Alex: thanks for your support. I'm ambivalent about this. On the one hand, I do agree with you that I've been mistreated. Not in the criticisms. but, rather, in not being allowed to respond. On the other hand, maybe it is inertia, maybe it is optimism, but I've been associate with the MI since its very inception, decades ago, and before that with the Rothbard living room crowd, which I regard as a precursor of sorts of the MI, and thus I hate to sever my connection with this organization. On the third hand, I hope that one day they will give up on their Israeli Derangement Syndrome, and at least allow debate on this issue. On the fourth hand, only my Senior Fellowship has been revoked. I am still invited to Mises events, allowed to blog there (on non Israeli issues). I still donate $ to the MI. As I say, I am very ambivalent. But I do appreciate your support. Best regards, Walter
Dear Scott: thanks for your kind words. Please give me a few examples of the stiltedness. I'm always trying to improve the quality of my writing. Best regards, Walter wblock@loyno.edu
Kudos, Walter. You left no loopholes to argue. Hoppe’s ignorance is not to be confused with naïveté. It is deliberate.
The extreme animosity targeting a sliver of land no larger than New Jersey, in and of itself is insane, but to create a false vision of ejecting erudite,accomplished, kindly souls from lovely, well established surburban style neighborhoods is grotesque. The land was an uninhabitable, arid desert. Sand and rocks without irrigation, plumbing or vegetation. Oh , and the Dead Sea. Emphasis on “ dead”. The Palestinians practice “ taqi’a”. A tenet of Islam using lies and trickery to gain sympathy. The most absurd attempt was a group of Palestinian “ victims”, lamenting the Israelis not allowing them to “ fish” in the Dead Sea. Usurping all the delicious bounty for themselves while the poor, mistreated Palestinians starved. SNL in its heyday couldn’t have put forth a more hilarious skit.
And here’s the real kicker. Gaza belonged to Egypt. Israel took it after being simultaneously attacked by Egypt and surrounding nations . Tiny, fledging Israel miraculously won the war. In six days! Israel then cultivated the shithole that was Gaza. Sophisticated irrigation, amazing greenhouses, hospitals, schools, housing, beautiful paved thoroughfares with manicured medians. Shops, markets , restaurants. It was an oasis in the desert. Could have been the Singapore of the Middle East. Within days of Israel ceding Gaza for a Peace Treaty,thousands of Israelis left all their worldly goods without a fight… The Palestinians destroyed it. Ripped up the irrigation system to make weapons to attack Israel. They decimated the greenhouses, destroying the food supply. The hospitals and schools became terror headquarters used as weapons storage.More ironic still, with the now huge swath of land afforded the Palestinians,why was Gaza so overcrowded? Because the leadership and the Uber-wealthy who profit from pimping them live like royalty. Huge, luxurious estates in the hills beyond Gaza, shoving the pawns into the areas nearest Israel’s border for staging. Israel first offered to give Gaza back to Egypt. They’d forged a standing treaty. Egypt said thanks, no no thanks. They has enough of the Palestinians, having banned and purged the Muslim Brotherhood, labeled a terrorist entity.Hamas is a MB offshoot. When the Hamas terrorists continued perpetrating attacks on Egypt, not only did Egypt build an adjoining wall with Israel, but a literal fortress, also razing a huge swath of Palestinian land as a buffer zone and… drumroll…. flooded the Hamas tunnels with far worse than mere water, rendering them obsolete. Amazingly, an earthquake didn’t ensue. Funny there’s no “ outrage” from the world international. As funny as the lack of ire regarding 25,000 Palestinians slaughtered when they abused their welcome status in Jordan by attempting a coup and takeover. Or how under the Hezbollah faction, they’ve taken over formerly Christian Lebanon. Formerly know as the jewel of the Middle East.
