That is the title of James Parkes’s patient historical narrative. The subtitle is A History of the Peoples of Palestine. “Palestine,” we have collectively forgotten, names a remnant of the Roman Empire, a remnant that has been occupied by many peoples. He wrote it in the late ’40s, long before “the Palestinian people” was popularized by Yassir Arafat in the ’60s to refer exclusively to its Arab inhabitants, a ruse the world fell for and seems stuck with.
Whose Land? came from the pen of a theological liberal. By “liberal” I mean (in part) that he did not believe that the creation of the modern secular state of Israel in 1948 (hereafter simply “Israel” unless the context indicates the biblical House of Israel) fulfilled Old Testament prophecy of the ingathering to The Land of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—simply because he did not think that any event can do such a thing.
Unlike today’s “liberals,” however, he conditionally supported the Zionist response to European antisemitism, the ghoulish rise of which he witnessed in the ’20s and ’30s and which he made the focus of his professional life. In Whose Land?, Parkes affirms the historical and moral right of Jews to national restoration in their ancestral land, but insists that—I’m paraphrasing Parkes—justice and respect for the Arabs with whom the Jews had to deal must (ethically must) inform the Jew in his exercise of his right to, say, purchase a plot of land from a Palestinian Arab. He defends Israel’s legitimacy while warning that Jewish nationalism must never mirror the exclusivism or oppression that Jews themselves had suffered. He bases his non-Scriptural case on commonly shared assumptions—which, in my view, make no sense unless grounded in Scripture. I encourage you to find a copy of Whose Land? and take Parkes’s eloquent, empathetic, and learned historical tour.
I agree with Parkes that Israel fulfills no prophecy, but that’s because I follow the Scriptural exegesis of Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992). Sellers rarely commented on current events, so what his view on Israel was is a matter of speculation. (I invite his descendants to settle the matter, if they can.) He was neither pro-Zionist or anti-Zionist as we use those terms. Where Sellers and I differ from Parkes is that we accept the Bible’s self-attestation that its words are God-breathed, a proposition no self-respecting theological liberal takes seriously. (My Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers will, God-willing, be published in 2026.)
Sellers held that Israel must be judged by the same standards to which one would hold any other nation. In the present Dispensation of Grace, resurrected descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have not yet been ingathered to The Land, nor have Christ’s Apostles been resurrected to sit on twelve thrones judging the Israel’s twelve tribes (Matthew 19:28); Israel is not yet mediating between God’s throne and the nations in the eon of the manifest Kingdom of God. Israel is but one of the nations, on equal footing with them. The status of “most favored nation” is reserved for the time when God will govern all nations.
That is, because the Gospel is freely authorized to all nations (Acts 28:28), they are “joint bodies” (σύνσωμα, sussōma: plural; Ephesians 3:6). As we are living in the pre-Kingdom Dispensation of Grace (and the “Silence of God”), however, we who follow the course of history’s “secular surface” still need to know what trend to promote or impede. We’re left to our theoretical devices guided by biblical precepts, one of which, I’d argue, is the just acquisition of property.
On the fraught issue of Israel I conditionally follow the agnostic anarchocapitalist economist Walter Block, another scholar who doesn’t believe 1948 fulfilled prophecy. Over Israel, Block parted ways with his mentor and friend, Murray Rothbard, who was frankly pro-Arafat in the ’60s and vehemently anti-Israel, “uniquely pernicious” as states go. (I regret, even am ashamed, that I did not challenge Rothbard on this. In slight mitigation: in the early ’80s, I didn’t have the intellectual “stuff” to do so—few mortals did or do on any subject—and that the topic rarely came up.)
I still cannot afford a copy of Block and Alan G. Futerman,
Rothbard supports homesteading as the legitimate means of ownership (the first homesteader gets the land, not any subsequent one). Indeed, perhaps second only to John Locke, Rothbard is the main defender, articulator, of this viewpoint. Libertarians deduce from this fact that stolen property must be returned to its original owners, or their heirs. This is the case for reparations. Well, the Romans stole the land from the Jews around two millennia ago; the Jews never gave this land to the Arabs or anyone else. Thus according to libertarian theory it should be returned to the Jews.
