I notice that many libertarians I find on the internet are very opposed to Zionism. Why is this? Is this due to anti-Semitism, or what is the reason for this? I would think that the libertarian position would be that the Jews had the right to form Israel in 1948, but the Palestinians have the right to secede from the country.
Zionism is an anathema to true libertarians. What was done to the Palestinians was one of the biggest rape and ethnic cleansings ever performed in the history of the earth. The Palestinians were forcibly dispossessed of their land. Obviously the forcible dispossession of land is a slap in the face to libertarianism.
This link will give you a view of the events that has been sanitized from U.S. Education Systems at the bidding of the Neo-conservatives and their Zionist partners.
http://www.palestineremembered.com/
A true libertarian is a natural enemy of both the philosophy and practitioners of Zionism and of their fellow scoundrels known as Neo-conservatives.
While Jews had a right to peacefully EMIGRATE to Palestine and settle on unoccupied land, they did NOT have the right to form the nation of Israel.
Palestinians were never given the choice to secede, they were forcibly cleansed from their rightful lands.
Both sides of the conflict, the Palestinians and the Jews, lay claim to the land which is now called Isreal.
The libertarian position would hold true to the non-aggression principle, and the mind your own business, MYOB, principle (not sure the latter is a libertarian principle, but seems to be true for most libertarians.)
The land was forced out of Palestine’s hands by the UN, and placed into the Jews after WWII, violating both of those above principles. If the Palestine and Isreal have disagreements over the land, let them figure it out on their own. The US nor any other country should be involved in their dispute.
As an ethnic “jew” myself, I have always been hostile to Zionism and Israel.
Zionism should be properly understood as a political ideology. In particular, an ultra-nationalist political ideology that supports what amounts to more or less a forcibly ethnically or religiously exclusive state. While Zionism’s roots may have started out in a seemingly innocent manner as the mere desire for a “Jewish homeland”, it has grown far beyond such simplicity and has become an all-encompassing political ideology that blatantly supports aggression as a means to its ends. The assumption that opposition to zionism is inherently anti-semetic is a PC taboo without much merit, especially considering the existance of people within the Jewish community around the world who are rather explicitly opposed to zionism.
The state of Israel was formed on the basis of land theft and cold blooded murder. This is of course not unique to Israel, since to some degree all nation-states have initially been formed through such methods of conquest, but it sticks out as a particularly blatant case of it. Many Palestinians were forcibly exiled from their own lands in order for certain Jews and particular European individuals who claimed Jewish descent to be moved onto it. The state of Israel continues to be a fairly aggressive state to this day. And while the radical Islamic side cannot be said to be entirely innocent in the matter, the media generally sides with Israel in a very unfair way. The Israel state most certainly is an aggressor, not merely engaging in defense.
The situation isn’t quite as clearcut as that. The 1967 borders were a de jure recognition of what de facto already existed: the areas allocated for Jews already had a supermajority of Jews, who got the land legally through buying and selling. If the situation were left alone for another few decades, the self-segregation of Jews and Arabs would have proceeded to the point that Israel existed all but officially. But the situation could not have been “left alone,” because the British ruled the territory and forcibly prevented Jewish immigration, and before that Turkey ruled the area and enforced Islamic law by which non-Muslims were second-class citizens and could be expropriated more or less at will.
The UN decision touched off Arab anger in a way that the fact of Jewish ownership prior to the decision did not, because it burst the illusion (or the reality) that Arabs were first-class citizens, and that the entire levant were part of dar al Islam. Without that decision, and under the Ottomans, the bubble would have burst years later, when Jews finished buying up lands in Jewish areas, and the Arabs would have responded simply by expropriating them of their lawfully-purchased property.
This doesn’t justify the UN decision, or the British mandate, or Ottoman rule, but it does point to the deficiency of the tale that the UN simply stole Arab land and handed it over to pesky European Jews.
–Len.
Yes, American soldiers should never be expcted to fight in a war and die for the benefit of another country or taxpayers have their money going to a foreign cause they might not agree with.
If your going to criticize the Zionists for doing all of those things to the Palestinians shoudn’t you also criticize the people who founded this country for doing pretty much the same thing to the Indians?
