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Rothbard's, Von Mises', or Block's view on Israel?

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Al_Gore the Idiot posted on Thu, May 12 2011 1:25 PM

I'm curious as to what are Rothbard's, Von Mises', or Block's view on Israel? Do they give a straight
answer or do they tiptoe around the subject?

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Marko replied on Thu, May 12 2011 1:42 PM

Walter Block, Murray Rothbard, tiptoe around a subject? When have you ever known them to do that?

In fact the same goes for Mises, he certainly doesn't tiptoe anywhere. But Block and Rothbard are not just to the point, they are outrageous and flamboyant. Rothbard in particular is a showman!

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James replied on Thu, May 12 2011 1:48 PM

I think one can reasonably infer what a market-anarchist's position is regarding any state.  They don't discriminate.

The U.S. and Israel say that they deplore having to kill innocents, but since they feel that they must "retaliate," and they can’t pinpoint the actual terrorists – in fact, they don’t know where the terrorists are or even who they are – therefore, they must do something, and killing the innocent becomes a regrettable necessity.

But how does such an argument differ from the U.S. government carpet-bombing New York City ("We must retaliate, and it is regrettable that we have to kill thousands, but we can’t pinpoint the SOB’s"). Or, for that matter, how does it differ from policemen trying to catch a criminal fleeing into a crowd, and simply machine-gunning the entire crowd?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard110.html

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What I'm getting at, is that those three prominent Misians are of Jewish backgrounds. What are their views on the state of Israel? 

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You do realize there are many Jews who oppose the Israeli state, just like their are many people living in the U.S who oppose U.S foreign policy. Just saying.

Freedom has always been the only route to progress.

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What is Jewish about the State of Israel?

Clayton -

http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.com
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Al_Gore the Idiot:

What I'm getting at, is that those three prominent Misians are of Jewish backgrounds. What are their views on the state of Israel? 

You could email Walter Block.

To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process.
Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!"
Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."

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I know there are a few articles on Lew Rockwell by Rothbard about Israel. He gives it pretty straight. Also I'm pretty sure on a religious point, Rothbard and Block are atheists, Mises was not religious.

Block: http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block88.html

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Marko replied on Thu, May 12 2011 3:03 PM

What I'm getting at, is that those three prominent Misians are of Jewish backgrounds. What are their views on the state of Israel?

Look up Rothbard's War Guilt in the Middle East, it is some hardcore stuff.

Block, I don't know if he wrote on the subject, but his Jewishness didn't preclude him from stating that US should have stayed out of WWII (a much more maverick view than being critical of Israel) so he certainly isn't someone who lets his heritage get in the way of his analysis.

Mises didn't write anything on the subject (that I know of). As Rothbard stated, Mises specialised in what he knew best and stuck to writing about that.

You do realize there are many Jews who oppose the Israeli state, just like their are many people living in the U.S who oppose U.S foreign policy. Just saying.

Probably Jewish intellectuals made the largest contribution to the critique of Israel.

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Clayton-

The Bibile says that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people....And if God said it, well then it must be.wink

Its funny, I met an Israeli who was arguing the subject with another person.  They said "Have you even looked at a map? Palestine doesnt even exist!"

Man in his 30's...

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Ludwig von Mises gave his views on early Israeli nationalism in Omnipotent Government, written during wartime.

von Mises believed that there was no such thing as a single Jewish nation or a Jewish people. There were only Hungarians, Germans, Russians, Poles, Americans, French, Italians, or other such people, among whom the various Jewish communities were dispersed.

How can a man who lived his entire life, say, speaking French, living among French people, absorbing French culture, and benefitting from protection and help of other French, decide that he was no longer a French person, and then go to live in a foreign country among various groups of other foreigners, and find any common grounds with them?

Why are they going to stop speaking French or whatever they grew up speaking, and all together adopt Hebrew, even though Hebrew was spoken only by priests for religious scriptorial purposes and even though the early Jewish people spoke Koine or Aramaic?

And why are they even going to bother with Hebrew itself, when Hebrew is not spoken properly in its original form any more, and spinoff languages such as Yiddish involved a combination of German, Hungarian, and Hebrew?

In short, he thought of it as an unfeasible experiment. It was about rejecting the identity of one's parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, and trying to create a new identity for oneself in a new culture to be created in a newly settled land.

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Marko replied on Fri, May 13 2011 3:01 AM

It is pretty clear von Mises was an Austrian patriot and that was that. Israel probably wasn't something that was ever on his mind much, one way or the other. I don't know why he would tiptoe around a state that didn't seem to mean much of anything to him.

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Merlin replied on Fri, May 13 2011 6:38 AM

Prateek Sanjay:

In short, he thought of it as an unfeasible experiment. It was about rejecting the identity of one's parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, and trying to create a new identity for oneself in a new culture to be created in a newly settled land.

Well, Israel proved Mises wrong on that account. It artificially resurrected Hebrew from a few thousand words and thus created a Jewish nation overnight. A typical Eastern European feat, I must add.  

The Regression theorem is a memetic equivalent of the Theory of Evolution. To say that the former precludes the free emergence of fiat currencies makes no more sense that to hold that the latter precludes the natural emergence of multicellular organisms.
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Merlin:
A typical Eastern European feat, I must add. 

Ha ha ha.

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DD5 replied on Fri, May 13 2011 9:36 AM

Merlin:

Prateek Sanjay:

In short, he thought of it as an unfeasible experiment. It was about rejecting the identity of one's parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, and trying to create a new identity for oneself in a new culture to be created in a newly settled land.

Well, Israel proved Mises wrong on that account.

I don't think so.  An "unfeasible experiment" I belive is Sanjay's very creative interpretation of what is a very short remark on Zionism by Mises.  

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