naraburns nihil supernum
7mo ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
Should there be a “statute of limitations” for historical grievances?
As I read about the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, I can’t help but feel sympathetic for the Palestinian view that they were unjustly deprived of their land in the “Nakba”. Nonetheless, the entire history of Israel involved the area being constantly passed between empires, and far enough back you have Jews being killed or forced into exile after the Jewish-Roman wars.
If you start the clock today and ignore all history, Israel’s current territory is legitimate (as is any territory, by default). If you start it in 1948, then they look like occupiers. If you start it in biblical times, Israel starts to look legitimate again. If you insist that time passing doesn’t matter at all, you’re forced into a hopeless task of trying to track the very first cases of early humans unjustly taking land in the area from other early humans.
An unbounded “statute of limitations” for grievances that go back thousands of years seems completely impractical. But very short time limits seem undesirable too. I’m opposed to Russia invading Ukraine and I think it is entirely legitimate for Ukraine to try to reclaim Russian-occupied territory now. But I would not, for example, endorse Germany trying to reclaim Kaliningrad today, even though it was annexed and had its German population expelled and replaced mostly with Russians after WWII.
There are many other historical examples. I think it was unjust that American former slaves were not given reparations in their lifetimes, but am much less enthusiastic about reparations for their descendants today. Here in New Zealand, the indigenous Maori population have legitimate historical grievances, and many Maori tribes have received compensation from the government in recent decades. Nonetheless, I would not support the strongest claims by Maori activists today.
I’m influenced a lot on this matter by a paper by Tyler Cowen called How Far Back Should We Go? Why Restitution Should Be Small. He argues that under any multiple different ethical theories, it is difficult to justify large restitution for wrongs committed in the distant past. It becomes impractical even in theory to identify who alive today is better or worse off, the original victims and beneficiaries have died, and intergenerational restitution claims are on much shakier ground.
In the case of territorial integrity, I think it’s a very good thing that we have a norm against expansionist wars, and pushing back against recent conquests (e.g. in the Russia-Ukraine war) should be part of that. But it would be completely impractical to try to correct all current borders that were the result of historical expansionism, even if we limited ourselves to just the past century or so. Even if you could pull it off, it would mostly end up just disrupting the lives of people quietly living their lives for the sins of their forefathers and probably wouldn’t do much to help anyone.
Bringing it back to Israel/Palestine, where does it leave me?
Well, if I’m to be consistent about being sceptical of long-ago restitution claims, anything along the lines of “Jews were exiled from ancient Israel thousands of years ago, so they deserve it back” has to be a non-starter. Consistently applying a similar standard to other groups would radically upend the world, from the descendants of Ghenghis Khan compensating the descendants of his victims, to Native Americans getting the USA back.
For the “Nakba”, we’re talking about claims that are now 75 years old. That puts it right in the marginal zone, in my view. There is a small but rapidly dwindling number of living victims, and more or less all the perpetrators are dead. But it’s far from a Ghenghis Khan-level distant past.
Finally, there are obviously very many recent grievances in the Israel/Palestine conflict, that this line of thought doesn’t apply for.
The statute of limitations in common law, in nearly all cases, only runs out if no redress is being pursued. You can't just stall on a lawsuit that's been filed against you for years, then claim that it has gone stale. As long as the lawsuit is filed on time, the SoL argument is moot.
The Palestinians haven't exactly let this drop. Indeed, one can argue the extent to which they have had any opportunity to let it drop if they had wanted to. So if this were a lawsuit, no statute of limitations would apply.
The SoL concept probably applies better to internal minorities like amerindians or ADoS; or to long settled controversies like Greater Hungary.
The comparison isn’t exactly one for one since common law has a sovereign. The question is where there is no sovereign should we import concepts like SoL in terms of morality. And I think the answer is yes — we are probably into fourth generation Israelis at this point.
It doesn’t matter if Palestine has “contested” the issue (assuming the land was rightfully Palestinian land in the first place). You are basically creating a situation where you will cause a massive amount of short term harm (by moving out the fourth generation Israeli) while also encouraging states to utterly quash any other “claimants” (because if they shut up because they are decimated — in the figurative sense — they lose their claim).
I think the logic of things like AP and SoL is at some point the past needs to be the past. That logic can still work even when there is no sovereign.
I think until such time as Israelis stop kvetching to Germans about the Holocaust, Palestinians can be permitted to protest their subsequent territorial expropriation.
Are Israelis kvetching at Germans any more? My impression was that in the current year most of the people kvetching to Germans about the Holocaust are Jewish-American lawyers looking for a payoff.
