 Alright, second question. This one's a long question. How would he answer this argument by a smart opponent of Israel who claims to be for property rights? Israeli Jews lived peacefully in Akko and elsewhere before Zionism decided to establish an exclusive homeland and kick Palestinians out and deny them their property. The idea of driving Jews out simply never existed in Palestine before Zionism. I don't think there's anything special about Palestine-Israel. If you turned any country into a national homeland for one group and kicked another group out and took away their property, they'd get endless conflict too. If you had property rights respected regardless of religion and ethnicity, you'd get peace. I think there's room for all Palestinians and Israelis to live peacefully together, but if the ruling regime continues to deny property rights based on religion and ethnicity, unfortunately conflict will continue until one group is eradicated. It's looking like we're getting close to the latter outcome. I mean, this gets a number of things wrong. The way it's conceptually framed is wrong and the history is wrong. It is true that under the Ottoman Empire, under the rule of law that was the Ottoman Empire, for whatever good that law was, there was a rule of some law in the territory called Palestine in those days. Jews and Arabs lived fairly peacefully. Jews had to pay an extra tax because they were Jews to the authorities ultimately in Istanbul or in Damascus where the regional government was. But there was no Palestine and there was some respect for property rights. Under Ottoman law, Jews had certain property rights and Arabs had certain property rights. But you have to take into account that there was an overarching legal system here. Now starting in the late 19th century, Jews in relatively speaking large numbers relative to the existing population in this territory, remember Palestine in the 19th century was swamp land. It was an awful place. It had a very small population focused in Jerusalem and a few other cities. There was no Tel Aviv, there was almost nothing on the coast, Jaffa, Akko, Haifa, but these were again very, very small places. The population was very small. And Jews started emigrating to this area. Now some of them had a dream of one day establishing a Jewish nation here. Some of them have a dream of, yeah, this is our ancient biblical land or whatever. But the fact is that most of them were atheists. Almost all the immigrants of the late 19th century came from, were coming from Russia and Germany. They were secular Jews, they were atheists. And most of them were just escaping from horrors of what was going on in their native countries. The Russians were mostly socialists who thought they could establish a communism in what was Palestine before you could get it in Russia itself. They established, you would see them, they started farming communities. And the only reason they could do this is because they purchased property rights again. They purchased land from rich Arabs, or Arabs generally, Arab farmers. They purchased land from the Ottoman authorities that might have owned land. A lot of the land was owned by rich Arabs in Damascus, or maybe rich Turks all the way in Istanbul. And the other way in which they gained land, they gained property, was using, taking possession of unused, unclaimed land, swamps, desert. Swamps were dried and they gained property rights over those. There was no way for the Jews during this period to take anybody's land. They had no political power, they had no weapons, you know, and they had no facility for taking other people's land. It is, but it is the case that starting pretty early on, and certainly once the Ottomans left. But even in the late 19th century, early 20th century, during the Ottoman period, but accelerated after the Ottomans left, hostilities between Jews and Arabs increased. The Arabs noticed that these Jews were moving in. Yes, they were buying land, but they didn't like the fact that the number of Jews was increasing. And they started, hostilities started increasing in the very late 19th century, early 20th century. Now in 1919, of course the Ottoman Empire lost the war and these territories fell into the hands of the British. The British got a UN mandate to manage these territories. And during this period, there were pieces of land all over the place. There were not a huge number of Arabs in the area defined as Palestine, and Palestine was never had never been a state, never been a country, not since before the Romans had been a country called Palestine. And Britain was in the business of divvying the territory up into states, into countries. And one of the considerations, and Jews all over Europe lobbied for, well, why don't we use this opportunity to carve out this piece of territory where there are quite a few Jews and there are not that many Arabs, them in the majority but there are not that many, into a future Jewish state. The Arabs have lots of state around. You know, Arabs in Palestine, if they want to live under Arab rule they can move somewhere else, but create a state that is, that will be accessible for Jews to move into. Not to take anybody's land, not to steal anybody's land, just to move into. Move into by buying land and by cultivating land that did not existed before. I mean Tel Aviv was a city created on land that didn't belong to anybody, and some of the land was purchased from Arab landowners, but