Yes, very true. But that doesn’t defeat the argument against the Zionist political agenda and the Israeli state. It puts it into a broader historical and comparative context. And it points to the proposition that nation-states are initially founded on some degree of conquest through devices such as land theft (which eventually institutionalizes itself into a territorial monopoly), intergenerational extortion (which eventually institutionalizes itself as taxation) and mass-murders. In the background, of course, this must be read against a framework of some degree of cooperation or patronage among the initial criminals involved.
I don’t know of any anti-Semitic libertarians.
Many libertarians are anti-Zionist because:
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The Jews had no “right” to take over the Arab land in Palestine.
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Jews were already living peacefully side by side with Christian and Muslim Arabs, but the Zionists decided to wage war on them and kick them off of their land, destroy their homes, etc.
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Zionism is a nationalistic, racist ideology that preaches hate against gentiles.
It appears that no one here is aware of these facts: that war has not been waged exclusively by the Israelis, that massacres of jews prior to the establishment of Israel were frequent, that the Israeli state has 3 million arabs, while a jew in the palestinian terroritory can’t be said to be safe at all, that muslim fundamentalists kill their own co-religionaries more often than Israeli civilians, that palestinian radical movements don’t want peace under any circumstance, that they are funded by states such as Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, in the past also Iraq, for reasons of domestic political stability (hate for the enemy makes the state healthier, and perpetual war means perpetual hatred).
There is only one solution: coexistance. And only one sure fact: palestinian political movements don’t want it. So, there will never be peace, and Sionism has nothing to do with that, unless one wants to defend the deportation of six million people. The sad fact is that the greatest problem of the palestinian people are their palestinian rulers and muslim neighbours…
For what concerns anti-semitism in libertarian movements, it appears that it is the sad consequence of a political tactics: libertarians in the eighties went closer to extreme-right movements such as white supremacists, segregationists, anti-semitists, full fledged conspirationists (now we can add 9/11 truthers) and other extremists… all this is absolutely harmful to libertarianism, even much more dangerous than the new-leftism of the '60… at least hashish smokers have never harmed anyone…
The Zionist political movement doesn’t seem to want it either. They are no less aggressive than the radical Muslims. Both sides deserve some level of blame. But as far as the institutional problem goes, the Israel state in and of itself and the tactics used is a significant contributor to the hostile nature of the situation.
And I don’t believe I’ve seen anyone suggest mass-deportations in this thread. Part of the complaint or beef with the Israeli state is that it forcibly exiled people from what was originally their property. This is a valid beef to have. I can tell you one thing. Hegemony with the U.S. and a militaristic policy of the Israeli state is not going to lead to peaceful coexistance. It will only be inflammatory and it has been so for quite some time.
There is a degree of truth to this. Rothbard shifted his alliances more in the direction of paleoconservatives and white nationalists in the 80’s and early 90’s. I believe that alliance started to fray, however, around the time Rothbard died. Furthermore, I don’t lump all opposition to Zionism into those movements. It is fallacious to assume that all opposition to the Israeli state and Zionism comes from anti-semites, white nationalists and the like. There are even Jewish anti-zionist movements.
A majority of Israelis support a two-state solution. Israelis march in support of Palestinian causes. Palestinians are not only protected by the geneva convention, but by the Israeli constitution–in other words, they can sue the Israeli military in civil court, and have won.
That doesn’t mean abuses never happen, but good luck finding Palestinians who support a two-state solution, or respect the Israelis’ basic human rights. The David-and-Goliath-story-with-Israel-as-Goliath is mostly myth.
–Len.
Cry me a river. You should have thought of that before you decided to plop yourself down on the front porch of a billion Arabs. I really could care less who wins your intra-ethnic conflict. I just hope it ends soon enough that I can finally quit paying both sides not to fight, and the Middle East can sink back into dusty, ignorant obscurity.
That’s probably a reaction to the Jewish Marxist vanguard of the Great Society, and who have brought their socialist baggage with them to the Republican Party, where they’ve hijacked American foreign policy to benefit a small group of paranoid nihilists with no oil.