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Notes -
Should there be a “statute of limitations” for historical grievances?
As I read about the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, I can’t help but feel sympathetic for the Palestinian view that they were unjustly deprived of their land in the “Nakba”. Nonetheless, the entire history of Israel involved the area being constantly passed between empires, and far enough back you have Jews being killed or forced into exile after the Jewish-Roman wars.
If you start the clock today and ignore all history, Israel’s current territory is legitimate (as is any territory, by default). If you start it in 1948, then they look like occupiers. If you start it in biblical times, Israel starts to look legitimate again. If you insist that time passing doesn’t matter at all, you’re forced into a hopeless task of trying to track the very first cases of early humans unjustly taking land in the area from other early humans.
An unbounded “statute of limitations” for grievances that go back thousands of years seems completely impractical. But very short time limits seem undesirable too. I’m opposed to Russia invading Ukraine and I think it is entirely legitimate for Ukraine to try to reclaim Russian-occupied territory now. But I would not, for example, endorse Germany trying to reclaim Kaliningrad today, even though it was annexed and had its German population expelled and replaced mostly with Russians after WWII.
There are many other historical examples. I think it was unjust that American former slaves were not given reparations in their lifetimes, but am much less enthusiastic about reparations for their descendants today. Here in New Zealand, the indigenous Maori population have legitimate historical grievances, and many Maori tribes have received compensation from the government in recent decades. Nonetheless, I would not support the strongest claims by Maori activists today.
I’m influenced a lot on this matter by a paper by Tyler Cowen called How Far Back Should We Go? Why Restitution Should Be Small. He argues that under any multiple different ethical theories, it is difficult to justify large restitution for wrongs committed in the distant past. It becomes impractical even in theory to identify who alive today is better or worse off, the original victims and beneficiaries have died, and intergenerational restitution claims are on much shakier ground.
In the case of territorial integrity, I think it’s a very good thing that we have a norm against expansionist wars, and pushing back against recent conquests (e.g. in the Russia-Ukraine war) should be part of that. But it would be completely impractical to try to correct all current borders that were the result of historical expansionism, even if we limited ourselves to just the past century or so. Even if you could pull it off, it would mostly end up just disrupting the lives of people quietly living their lives for the sins of their forefathers and probably wouldn’t do much to help anyone.
Bringing it back to Israel/Palestine, where does it leave me?
Well, if I’m to be consistent about being sceptical of long-ago restitution claims, anything along the lines of “Jews were exiled from ancient Israel thousands of years ago, so they deserve it back” has to be a non-starter. Consistently applying a similar standard to other groups would radically upend the world, from the descendants of Ghenghis Khan compensating the descendants of his victims, to Native Americans getting the USA back.
For the “Nakba”, we’re talking about claims that are now 75 years old. That puts it right in the marginal zone, in my view. There is a small but rapidly dwindling number of living victims, and more or less all the perpetrators are dead. But it’s far from a Ghenghis Khan-level distant past.
Finally, there are obviously very many recent grievances in the Israel/Palestine conflict, that this line of thought doesn’t apply for.
The statute of limitations in common law, in nearly all cases, only runs out if no redress is being pursued. You can't just stall on a lawsuit that's been filed against you for years, then claim that it has gone stale. As long as the lawsuit is filed on time, the SoL argument is moot.
The Palestinians haven't exactly let this drop. Indeed, one can argue the extent to which they have had any opportunity to let it drop if they had wanted to. So if this were a lawsuit, no statute of limitations would apply.
The SoL concept probably applies better to internal minorities like amerindians or ADoS; or to long settled controversies like Greater Hungary.
The comparison isn’t exactly one for one since common law has a sovereign. The question is where there is no sovereign should we import concepts like SoL in terms of morality. And I think the answer is yes — we are probably into fourth generation Israelis at this point.
It doesn’t matter if Palestine has “contested” the issue (assuming the land was rightfully Palestinian land in the first place). You are basically creating a situation where you will cause a massive amount of short term harm (by moving out the fourth generation Israeli) while also encouraging states to utterly quash any other “claimants” (because if they shut up because they are decimated — in the figurative sense — they lose their claim).
I think the logic of things like AP and SoL is at some point the past needs to be the past. That logic can still work even when there is no sovereign.
I think until such time as Israelis stop kvetching to Germans about the Holocaust, Palestinians can be permitted to protest their subsequent territorial expropriation.
Are Israelis kvetching at Germans any more? My impression was that in the current year most of the people kvetching to Germans about the Holocaust are Jewish-American lawyers looking for a payoff.
It's mostly Germans and "Germans" telling other Germans that they're insufficiently penitent.
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