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Notes -
American Heritage Dictionary, first thing I see when DuckDuckGoing the word:
What law do states submit to but natural law? Justifiable (morally) is the sense I am using, that is definition 3. Based on logical reasoning may seem different but I also hold to the reason theory of justice/legitimacy. So again, the question is more why people are insisting that I can't use the word. It's not weird at all that I'm using it, it's weird that there is difficulty understanding what I mean.
As for whether the state is immoral, maybe. I think I mean something deeper though, that is, whether there is any moral authority, while whether a state is immoral might be seen as less fundamental; a state might have moral authority but be temporarily immoral. Like their King, Solomon. He was immoral but they think he had moral authority / legitimacy. I would like to argue whether he had any moral authority (legitimacy) at all.
Another example, over 200 years ago: legitimists. Somehow everyone understood what they meant when they said Napoleon was not legitimate. They had a specific theory of legitimacy, birth right based on another aristocratic law, which I disagree with but not on the basis that I literally cannot understand their that concept differs from might.
I think my definition fits all of those? It's like the "legitimate" business of a shady scrap salesman who does everything by the books but doesn't ask any more questions than required about where the copper wire the crack head brought him was sourced from. It's only really tricky because there are not widely agreed upon international "rules". So we're left with conventions, comparisons and recognition. It's hard to find some criteria in which Israel is not legitimate without knocking some other widely agreed to be legitimate state out of the category. It's recognize by other states, even ones that condemn it. It polices it's borders. It maintains rule of law and administers basic services to its constituents. The largest thing it's missing is defined borders because it got into the state it is now after a series of wars where it established control of areas of at the time attacking Egypt and Jordan but didn't annex those territories. These are just observations, and if I were to draw a line around the "legitimate states" I would find it difficult to justify a line that doesn't include Israel.
Whether a state is legitimate or not says to me something about its relationship to other states and the expectation of its citizens. Whether what a state does it moral seems to be the thing you're actually interrogating and it's getting hung up on this diction.
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