There is no “ Palestine” or Palestinian people. It was a region , the people were nomadic cast offs from other regions and former “ occupiers”. Primarily the Turks.And the Iranians are not Arabs. They are Persian, speak Farsi and were hijacked by the CommunoIslamoFascist Mullah regime.The Red/Green Alliance hijacking universities, institutions and venues worldwide. Yesterday, the delightful Keffiyahs For Kristolnacht Kinder held a protest at Auschwitz as Holocaust survivors paid their respect to those who perished. Hey Hans! Remember those glorious days when the Nazis , your German brethren took Hungary , Poland, , Austria and a sundry assortment of European delights? Howza ‘bout Russia invading Ukraine and Venezuela readying to take Guyana? You’re down with it. Siding with Russia and Maduro. And since you so staunchly oppose taking another’s land, it must infuriate you knowing America stole the land from Mexico, indigenous people, Pacific Islanders, the Inuits, Guam, Liberia … Canada must make your blood boil! Between the French, the Scots and the Brits, that’s a helluva lot of genocide and theft! Are you seething over the British West Indies,British Mandate Palestine, Rhodesia, Australia the British penal colony? The felonious French theft of Algeria, New Guinea, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Morocco? The Spaniards? Those nifty hombres didn’t earn the name “ Conquistadors “ by feigning pacifism Your beloved Ottoman Empire marauders? The Romans? It’s all good. They’re not those lousy Jew-bastard Zionist savages!
Israel doesn’t demolish churches, mosques or holy sites. 20 % of Israelis are Christian. 18% are Arab Muslims. There are Druze, Bedouins, Yazidis,Hindus,Buddhists, atheists, a large LGBTQ community and tourist destination. Everybody is free to worship as they please. Equal opportunity , equal wage employment, an Arab party in the Knesset, Arabs serve in the courts, Gays and trans serve in the military. Everybody is afforded healthcare… including the Palestinians who hate them.
And as per Tucker Carlson’s recent idiocy with the Pastor claiming Christians are mistreated in Israel… well, Bethlehem is in Palestinian territory.Less than 500 Christians remain in Palestine. The rest fled to Israel , escaping persecution in the Middle East, primarily Palestine, Iraq,Lebanon and Yemen.
Try again Hans. You spend a lot of time in Turkey. Likely thrilled by Erdogan’s persecution of the Kurds, Jews and Christians.If you overlay Hitler’s photo transparency atop Erdogan’s image, it’s a chilling likeness.
Hoppe has a vision of libertarian “ purity”. His vision. It’s bastardized. When striving for ideological purity, the inevitable outcome is human travesty. Cultism. Quashing free will, spirituality, creativity , happiness and prosperity. Replaced by fear, distrust, animus and violence. Whether coups, wars, genocide… all those utopian visions of a perfect society require unilateral collectivism and scapegoats. Communism, fascism, socialism, corporatism, globalism, theocracy all revolve around “ purism”.
Including the two party system that has become so untenable in its left/right extremism and demand for lockstep loyalty. Excluded is what made up the most robust, well adjusted, pragmatic 50% of the American constituency. The center, now a gaping hole swallowing us.
Hoppe’s version of libertarianism is a bastardized excuse for his intolerance.
For the record, Hans, Walter is , in fact, a very nice guy. Can’t say the same for you.
imo, Lew Rockwell needs to publish this excellent an' even-handed rebuttal--clearly my just sayin' this will inflame some no end but I believe in a debate (or fairly blatant defamation as it were...) all parties should get their soapbox time (An' let readers libertarian, contrarian, an' otherwise-inclined judge for themselves) I "wuz" wonderin' when this would come out, bemused by the looong silence... now this more robust and carefully researched response makes sense
Excellent rebuttal! Unfortunately, instead of publishing it, Mises Institute decided to "cancel" you by removing you as an Senior Fellow, and this "campaign" is going on - today Thomas DeLorenzo wrote the article saying that you are "not the kind of person the Mises Institute can any longer be associated with". With regret, today I requested to cancel my Mises Institute's Sustaining member subscription. If Mises Institute cannot any longer be associated with Dr. Block and waged "cancel" campaign against him, I cannot any longer be associated with Mises Institute.
Professor Block: We met a few times, once in San Francisco when you debated Sharon Presley about abortion at my wife's supper club, as well as some of the times when you spoke at conferences held by Liberty International (formerly the International Society for Individual Liberty). If I'm lucky, you might remember me.
I am entirely in agreement with you about Israel vs Hamas as well as Hoppe, but I believe your argument can be strengthened in some ways. I also think that I can shed some light on where Hoppe's coming from, despite not knowing him personally as well as you.