Hehe that is pretty much my position on it too.
@Mark B - What a load of pathetic nonsense. The Palestinians were only evicted after the vast majority of them attacked the Jewish community with the intention of destroying it. You clearly know nothing about the history and get your facts from ultra-leftist websites like that one above. Read Benny Morris’ “Righteous Victims”, it’s been praised by both sides.
It’s not the simple situation its often made to be. Who fired the fists shot? The Israelis who wanted their own state? Or the Arabs who where strongly opposed to further mass Jewish emigration? It makes all the difference on earth and yet I seldom hear the point discussed.
Perhaps the situation precipitated when the settlers tried to erect their state, or perhaps their mere presence set a chain reaction of attacks and counter-attacks in place. If this was the case, I cannot help thinking that the whole mess was horrible but inevitable, and just a modern repetition of what has gone down thousands of times in history, before states ever existed.
Now, has no ‘right’ to exist, but neither does any other state. And given that there are states around, the more states there are the better. So, one cannot say a priori that should not exist.
So for me, the Israelis where mistaken in seeking a state (especially one that encompassed Arab lands), but I certainly would not say that this makes them fully guilty of the Arab flight. Perhaps it was inevitable.
Zionism is not nationalistic. It merely opinion that if Jews cannot get justice insofar as property in life in some countries, they could buy land elsewhere and then secede and form their own government. This is very classical liberal point of view. That is, right to buy, right to secede, right to defend property.
This is what did happen, but large landowners in that part of the world said that all buying of land by Jews is not valid, because contracts made between Jews and Muslims cannot be valid if Jews decide to secede from Muslim government.
Then there was war, which attackers lost, and they have been angry ever since. They lost territory which they used as base to attack from, as in any war between any countries, but apparently rules which are valid for other nations are not to be granted to Jews?
There is parable by Ambrose Bierce to explain all anger at Israel for what it really is:
"People of Madagonia had antipathy to people of Novakatka and set upon some sailors of a Novakatkan vessel, killing two and wounding twelve.
"King of Madagonia having refused either to apologise or pay, King of Novakatka made war upon him, saying that it was necessary to show that Novakatkans must not be slaughtered.
“In the battles which ensued the people of Madagonia slaughtered two thousand Novakatkans and wounded twelve thousand, but the Madagonians were unsuccessful and lost this war, which so chagrined them that never thereafter in all their land was a Novakatkan secure in property or life.”
Lol I’m always shocked to hear about “pro israeli” or israeli sympathizers from libertarian folks. As for Zionism not being nationalistic…
I’m pretty sure that’s the Jewish symbol, a star of david, enough said.
Well, provided you’re ready to get rid of the crosses in the flags of Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, we can start talking about the Judeocentrism of Israel’s vexillogy. Most Israelis these days are only cultural Jews, with the Orthodox and Hasidics being to Israeli society what the “Bible Belt” is to the US. Though, estimates do vary wildly on the secularity of Israelis, depending on the criteria you use. About half don’t keep the Sabbath, for starters, and the only real influence the Chief Rabbinate possesses outside of the usual “births, deaths and marriages” trinity (well, there’s conversions and folks can submit doctrinal questions too, but anyhow…) is over certification of kosher goods and administration of holy sites like the Kotel. It’s definitely not a Jewish version of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Taliban-Afghanistan or other places where believing in the wrong deity can get you stoned in the non-Californian manner.
In any case, what’s wrong with a country being nationally based? Homogenous nation-states like the Roman Republic, Austro-Hungarian and German Empires or modern day Mexico are a hell of a lot better from a dozen different perspectives than multiculturalist theocracies like the EU or Britain. Nobody ever kicks up a fuss when the Japanese prefer their country to be Yamato, or the Chinese any of the 50-some ethnicities in their jurisdiction. So what’s wrong with, say, Britain being culturally (not ethnically, necessarily. Wouldn’t work with the whole English-Welsh-Scottish-Irish thing anyhow) British? Or America American?
You’re right. Nationalism is not wrong or anti-libertarian at all. Rothbard wrote about this.
Nationalism is as anti-libertarian as love of one’s family is anti-libertarian.