There is both cultural and genetic evidence that at least some Jews of today are the heirs of at least some land that was homesteaded by Jews 2,000 years ago, particularly the Temple Mount. The same analysis should be extended to any plot of land with evidence of Jewish homesteading and Jewish claimants. Even aside from 2,000 years ago, groups of Jews came to pre 1948 Palestine to specifically homestead it again, and did so successfully. We cannot accept Rothbard’s claim that Israel should have simply done nothing in response to a blockade against it in 1967 with clear threats to destroy it. Anyone who joined in that war against Israel (and especially the War of Independence in 1948), by either fleeing or actively participating, and lost territory as a result, does not deserve it back from a minarchist libertarian perspective.
The major weakness of the Rothbard essay is that it does not go far back enough into history in its analysis of property rights justifications in the case of Israel. Despite the fact that Jews homesteaded most of what is now Israel, purchased land (thus voluntary populating its areas) and gained territories through defensive wars, the latter idea is also true. . . .
Being libertarians, we do not love the State of Israel as a state. We believe many of the things that it does to its citizens and others under its control are indeed far away from the NAP [Non-Aggression Principle: it is always wrong to initiate force or violence against person and property]. However, as a state, is it “uniquely pernicious, because its entire existence rests . . . on a massive expropriation of property and expulsion . . .”? No.
Ironically, Rothbard himself penned a history of the United States before and leading up to the American Revolution. In it, he correctly documents a litany of instances of genocide against various Indian tribes, land theft, fraud, expropriation, and expulsion. And yet, he nevertheless chose to title his history Conceived in Liberty.
Israel, on the other hand, was founded primarily on mass voluntary immigration and homesteading. Were there instances of land theft, expropriation, and expulsion? On a small scale in isolated incidents, yes, but nothing compared to the extent of systematic murder and theft that occurred against innocent natives in the years leading up to the founding of the United States of America. While the United States was also founded on legitimate immigration and homesteading to a large extent, theft and murder were still widespread, and to a much larger extent than with the founding of the State of Israel.
Finally, unlike the founding of the United States, today’s Jews do have a genetic and cultural claim to previously homesteaded land in Israel/Palestine. While certain sects of Jews, notably Jews of priestly lineage, can trace their roots back to definite Jewish homesteaders of Palestine/Judea during the Roman period, not a single American can say the same regarding any previously homesteaded land currently under the control of the United States.
While Israel as a State is, according to anarcho-capitalist libertarian theory, certainly vicious to a degree, it is certainly not “uniquely” pernicious as states go. It is, in fact, one of the few governments in the world founded on a combination of homesteading and inheritance, however delayed. If Rothbard willingly titled his history of pre-revolutionary America Conceived in Liberty, it would be consistent with his view of history to retitle his article on the 1967 Six-Day War, “Liberty in the Middle East.” But being that he has entitled it “War Guilt in the Middle East,” we (somewhat facetiously) suggest, in the name of logical consistency that is libertarianism, that he instead retitle his historical work on the founding of the United States Conceived in War Guilt. [Or Conceived in Genocide.—A.G.F.]
However Rothbard may view Israel, the fact remains that the maximum amount of individual and economic liberty in the Middle East can only be enjoyed there, in the “most pernicious” of all states.
Jewish purchases of plots of Palestinian land from Arab holders (where purchases occurred) does not imply that the latter had just title to it. It implies only Jewish recognition of the stubborn reality that only by such purchase they would (re?)acquire what they, as its rightful heirs, should have been theirs in the first place.
I’ve written this the day before the Islamist butchers of October 7th are scheduled to release their Jewish victims, alive and deceased. The lessons that Block et al. have drawn from history and sound ethical principles could not be more timely.[1]
Note
[1] Any pushback? Yes. Two years ago, Saifedean Ammous—brilliant Austrian School economist, author of The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, and an Arab native to The Land—debated Block. You may judge who had the better of the argument.