Your argument can be summarized as: 1) Hoppe's theory is a mixture of good (libertarian) and bad (conservative) ideas; 2) Hoppe's criticism of Israel consists of judging it out of context by an absolute standard; 3) Hoppe gets much of his history wrong. I concur with all of these conclusions.
To elaborate on 1, Hoppe has a bad habit of only paraphrasing his opponents' ideas, often misrepresenting them in the process - as you have rightly noted. He also has a bad habit of only implying and insinuating things, without stating stating them fully and explicitly. Rather, he refers to them, expects his audiences agree with him if they share his implicit assumptions, and leaves himself room to deny them if his audience doesn't share those assumptions - a classic motte-and-bailey fallacy. Specifically, he assumes a large amount of traditional German conservative "volkisch" thought - German nationalism. He advocates "market nationalism," and his objection to Nazism seems to be limited to its socialism, not its nationalism. However, both parts of that are wrong. Similarly, his defense of Marxist class theory only disagrees with the socialist aspect of Marxism, not the rest, but that is also mistaken, as I have argued at here:
When he refers to "the family," he seems to have in mind a specific type of family structure, known as the "authoritarian nuclear family," which has primogeniture (the eldest son inheriting everything), and in which land ownership is highly concentrated within families with eldest sons owning it all and allowing family members and others to live on it at his will, as the paterfamilias. (For more on this type of family structure, see this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RFFwhbVqeU).
Hoppe's ideal society seems to be medieval Germany, but he misrepresents that, just like his misrepresentation of the ghettos that you mentioned. Medieval Germany had many overlapping legal jurisdictions, some of which were territorial, some not. Manorial and urban law was territorial, but feudal law, canon law, and mercantile law were not. The same person in the same place might be subject to the jurisdiction of multiple legal authorities, which means that if someone had a grievance against them that couldn't be resolved by one jurisdiction then a competing one might be able to do it. In Hoppe's theory, all legal competition is inter-territorial, with no non-territorial or inter-territorial competition. Thus, Hoppe's theory allows for much less competition and thus much less actual freedom than medieval Western Europe.
You are exactly correct about Hoppe's double-standard judgement of Israel but not Hamas or the other Arabs in conflict with Israel, so I will not comment on that further, except to point out that Hoppe's method is the same as that of Marxists who hold actually-existing capitalism to an absolute standard of judgement, while either not judging actually-existing socialism at all or making all sorts of contextual excuses for it.
As for some specific recent war measures Hoppe measures, you could also point out that the IDF's war on Hamas has been conducted in a far more discriminate manner than not only the Allies in WWII, but moreso than the US in Fallujah and other recent examples of urban combat, too.
Also, when it comes to US aid to Israel, you rightly note that it largely consists of US subsidies to the US arms industry, but you seem to miss the point that it consists of loan guarantees to Israel for loans which can only be used to purchase US arms, which loans carry interest, and which are always repaid by Israel in full. That is quite different from much other US foreign aid, which simply consists of direct transfers of money.
Unfortunately, you seem to share Hoppe's misunderstanding of the bombings of Germany and Japan in WWII. While they were far more indiscriminate than would be needed today with 70+ years of technological advancement in navigation, targeting, and munitions, they were justified on the context of their times, as argued at length in many recent military history books and articles such as may be found here:
Finally, I will leave you with my own anti-Hamas rant, in the hopes that you will enjoy it:
The Palestinians sided w/ the Central Powers in WWI, the Nazis in WWII, the Soviets in the Cold War, Saddam in the Gulf War & the Iraq War, w/ the Taliban after 9/11, w/ Qadaffi in 2011, w/ Morsi's dictatorship in Egypt, & w/ Assad in the Syrian civil war.
They assassinated the king of Jordan in 1951, and tried to overthrow another king of Jordan in 1970, & started a civil war in Lebanon leading to Israeli & Syrian occupation there. They supported Idi Amin's genocidal regime in Uganda, and were trained by the Stasi in Libya along w/ the IRA & the Baader-Meinhof gang (whose German women they raped). A Palestinian assassinated Robert F. Kennedy while he was running for President of the USA.
The Palestinians pioneered the hijacking of passenger jets all over the West, as well as blowing up planes even in neutral countries like Switzerland. They helped Baader-Meinhof hijack an Air France plane to Uganda, separating the Jews from their hundreds of hostages, before their rescue by the IDF.