a lot of it was just sand on the beach that just wasn't owned by anybody. So in the Balfour Declaration there was the declaration of a Jewish state, but not a state where land would be taken from private landholders who are Arab and given to private landholders who are Jewish. No. The idea was that the land that was not owned by anybody, not owned by any Arab landowner or any Jewish landowner, but was owned in a sense, the extent that you can apply ownership to this, by the British now, because they happen to occupy it and they had basically conquered it from the Ottomans. And remember that in most countries, sadly, even in the United States, 75% of all the land west of the Mississippi is owned by the state. So the Ottoman Empire owned most of the land in what is known as Palestine. And so the British inhibited that. So by saying, OK, much of this land, this land that will be granted to a new state that is going to be friendly for Jewish immigration and going to be a Jewish state is not taking private property from anybody. There was no private property. Now then, just to fill in the history, then the reality is that from 1919, the end of World War I, through 1948, when the British left, Britain kept changing its mind about a Jewish state, yes a Jewish state, no a Jewish state. On a number of occasions in the teens, in the 20s, and in the 30s, Arabs took up arms and killed Jews, fought against the British, but mainly killed Jews. The British were trying to keep the peace. My grandfather was injured in one of these attacks in Hebron while he was a student there and left Palestine as a consequence. But the Arabs, there were huge Arab uprisings where Jews were killed, like they were killed outside of Gaza. And the British brought back peace. But there aren't these periods as Jews migrated into Palestine. And the rate of migration was not very fast. It was not like millions came. They basically bought land. The British didn't give them anything. They bought land from Arabs, or they settled unoccupied land and turned it into productive land. The property rights of Palestinians or Arabs was never violated. And it has not been violated with the one exception I gave earlier about those who were kicked out gratuitously. The land of the Palestinians was either taken from them because they initiated violence, but those who stayed, even those who stayed who initiated violence, got their land back. The Arab villages all over Israel, Arab towns, Arab cities, the Arabs in Akko, the Arabs in Jerusalem, the Arabs in Haifa, the Arabs in Jaffa, all still live peacefully with Jews. And their rights, their property rights have all been respected. Indeed, the property rights of Arabs have never really been violated. So this is not an issue of rights violations. Never has been a property rights violation. That's not the issue. I agree that if the Arabs had settled with, yeah, if Jews want to buy property and they want to live here, fine. And you know, as long as property rights are respected, who cares who the government is in Jerusalem or whatever, yeah, none of this would happen. We would all be living happily, peacefully in Israel or whoever would it be, right? There are millions of Arabs who live today in Israel whose property rights are fully protected. Now, granted, Israel, like most Western states, violates property rights in all kinds of ways. Jews and Arabs. Does Israel sometimes discriminate against its Arab population? Sometimes. But it's minor. And they have, again, more rights than in any other country in the Middle East. And their property rights are respected more than in any other country in the Middle East. This conflict has never been about property rights. If it was, it could easily be resolved. The courts in Israel are pretty good about deciding whose property this belongs to. And to the extent Israel has violated people's property rights, whether as a state or whether individuals have violated property rights, then Israel should be held to account on that and the Supreme Court has indeed on occasion done that. They've returned land, a property to Arabs whose land was taken from them illegitimately. But don't forget, what does it mean to say Palestinian land? There is no such thing as Palestinian land if you believe in property rights. If you believe in property rights, then there's a land of Palestinian of Muhammad, his land. Nobody took his land away. Now, adjacent to his land was land that was owned by the Ottoman state and now is owned by the Israeli state. That was never his. And it doesn't belong to, quote, the Palestinians. And I don't think it should belong to these Israel, the Israeli state either. I think it should be privatized. It should be sold to the highest bidder. But we live in a world in which land is not privately owned, not all privately owned. We live in a world in which states own, in quotation marks, a significant portion of the land within their own country. Israel is no different than any other country in that regard. And to assign that god land, that unclaimed land, if you will, to the ethnicity of the group that happened to be a majority at any particular point in time is completely arbitrary and random. Israel established a country and it's, again, the more basis of Israel is the fact that it's a free country. It didn't just establish any country, established a free country that actually respects property rights, including the property rights of Arabs.