The Legal Status of the State of Israel: A Libertarian Approach

AuthorWalter E. Block - Alan G. Futerman - Rafi Farber
PositionJoseph A. Butt, S.J. College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans - Independent Scholar, Rosario, Argentina - Independent Scholar, Karnei Shomron, Israel
Pages435-554
e Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law
ISSN: 2338-7602; E-ISSN: 2338-770X
http://www.ijil.org
© 2016 e Institute for Migrant Rights Press
e authors wish to thank Steve Kahn, Buzz Lorch, Michael Makovi, Joel Kirsch and
Gustavo Perednik for helpful comments on an earlier dra of this paper. e usual
proprieties apply; only the authors are responsible for all errors and infelicities.
thE lEGal status of thE statE of
israEl
a liBErtarian aPProaCh
Walter E. Block
Joseph A. Butt, S.J. College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans
wblock@loyno.edu
Alan G. Futerman
Independent Scholar, Rosario, Argentina
alanfuterman@catalactica.com.ar
Ra Farber
Independent Scholar, Karnei Shomron, Israel
rebrafarber@alumni.brandeis.edu
At bottom, for the libertarian, the issue of justice in the Middle East regarding
the Jews and the Arabs, Israel and Palestinians, comes down to private property
rights. Murray Rothbard's War Guilt in the Middle East takes the position that the
Arabs were and are the proper owners of the terrain under dispute. We oer the
very opposite point of view, but based on the very same libertarian principles
employed by Rothbard. Our main criticism is that this author does not go far
back enough in history in his analysis nor does he correctly analyze the histori-
cal record in the period before and aer the creation of the State of Israel. us,
we provide a case for the existence of Israel as a state from a libertarian legal
perspective.
Keywords: Libertarianism, Private Property Rights, Israel, Palestinians, Legal eory,
Political eory.
III Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law 435-553 (June 2016)
436
Block, Futerman, & Farber
I. INTRODUCTION
Is the government of Israel justied? Not from the Rothbardian an-
archo-capitalist point of view. e Israeli government engages in tax-
ation, which is a polite word to describe the; it has a military dra
which amounts to forced labor; it also demands the monopoly right to
dispense justice, and will initiate violence against innocent providers of
this service who might dare to compete with it.1 Of course, every other
government on the face of the earth (with the exception of compulsory
service in the armed forces) violates rights in this manner. ey are all
therefore equally guilty from the perspective of libertarian anarchism.
us, given that the Israeli state is not justied, this applies to all other
nations on earth as well.2
1. In the view of Murray N. Rothbard (emphasis added by present authors):
For centuries, the State (or more strictly, individuals acting in their
roles as ‘members of the government’) has cloaked its criminal activ-
ity in high-sounding rhetoric. For centuries the State has committed
mass murder and called it “war”; then ennobled the mass slaughter
that “war” involves. For centuries the State has enslaved people into its
armed battalions and called it "conscription" in the “national service”.
For centuries the State has robbed people at bayonet point and called it
“taxation. In fact, if you wish to know how libertarians regard the State
and any of its acts, simply think of the State as a criminal band, and all of
the libertarian attitudes will logically fall into place.
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