Egypt & Jordan made peace w/ Israel decades ago. The Palestinians have refused every peace offer Israel ever made, including ones offering more than 90% of Gaza & the West Bank. They responded w/ suicide bombings of pizza parlors, then rocket attacks after they were quarantined behind a wall, then paragliders after their rockets were neutralized by Israeli air defense.
The Palestinians have their own dedicated UN relief agency, & are served by many other NGOs. They've gotten as much foreign aid per capita as Japan after WWII. Their population & economy was the fastest-growing in the world from 1967 to 1987, when the First Intifada began. Their biggest health problem is obesity. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans leave their luxury homes each year to vacation in Turkey & elsewhere, by way of Egypt.
Hamas turned pipes from Gaza's water network into rocket launch tubes, then they complain when Israel cuts off their water. Hamas rocket misfires damage Gaza's power grid, then they complain when Israel stops giving them free electricity. Palestinian families watching TV in Israeli hospital waiting rooms where their family members are getting free medical treatment cheer when they see news of Palestinian suicide bombers blowing up civilian targets.
The ancient Roman senator Cato ended every speech during the Punic Wars with "Carthago delenda est," "Carthage must be destroyed." It was.
I’m so glad you guys wrote this. My only criticism is that the English is a bit stilted at times and thus made the paper occasionally uncomfortable to read. Other than that, excellent work
Instead of tarnishing your name as a libertarian researcher, you should have just stated the facts. The appropriate response to Hoppe is as follows:
Dear Hoppe, I, Block, want to bring Jesus Christ back to bring Armageddon. As a result, I am turning off my intellect to support Israel's genocide and looting of Palestinian private property. I might turn on my brain once this atrocity is over.
Alex: thanks for your support. I'm ambivalent about this. On the one hand, I do agree with you that I've been mistreated. Not in the criticisms. but, rather, in not being allowed to respond. On the other hand, maybe it is inertia, maybe it is optimism, but I've been associate with the MI since its very inception, decades ago, and before that with the Rothbard living room crowd, which I regard as a precursor of sorts of the MI, and thus I hate to sever my connection with this organization. On the third hand, I hope that one day they will give up on their Israeli Derangement Syndrome, and at least allow debate on this issue. On the fourth hand, only my Senior Fellowship has been revoked. I am still invited to Mises events, allowed to blog there (on non Israeli issues). I still donate $ to the MI. As I say, I am very ambivalent. But I do appreciate your support. Best regards, Walter
Dear Aman: Thanks for your advice. Best regards, Walter
I'm looking forward to our interview 😁 Dr Block!
PS:"Aman" seems like a pleasant fellow doesn't he?
Dear Tim (fellow old duffer): Well said. I urge you to elaborate on this a bit and get it published. Best regards,
Walter
Dear Danny: me too. Best regards, Walter
Dear Scott: thanks for your kind words. Please give me a few examples of the stiltedness. I'm always trying to improve the quality of my writing. Best regards, Walter wblock@loyno.edu
Dear Daisy: I agree with you fully and enthusiastically. Best regards, Walter
yes, I read Hoppe's open letter. how else could I have replied to it?
I had asked Daisy the question.
Kudos, Walter. You left no loopholes to argue. Hoppe’s ignorance is not to be confused with naïveté. It is deliberate.
The extreme animosity targeting a sliver of land no larger than New Jersey, in and of itself is insane, but to create a false vision of ejecting erudite,accomplished, kindly souls from lovely, well established surburban style neighborhoods is grotesque. The land was an uninhabitable, arid desert. Sand and rocks without irrigation, plumbing or vegetation. Oh , and the Dead Sea. Emphasis on “ dead”. The Palestinians practice “ taqi’a”. A tenet of Islam using lies and trickery to gain sympathy. The most absurd attempt was a group of Palestinian “ victims”, lamenting the Israelis not allowing them to “ fish” in the Dead Sea. Usurping all the delicious bounty for themselves while the poor, mistreated Palestinians starved. SNL in its heyday couldn’t have put forth a more hilarious skit.
