What Really Happened in the Middle East

Via Erik Svansbo’s blog, I found this short and informative film about Israel and the Jewish State entitled What Really Happened in the Middle East. It is very emotional, and I bet many will find some if its contents questionable. However, one thing I found particularly interesting was what Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, said about the Palestinian refugees. Whenever I have pointed out that the Palestinians now trapped in horrific refugee camps in Arab countries were forced out by the Arab states, I have been accused of Islamophobia and been labelled a propagandist. Therefore, it is worth noting that Mr Abbas’s take on this historic event is the same as mine. In the film, he is quoted as saying:

The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe.

People often talk about the Israeli occupation of Palestine as if this is a fact beyond questioning. I say it is far more complicated then that. It is true that the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union consider Jewish settlements in the West Bank an occupation of Palestinian land. I will not argue with that. The problem is that there never was a Palestinian land to begin with; at least not on the ground most settlers now consider their home. So the question we are faced with is as old as political philosophy: When and how do you take ownership of land? The libertarian answer normally dates back to John Locke and reads that unclaimed land becomes private property the moment someone starts working on it.