[The Conquistador]

According to John Locke's labor theory of value property can only be owned by adding one's labor to a piece of land. No state, as such, owns land (with a few exceptions such as land purchased via its citizens tax money). Certainly no state owns the entire territory in which its citizens live. Land ownership is an individual, not a collective, concept. The only power that a given state has is if the people of a territory voluntarily choose it as their government. This gives it the right to govern (not to own) that territory.

The Jews of "Palestine" of 1948, being very much influenced by the British tradition declared the State of Israel along the lines set out by John Locke. It was very similar to what the 13 colonies did in 1776. This is the moral basis of the claim to legitimacy of the state of Israel. In general, any human being has the right to travel to any point on the surface of the earth (his right of liberty), and if a group of people chose to travel to the same spot, they have the right to form a government.

The Arabs, on the other hand, had an archaic, ethnic concept of government. One belonged to a government by virtue of one's ethnic group, and this was not a matter of choice. This was why the young state of Israel was attacked, not by any entity which could be called Palestinian by any stretch of the imagination, but by 6 Arab countries which had no conflict with Israel other than the fact that it existed.

This is the biggest of all the lies which are continually told about the Arab-Israel conflict. Israel has been attacked by people who consider themselves to be one entity, the Arab nation. They feel themselves offended not because they were attacked, not because they have been economically disadvantaged, not because they have any kind of practical conflict., but because people who are different from them want to live next to them. For example, Barack Obama recently made a comment about the "occupied territories" in the Mid-East. implying (but not saying explicitly) that Israel had committed aggression and conquered Arab territory. The facts are that in the process of their aggression against Israel, Jordon and Egypt conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip respectively, and they were then thrown back from these territories. And the Israeli "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza is simply a result of their victory in a defensive war.

Having been defeated in their war of nation-states the Arab countries have resorted to subterfuge. They are pandering to the western media by pretending to be engaged in a war of national liberation. As noted, the war between the Arab peoples and the state of Israel broke out in 1948. Some 16 years later, after several defeats, the Arabs got the idea that they were Palestinians and had always lived in the country called Palestine. (1964 was the year of the formation of the PLO.) The Encyclopaedia Britannica tells us:

"the idea that Palestinians form a distinct people is relatively recent. The Arabs living in Palestine had never had a separate state. Until the establishment of Israel, the term Palestinian was used by Jews and foreigners to describe the inhabitants of Palestine, but it was rarely used by the Arabs themselves; mostly they saw themselves as part of the larger Arab or Muslim community." [Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th Edition, Vol. 25, p. 421.]

And, of course, this is what has been going on since 1948, a war between the Israelis and the Arab community. In this sense, it is like 99% of the wars that go on in the world. There are two groups of people. They live next to each other. They don't like each other. So the stronger attacks the weaker. The Arabs thought that they were stronger because they have an enormous advantage in population, but they were whipped badly. Now they are whining, pretending to be victims and trying to get the major powers of the world to come into the conflict, destroy the state of Israel and give them a victory they cannot earn on their own. This is why a central Arab precondition for "peace" is that Israel cease to exist. Who would agree to such a condition and how sincere is such a desire for peace?

But on a deeper level the reason for the conflict is the left-wing media of the world. These are composed of people with a philosophy of love and peace, as per Jesus of Nazareth. As I have explained in previous blogs, such people talk loudly of peace, but there is an enormous amount of hate in their hearts. Always being careful not to put themselves at risk of physical violence, they work tirelessly behind the scenes to stir up hate and violence.

The first experience I had with this alliance between a love/peace faction and a hate/violence faction was at Harvard in the 1950s. The professors kept agitating to stir up violence among American union workers. "We are your friends. We are peaceniks and cannot engage in violence ourselves, but your cause is just, and we are on your side." The union workers, mostly average (or below average) guys fell for it hook, line and sinker. The peacenik professors were able to enjoy the vicarious violence but did not have to get their hair mussed or their faces bruised by angry workers whose jobs they were stealing. One sees this alliance between what seem on the surface to be two very opposite types of people. The professors' technique was to look for a group of people dumb enough to believe pretty much anything they were told and then to weave their web of lies and finally declare, "We are on your side." They then sit back, out of the range of whizzing bullets and swinging fists, and get the violence they want. It is a lot of fun.

You will find such people in various odd places where they can champion the cause of the "Palestinians" (and incite them with hatred) without themselves actually being at risk of violence. If the Angel of Death could walk through the Mid-East and strike down such people, then, lo and behold, the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza would suddenly be able to live in peace with their neighbors in Israel. (Remember that the two groups first came into contact because the latter offered attractive jobs to the former.

Dwight Eisenhower was a fairly decent person, but after the 1956 war he forced the Israelis to give up their conquest of the Sinai Peninsula. This was later formalized as the land-for-peace idea. However, when Eisenhower defeated Germany in 1945, there was no talk of American withdrawal. Germany was severely punished for her aggression. She gave up her thoughts of becoming the master race and concentrated on economic development. On the other hand, the Arabs were repeatedly rewarded for their aggressions. This is why there is no war in Central Europe, but war continues in the Middle East.

A portion of the blame lies with the Israelis. "Peace" became a greeting (substituting for "hello" and "goodbye" in the Hebrew language of the mid 20th century although it is not such in biblical Hebrew). Whenever, there is any kind of crisis or conflict in the region, all of the newspapers start to scream "peace." And so the war has continued for over 50 years.

The way to bring real peace in the Mid-East is for the world media to recognize the truth that every nation has the right to fight in its own self defense In the words of Patrick Henry, "Gentlemen may cry 'peace, peace' but there is no peace." That has been the case in the Mid-East since 1948, and that is why the war started in that year continues to this day.