And here’s the real kicker. Gaza belonged to Egypt. Israel took it after being simultaneously attacked by Egypt and surrounding nations . Tiny, fledging Israel miraculously won the war. In six days! Israel then cultivated the shithole that was Gaza. Sophisticated irrigation, amazing greenhouses, hospitals, schools, housing, beautiful paved thoroughfares with manicured medians. Shops, markets , restaurants. It was an oasis in the desert. Could have been the Singapore of the Middle East. Within days of Israel ceding Gaza for a Peace Treaty,thousands of Israelis left all their worldly goods without a fight… The Palestinians destroyed it. Ripped up the irrigation system to make weapons to attack Israel. They decimated the greenhouses, destroying the food supply. The hospitals and schools became terror headquarters used as weapons storage.More ironic still, with the now huge swath of land afforded the Palestinians,why was Gaza so overcrowded? Because the leadership and the Uber-wealthy who profit from pimping them live like royalty. Huge, luxurious estates in the hills beyond Gaza, shoving the pawns into the areas nearest Israel’s border for staging. Israel first offered to give Gaza back to Egypt. They’d forged a standing treaty. Egypt said thanks, no no thanks. They has enough of the Palestinians, having banned and purged the Muslim Brotherhood, labeled a terrorist entity.Hamas is a MB offshoot. When the Hamas terrorists continued perpetrating attacks on Egypt, not only did Egypt build an adjoining wall with Israel, but a literal fortress, also razing a huge swath of Palestinian land as a buffer zone and… drumroll…. flooded the Hamas tunnels with far worse than mere water, rendering them obsolete. Amazingly, an earthquake didn’t ensue. Funny there’s no “ outrage” from the world international. As funny as the lack of ire regarding 25,000 Palestinians slaughtered when they abused their welcome status in Jordan by attempting a coup and takeover. Or how under the Hezbollah faction, they’ve taken over formerly Christian Lebanon. Formerly know as the jewel of the Middle East.
There is no “ Palestine” or Palestinian people. It was a region , the people were nomadic cast offs from other regions and former “ occupiers”. Primarily the Turks.And the Iranians are not Arabs. They are Persian, speak Farsi and were hijacked by the CommunoIslamoFascist Mullah regime.The Red/Green Alliance hijacking universities, institutions and venues worldwide. Yesterday, the delightful Keffiyahs For Kristolnacht Kinder held a protest at Auschwitz as Holocaust survivors paid their respect to those who perished. Hey Hans! Remember those glorious days when the Nazis , your German brethren took Hungary , Poland, , Austria and a sundry assortment of European delights? Howza ‘bout Russia invading Ukraine and Venezuela readying to take Guyana? You’re down with it. Siding with Russia and Maduro. And since you so staunchly oppose taking another’s land, it must infuriate you knowing America stole the land from Mexico, indigenous people, Pacific Islanders, the Inuits, Guam, Liberia … Canada must make your blood boil! Between the French, the Scots and the Brits, that’s a helluva lot of genocide and theft! Are you seething over the British West Indies,British Mandate Palestine, Rhodesia, Australia the British penal colony? The felonious French theft of Algeria, New Guinea, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Morocco? The Spaniards? Those nifty hombres didn’t earn the name “ Conquistadors “ by feigning pacifism Your beloved Ottoman Empire marauders? The Romans? It’s all good. They’re not those lousy Jew-bastard Zionist savages!
Israel doesn’t demolish churches, mosques or holy sites. 20 % of Israelis are Christian. 18% are Arab Muslims. There are Druze, Bedouins, Yazidis,Hindus,Buddhists, atheists, a large LGBTQ community and tourist destination. Everybody is free to worship as they please. Equal opportunity , equal wage employment, an Arab party in the Knesset, Arabs serve in the courts, Gays and trans serve in the military. Everybody is afforded healthcare… including the Palestinians who hate them.
And as per Tucker Carlson’s recent idiocy with the Pastor claiming Christians are mistreated in Israel… well, Bethlehem is in Palestinian territory.Less than 500 Christians remain in Palestine. The rest fled to Israel , escaping persecution in the Middle East, primarily Palestine, Iraq,Lebanon and Yemen.
Try again Hans. You spend a lot of time in Turkey. Likely thrilled by Erdogan’s persecution of the Kurds, Jews and Christians.If you overlay Hitler’s photo transparency atop Erdogan’s image, it’s a chilling likeness.
