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Notes -
Legitimacy & Israel
What is it that makes a state legitimate? It's amazing to me how many people simply take any existing state as legitimate, without asking whether it ought to be seen as legitimate or not. States commit horrific acts of violence and coercion daily, so this is an important question. How can we know whether such a state is actually justified in committing such blatantly awful acts?
There are, I think, at first appearance two popular theories of this: might makes right, and democratic moralism. The former theory is amoral, and the latter is moralistic. In practice, however, I think these are in fact merely two faces of the same coin.
On the one hand, the might-makes-right people say that the state is self-justifying. It exists, it has might, therefore obey it, end of discussion. This is unsatisfying in that it essentially dodges the topic of discussion. As such it is not really a valid answer to the question of legitimacy; rather it implicitly denies that there is any question to be had at all. Might makes right might be a good starting point for a science of state, which investigates how, in human history, states have emerged and become mighty, but it is inappropriate for the normative question that is the question of legitimacy (what type of state should there be?).
Now on the other hand the democratists say that the state is justified when it is popular. But why should that be? If you assume, empirically, that people have different levels of moral aptitude, then popularity immediately appears to be a formula to craft a wicked state. The only deeper justification is that popularity probably correlates with mightiness. But this is just a thin veneer over the first position.
So said Thrasymachus:
In the Gorgias, Socrates makes the link to democracy explicit, and Callicles agrees:
But Callicles then points out the absurdity of democracy:
I agree, rather, with Socrates (and Plato?) that the aristocratic rule by virtue is more just than the democracy. And likewise the most legitimate state is the state of Reason (or what was called philosophy). I believe in modern times, Francis Galton and Friedrich Nietzsche have shown us the way to establish a legitimate state.
Galton:
Now this brings me to Israel. Israel is a recent example of state foundation, by which I mean the art of creating a new state. It was founded in 1948 by a population made up largely of recent immigrants; for well over a thousand years Jews had been but a small minority in the region; for nearly two thousand there was no Jewish state.
Now, what kind of state is Israel? Obviously, it is Jewish. But it is also democratic. And it seems to premise its existence on the dwelling of the Jewish immigrants in the region. What inferences can we make here regarding probable hypotheses in the science of state? For one, we can guess that Israel and states like it depend on the influx of people into its vicinity for its sustenance. In other words Israel is predicated on the mass immigration of aliyah; the Jewish population grew from about 25,000 in the 1880s to about 630,000 by 1948, mostly through immigration. It is merely, then, the armed and coercive organisation of that population.
What sort of just foundation is that? Consider this: when one man declares himself sovereign, he is a laughing stock, like an ape. When a few men do it, they are criminals; yet when many men do it, I am supposed to profess that they are just?
I would prefer to keep my reason and see all such founders, not only Israel's, as laughing-stocks and criminals. Thus, I see Israel as the farce of state foundation. For before Israel we knew the way to the just state; yet it was the Torah and its aliyah which led to the foundation of Israel, a state not unlike all previous states, and all of its rivals in the region. There is nothing new or elevated about Israel. What is the higher purpose?
And if Israel is farce, who then is the tragedy? One does not have to look far; it is Israel's greatest ally, or should I say its uncle, old Samuel. For the United States was founded on philosophy, it was founded on higher ideals. But its ideals were flawed, because its philosophers were flawed, and so were its people. It started as an oligarchy, that saw itself as an aristocracy, and it never knew true justice. As Plato would predict, it degenerated to a democracy, and lost most of what apprehension of virtue it had, and now many say it is on the road to tyranny.
Imagine what could be done with North America if it were not already settled! That is the tragedy. And the farce is all the effort put in to crowding out the Muslims in Palestine, for nothing higher at all. The situation is so dire that people dream of settling Mars, a desert with no water and no breathable air, because at least it is not yet scourged by a state. Galton had the same dream:
Some will say all of this is silly because it is impossible. But we know true aliyah is not impossible; Galton showed us that much. If Israel were impossible, it would not be because of the Jews. It would be because of the gentiles. So too, if true Israel is impossible, it is because the true gentiles block the true aliyah of the true Jews. (Sozusagen). Ask yourself, are you a Jew or a Gentile? Is it just for the gentiles to stop the Jews? And how should Jews feel, if they are stopped?
