him is indirect: this is, he suggests, a dubious ploy of 'pro-Israel activism'. That there is much anti-Israel activism which does deny Israel's legitimacy as a sovereign nation; that, indeed, this denial has been part of the context of Middle East politics ever since Israel's foundation; that a prominent Palestinian organization, Hamas, even now refuses to acknowledge Israel's right to exist; and that a section of the international liberal-left more or less goes along with this, seeing Israel as a last colonial-imperial outpost and not as a legitimate national expression of the Jewish people: these are facts that appear not to merit Peter's consideration.
Which, though, is the bigger problem - for peace in the region and in general? The fact that some propagandists for Israel misuse the delegitimization charge to try - altogether unsuccessfully, it should be said - to fend off criticism of Israeli governments and Israeli policies? Or the fact that there is this one country in the world, a Jewish country, that is treated by many as a pariah amongst nations, its right to exist put in question or simply rejected by them, its misconduct represented as not merely bad but as singularly bad?
If Peter has reasons for thinking that a lame pro-Israel propaganda effort in this matter is the more worrying issue, I'd be interested to know what they are. He doesn't say. I'm of the opposite opinion. I think hostility to Israel, going beyond what a critical stance towards the country's conduct vis-à-vis the Palestinians deserves, is the bigger problem. This should be more troubling to more people than it appears currently to be. Look at it this way. Israel is like every other country on the planet in being open to public, even forthright, criticism irrespective of its legitimate claim to existence as a sovereign state. Yet Peter wants to insist on the relevance of this combination in Israel's case alone. But Israel is unlike the vast majority of other countries in having its right to exist denied by many people, both in the region and beyond. Yet Peter's worry on this point is that the concern over efforts to delegitimize the country as a sovereign entity are merely apologia.