Hoppe has a vision of libertarian “ purity”. His vision. It’s bastardized. When striving for ideological purity, the inevitable outcome is human travesty. Cultism. Quashing free will, spirituality, creativity , happiness and prosperity. Replaced by fear, distrust, animus and violence. Whether coups, wars, genocide… all those utopian visions of a perfect society require unilateral collectivism and scapegoats. Communism, fascism, socialism, corporatism, globalism, theocracy all revolve around “ purism”.
Including the two party system that has become so untenable in its left/right extremism and demand for lockstep loyalty. Excluded is what made up the most robust, well adjusted, pragmatic 50% of the American constituency. The center, now a gaping hole swallowing us.
Hoppe’s version of libertarianism is a bastardized excuse for his intolerance.
For the record, Hans, Walter is , in fact, a very nice guy. Can’t say the same for you.
imo, Lew Rockwell needs to publish this excellent an' even-handed rebuttal--clearly my just sayin' this will inflame some no end but I believe in a debate (or fairly blatant defamation as it were...) all parties should get their soapbox time (An' let readers libertarian, contrarian, an' otherwise-inclined judge for themselves) I "wuz" wonderin' when this would come out, bemused by the looong silence... now this more robust and carefully researched response makes sense
Daisy, I fully agree with you. Best regards, Walter
Excellent rebuttal! Unfortunately, instead of publishing it, Mises Institute decided to "cancel" you by removing you as an Senior Fellow, and this "campaign" is going on - today Thomas DeLorenzo wrote the article saying that you are "not the kind of person the Mises Institute can any longer be associated with". With regret, today I requested to cancel my Mises Institute's Sustaining member subscription. If Mises Institute cannot any longer be associated with Dr. Block and waged "cancel" campaign against him, I cannot any longer be associated with Mises Institute.
Professor Block: We met a few times, once in San Francisco when you debated Sharon Presley about abortion at my wife's supper club, as well as some of the times when you spoke at conferences held by Liberty International (formerly the International Society for Individual Liberty). If I'm lucky, you might remember me.
I am entirely in agreement with you about Israel vs Hamas as well as Hoppe, but I believe your argument can be strengthened in some ways. I also think that I can shed some light on where Hoppe's coming from, despite not knowing him personally as well as you.
Your argument can be summarized as: 1) Hoppe's theory is a mixture of good (libertarian) and bad (conservative) ideas; 2) Hoppe's criticism of Israel consists of judging it out of context by an absolute standard; 3) Hoppe gets much of his history wrong. I concur with all of these conclusions.
To elaborate on 1, Hoppe has a bad habit of only paraphrasing his opponents' ideas, often misrepresenting them in the process - as you have rightly noted. He also has a bad habit of only implying and insinuating things, without stating stating them fully and explicitly. Rather, he refers to them, expects his audiences agree with him if they share his implicit assumptions, and leaves himself room to deny them if his audience doesn't share those assumptions - a classic motte-and-bailey fallacy. Specifically, he assumes a large amount of traditional German conservative "volkisch" thought - German nationalism. He advocates "market nationalism," and his objection to Nazism seems to be limited to its socialism, not its nationalism. However, both parts of that are wrong. Similarly, his defense of Marxist class theory only disagrees with the socialist aspect of Marxism, not the rest, but that is also mistaken, as I have argued at here:
https://laissez-faire.ch/en/articles/against-hoppe-s-defense-of-marxist-historical-theory/
When he refers to "the family," he seems to have in mind a specific type of family structure, known as the "authoritarian nuclear family," which has primogeniture (the eldest son inheriting everything), and in which land ownership is highly concentrated within families with eldest sons owning it all and allowing family members and others to live on it at his will, as the paterfamilias. (For more on this type of family structure, see this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RFFwhbVqeU).
Hoppe's ideal society seems to be medieval Germany, but he misrepresents that, just like his misrepresentation of the ghettos that you mentioned. Medieval Germany had many overlapping legal jurisdictions, some of which were territorial, some not. Manorial and urban law was territorial, but feudal law, canon law, and mercantile law were not. The same person in the same place might be subject to the jurisdiction of multiple legal authorities, which means that if someone had a grievance against them that couldn't be resolved by one jurisdiction then a competing one might be able to do it. In Hoppe's theory, all legal competition is inter-territorial, with no non-territorial or inter-territorial competition. Thus, Hoppe's theory allows for much less competition and thus much less actual freedom than medieval Western Europe.
