RISHON LEZION, Israel — Haim Watzman looks at the philosophical assumptions that underpin anti-Zionism and how they relate to the philosophy of land-ownership:
[Phillips] Brooks argues that the land on which the state of Israel was created belonged to the Palestinians. Therefore, it is stolen. Therefore, Israel is founded on a crime. Therefore there is no difference between the land Israel took in 1948 and in 1967; it’s all stolen and held illegitimately and the Jews should return whence they came.
Now, that might sound like a voice of conscience to the unthinking. But if you think it through, it’s based on a concept of originalism that makes no sense in the real world. In other words, for Brooks’ logic to work, there has to be some particular point in history in which the world’s territory was divided up fairly between different nations. Then bad nations started conquering peaceful ones to gain territory. Peace and justice can be regained if everyone goes back to where they came from.
But of course there was no such point in history. Brooks’ position also leads to logical absurdities. Where is the average Englishman, with his hopeless amalgamation of Celtic, Roman Saxon, Danish, and Norman French languages and gene pools, supposed to go? Should all the Arabs return to Arabia? Should India’s Aryan stock return to central Asia? What nation rightfully owns Malta? Istanbul? Honolulu?
Watzman is correct. The first mistake that anti-Zionists make is to claim that a country named Palestine and inhabited by an Arab people collectively named Palestinians existed prior to Israel’s statehood in 1948 — or even before the post-First World War mandate held by Great Britain after it gained control of the region from the crumbling Ottoman Empire. (This fallacy is frequently taught in countries in the Middle East and elsewhere in which school cirriculums are decided by depostic governments.)
In reality, the region known as Palestine was controlled by the Ottomans prior to 1918; various pieces of land were owned by people including Arab, absentee landlords; Jews who had either emigrated or lived there for centuries; Arab farmers and nomads; and various Christian and Islamic communities. Significant portions of land were vacant, arid desert. It was a mix of communities. Moreover, the Arabs who lived there — whether Muslim or Christian — were not known as Palestinians until many, many decades later. A man in Gaza City had little in common with someone in Ramallah; they were surely not united by any sense of a common, national identity beyond their Arab ethnicity and perhaps their religion.
The main mistake, however, is when anti-Zionists insist that all land — wherever it may be — should go back to their “original owners.” As Watzman notes, this is incredibly naive. Those anti-Semites on the American left probably feel that the United States was responsible for the massacre of native Americans and the settling of their land. Of course, they are correct — but I do not see anyone volunteering to return to Europe. Many racists on the American right who despise minorities likely come from Ireland and southern Europe countries — but their ancestors, when they first came to the United States, were denigrated by the Anglo-Saxons who forebearers had originally populated America.
My point is that no one has an inherent right to be anywhere. Humanity left Africa for the Middle East. From there, people spread to India, central Asia, and eastern Europe. Then China, southeast Asia, Australia, Russia, and western Europe. Then northeastern Asia and later North and South America. All of human history is filled with people settling, invading, and defending land.
The only things that separate the modern, Western world from barbarianism with respect to land-ownership are 1.) civil society; 2.) the rule of law; and 3.) the idea of national sovereignty. The only reasons that a person “owns” the ground inside a white, picket fence is the fact that he has a piece of paper saying so — along with a collective agreement within society to respect the document and a system of courts that will uphold its validity. Moreover, the idea stemming from the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 that newly-defined nation-states have sovereign borders and the right of jurisdiction in all internal affairs somewhat lessened primitive and medieval disputes over land.
However, these three points are only common agreements based in philosophy and pragmatism; they are not inherent in existence itself. In places where a civil society, the rule of law, and national sovereignty are either absent or in need of a firmer foundation — such as in both Israel and any forthcoming State of Palestine — then the Law of the Jungle rules.
Israel is ridden with political, social, and religious divisions (see here, here, and here) that have prevented any formation of a civil society for decades. The sovereignty of both Israel and any future Palestine are still up in the air as a result of disputed borders and occasional violence. Both the Israeli and Palestinian governments are rife with corruption.
What both ancient, world history and the modern, Middle East show is that the modern idea of land ownership rests on a shaky foundation that can be easily overtaken by current events. At the most basic level, the rightful owner of a piece of land might just be the answer to one question: Who can obtain and defend it the best?
