Dear Brad: Thanks for your support. This is a brilliant push back on your part. In my view, possession is 9/10 of the law. The burden of proof always rests with the plaintiff. These people of yours from 1000 years ago. They have no proof at all. Their claims should be ignored. If they fight, they are in the wrong.
However, this does not describe the present situation in the Middle East. The Jews have overwhelming evidence that they were there some 2500 years ago, long before the Arabs arrived. For proof, read this book of mine:
Here is just a small bit of evidence for you to chew on: the Dome of the Rock, the Al Aqsa Mosque lies ABOVE the Hebrew Second Temple, not BELOW it. This is uncontrovertible evidence.
I'm with Walter on this one, they should have a debate and then move on.
However, I do have questions and perhaps a place to start the debate.
Let's say that I find an oasis in the desert, there are zero signs that it's been inhabited and I move in and live there. A thousand years later it's a nice village, we have clearly mixed our labor with the land, where no improvements were made previously.
Then people come back and say their ancestors once lived there long, long ago, they have no title, no real proof, just their history and the idea that they came from that general area.
Can they really just evict me or do I have a right to stay and fight for what we have built? Are we really expected to simply leave based on the vague idea that someone a thousand years ago might have lived there?
I can't imagine any scenario where the people would just pack up and go or where they could be expect to. Can you really expect any group to be impoverished in such a way, through no fault of their own? To me that is the argument being made, that the Jews can come back and take land away from the people who homesteaded it. There were hundreds of "Palestinian" villages prior to the wars.
To me this seems a stretch too far and I don't think you need to make this particular argument to prove that the Jews now own the land they live on. They have a much more modern claim. They bought much of it, they homesteaded tons of it and the rest they got after having war waged upon them, furthermore, they now have no place to go back to, forcing them to leave would now do the same immense harm.
Those all seem to be much stronger reasons for why they have a right to stay and fight for their land. In fact I'm not sure I believe in Ancestral rights at all, but even if I did, they would need to be far more recent to satisfy my ideas of justice.
If everyone could always go back to land their ancestors once lived on, where would we be when it comes to property rights? Could I go to back to Europe and demand land because my ancestors once lived there and were forced out due to persecution and if so, what type of proof would I need before it would be a legitimate claim?
In more than once case I even know where my ancestors lived, before they were driven off their land. For instance some of my ancestors came from from Rochelle and then founded New Rochelle. They were Huguenots, who were driven from their land over a religious difference as well. Actually there were run out of New Rochelle too, because they were Loyalists and fought for the King who have saved them from slaughter, they ended up in New Brunswick. I know the exact plot of land that they lived on in New Rochelle and the general area they came from in New Rochelle, but I do not think I have a claim to that land nor the land in Rochelle.
A line must be drawn someplace or abandoned land could NEVER be used, right?
I have a vague recollection of reading something on this vary topic, abandoned land and future homesteading that is. I simply can not remember who it was that wrote it.
Well anyway, I sincerely hope Mises/Rockwell come to their senses and debate this topic and then agree to disagree, if they can't come together on a position.
Dear Brad: Thanks for your support. This is a brilliant push back on your part. In my view, possession is 9/10 of the law. The burden of proof always rests with the plaintiff. These people of yours from 1000 years ago. They have no proof at all. Their claims should be ignored. If they fight, they are in the wrong.
However, this does not describe the present situation in the Middle East. The Jews have overwhelming evidence that they were there some 2500 years ago, long before the Arabs arrived. For proof, read this book of mine:
Block, Walter E. and Alan Futerman. 2021. The Classical Liberal Case for Israel. With commentary by Benjamin Netanyahu. Springer Publishing Company; https://rd.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-3953-1; https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-3953-1;
file:///C:/Users/wblock/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/Content.Outlook/I1L1K1JR/Block-Futerman2021_Book_TheClassicalLiberalCaseForIsra.pdf
summary of this book: https://cosmosandtaxis.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Block_Futerman_summary_CT_Vol12_Iss_9_10.pdf
Here is just a small bit of evidence for you to chew on: the Dome of the Rock, the Al Aqsa Mosque lies ABOVE the Hebrew Second Temple, not BELOW it. This is uncontrovertible evidence.
I'm with Walter on this one, they should have a debate and then move on.
However, I do have questions and perhaps a place to start the debate.
Let's say that I find an oasis in the desert, there are zero signs that it's been inhabited and I move in and live there. A thousand years later it's a nice village, we have clearly mixed our labor with the land, where no improvements were made previously.
Then people come back and say their ancestors once lived there long, long ago, they have no title, no real proof, just their history and the idea that they came from that general area.
Can they really just evict me or do I have a right to stay and fight for what we have built? Are we really expected to simply leave based on the vague idea that someone a thousand years ago might have lived there?
I can't imagine any scenario where the people would just pack up and go or where they could be expect to. Can you really expect any group to be impoverished in such a way, through no fault of their own? To me that is the argument being made, that the Jews can come back and take land away from the people who homesteaded it. There were hundreds of "Palestinian" villages prior to the wars.
To me this seems a stretch too far and I don't think you need to make this particular argument to prove that the Jews now own the land they live on. They have a much more modern claim. They bought much of it, they homesteaded tons of it and the rest they got after having war waged upon them, furthermore, they now have no place to go back to, forcing them to leave would now do the same immense harm.
Those all seem to be much stronger reasons for why they have a right to stay and fight for their land. In fact I'm not sure I believe in Ancestral rights at all, but even if I did, they would need to be far more recent to satisfy my ideas of justice.
If everyone could always go back to land their ancestors once lived on, where would we be when it comes to property rights? Could I go to back to Europe and demand land because my ancestors once lived there and were forced out due to persecution and if so, what type of proof would I need before it would be a legitimate claim?
In more than once case I even know where my ancestors lived, before they were driven off their land. For instance some of my ancestors came from from Rochelle and then founded New Rochelle. They were Huguenots, who were driven from their land over a religious difference as well. Actually there were run out of New Rochelle too, because they were Loyalists and fought for the King who have saved them from slaughter, they ended up in New Brunswick. I know the exact plot of land that they lived on in New Rochelle and the general area they came from in New Rochelle, but I do not think I have a claim to that land nor the land in Rochelle.
A line must be drawn someplace or abandoned land could NEVER be used, right?
I have a vague recollection of reading something on this vary topic, abandoned land and future homesteading that is. I simply can not remember who it was that wrote it.
Well anyway, I sincerely hope Mises/Rockwell come to their senses and debate this topic and then agree to disagree, if they can't come together on a position.