You are exactly correct about Hoppe's double-standard judgement of Israel but not Hamas or the other Arabs in conflict with Israel, so I will not comment on that further, except to point out that Hoppe's method is the same as that of Marxists who hold actually-existing capitalism to an absolute standard of judgement, while either not judging actually-existing socialism at all or making all sorts of contextual excuses for it.
As for some specific recent war measures Hoppe measures, you could also point out that the IDF's war on Hamas has been conducted in a far more discriminate manner than not only the Allies in WWII, but moreso than the US in Fallujah and other recent examples of urban combat, too.
Also, when it comes to US aid to Israel, you rightly note that it largely consists of US subsidies to the US arms industry, but you seem to miss the point that it consists of loan guarantees to Israel for loans which can only be used to purchase US arms, which loans carry interest, and which are always repaid by Israel in full. That is quite different from much other US foreign aid, which simply consists of direct transfers of money.
Unfortunately, you seem to share Hoppe's misunderstanding of the bombings of Germany and Japan in WWII. While they were far more indiscriminate than would be needed today with 70+ years of technological advancement in navigation, targeting, and munitions, they were justified on the context of their times, as argued at length in many recent military history books and articles such as may be found here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/feb/07/featuresreviews.guardianreview2
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/magazine/1906501/why-truman-dropped-the-bomb/
Finally, I will leave you with my own anti-Hamas rant, in the hopes that you will enjoy it:
The Palestinians sided w/ the Central Powers in WWI, the Nazis in WWII, the Soviets in the Cold War, Saddam in the Gulf War & the Iraq War, w/ the Taliban after 9/11, w/ Qadaffi in 2011, w/ Morsi's dictatorship in Egypt, & w/ Assad in the Syrian civil war.
They assassinated the king of Jordan in 1951, and tried to overthrow another king of Jordan in 1970, & started a civil war in Lebanon leading to Israeli & Syrian occupation there. They supported Idi Amin's genocidal regime in Uganda, and were trained by the Stasi in Libya along w/ the IRA & the Baader-Meinhof gang (whose German women they raped). A Palestinian assassinated Robert F. Kennedy while he was running for President of the USA.
The Palestinians pioneered the hijacking of passenger jets all over the West, as well as blowing up planes even in neutral countries like Switzerland. They helped Baader-Meinhof hijack an Air France plane to Uganda, separating the Jews from their hundreds of hostages, before their rescue by the IDF.
Egypt & Jordan made peace w/ Israel decades ago. The Palestinians have refused every peace offer Israel ever made, including ones offering more than 90% of Gaza & the West Bank. They responded w/ suicide bombings of pizza parlors, then rocket attacks after they were quarantined behind a wall, then paragliders after their rockets were neutralized by Israeli air defense.
The Palestinians have their own dedicated UN relief agency, & are served by many other NGOs. They've gotten as much foreign aid per capita as Japan after WWII. Their population & economy was the fastest-growing in the world from 1967 to 1987, when the First Intifada began. Their biggest health problem is obesity. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans leave their luxury homes each year to vacation in Turkey & elsewhere, by way of Egypt.
Hamas turned pipes from Gaza's water network into rocket launch tubes, then they complain when Israel cuts off their water. Hamas rocket misfires damage Gaza's power grid, then they complain when Israel stops giving them free electricity. Palestinian families watching TV in Israeli hospital waiting rooms where their family members are getting free medical treatment cheer when they see news of Palestinian suicide bombers blowing up civilian targets.
The ancient Roman senator Cato ended every speech during the Punic Wars with "Carthago delenda est," "Carthage must be destroyed." It was.
Hamas delenda est.
Dear Tim: I greatly benefited from these remarks of yours. I urge you to expand on them and publish this essay of your. Thanks, Walter
I’m so glad you guys wrote this. My only criticism is that the English is a bit stilted at times and thus made the paper occasionally uncomfortable to read. Other than that, excellent work
Instead of tarnishing your name as a libertarian researcher, you should have just stated the facts. The appropriate response to Hoppe is as follows:
Dear Hoppe, I, Block, want to bring Jesus Christ back to bring Armageddon. As a result, I am turning off my intellect to support Israel's genocide and looting of Palestinian private property. I might turn on my brain once this atrocity is over.
Best Wishes, Walter E Block