To be plain, since the above is metaphor (which I think has value in itself): I am not talking about actual Jews or gentiles. Zionism showed that a scattered people can migrate and found a state within a few decades; Galton showed what kind of state would be worth founding. By «true Israel» I mean a state founded on reason and on Galton's eugenics rather than on scripture. By «true aliyah» I mean the migration of the people who want such a state to a place where they can found it. By «true Jews» I mean those founders, and by «true gentiles» the existing states and peoples who would stop them. So the question I am asking is: would it be just for existing states to block the founding of a better one, and would its founders be wronged if they were blocked?
From what I understand, a lot of those Jews were displaced persons who were sent there after World War II. Another big chunk were refugees who were chased out of countries like Iraq, Yemen, etc.
I'm not sure how this plays into your standards of justice, but I do think it's worth noting.
I think you need to clarify what you mean by "they" here. I mean, let's suppose that the initial founding of Israel in 1948 was unjust by some standard. Does that mean that the Israel of 2026 is illegitimate? That Israel is tainted forever?
Can you give a few examples of states which meet this higher purpose standard?
As a point of information, it's worth noting that (1) there has always been a significant Christian Arab population alongside the Muslim Arab population, at least until recently until the Christians started getting chased out in large numbers; and (2) a lot of the Palestinian Arabs are the descendants of Arabs who migrated internally within the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries from places like what are now Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. That's why it's common for Palestinian Arabs to have names like "Masri" which means Egypt.
If there were a Jewish colony on Mars which eventually became successful and prosperous, you can bet that there would be a lot of outrage over it. People would accuse the Jews of invading and seizing land which should be the common property of all mankind.
It doesn't play in at all, because I'm talking about setting a state on something higher than Jewish ethnicity. And that aside, if they were refugees, then they did the equivalent of Syrian refugees setting up a Caliphate in Europe.
Of course not, it's the ship of Theseus. However, the question of whether Israel is really still Israel is one for the next century, given that Netanyahu is a single year younger than the state he leads.
Okay, read it as the Arabs in Palestine, their religion doesn't matter to me.
This also doesn't matter to me. I didn't say Israel is uniquely evil, in fact. I implied it's mundane. The farce is that an amazing effort has gone into establishing a mundane state, one that is not morally better than the Muslims living there before.
I doubt they would be piqued for the same reason as me, but for me it is the issue of, it is a waste of scarce land that it should go to a vanity state for a micro-ethnicity that failed to have a state for 2000 years.
That's not necessarily so terrible. I mean, suppose a bunch of Druze had been chased out of Syria into what is now France during the days of the Roman Empire, and the Roman Empire had collapsed. Would it be so wrong for those Druze to set up their own state in part of what's now France? I mean, at the time it wasn't carved in stone that France needed to be a state at all, let alone a state with the borders we know today.
Ok, then why are we discussing the legitimacy of Israel at all? Is this a purely academic exercise?
Arabs in the Ottoman Empire, many of whom migrated to Palestine around the same time as large numbers of Jews were making aliyah. (And apparently it wasn't a coincidence.)
There was no state there before. Unless you mean the Ottoman Empire. Is that what you are referring to?
I object to this characterization for at least two reasons. First, Israel is minuscule in comparison to the Ottoman Empire; the Muslim world; the Arab world. Probably less than 1% of the total land area. There's more than enough land to accommodate everyone.
More importantly, Israel is far more than just a vanity state. There was (and is) a huge problem with persecution of Jewish minority populations in many many places. In fact, part of the reason so many Jews were killed by the Nazis was a lack of a viable destination for people to flee to.
Anyway, it seems you didn't answer my question from before. I am really interested in your answer:
Can you give a few examples of states which meet this higher purpose standard?
Also, given that the pre-existing state to modern Israel -- the Ottoman Empire -- collapsed due to external reasons, and given that there were many Jewish people in Palestine at the time, what do you feel should have happened? Should an Arab state have been established? (Actually multiple Arab states were established -- Lebanon; Syria; etc.) Should the French and British simply annexed their mandates?
I'm genuinely curious what you think should have happened which would not have been a "waste" as you put it.
Last, give you believe that any illegitimacy of Israel's founding does not carry forward to the present, why are you bringing up the topic? Is it purely an academic issue for you?
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