Sam Fleischacker here examines the case for a Jewish state in Israel/Palestine in the latest post in his “Cool Hour” series over at Normblog. Readers won’t be surprised to learn  that I am in agreement with the overall thrust of Sam’s arguments.

Here’s a choice quote,

Almost all the new states of Asia and Africa formed in the 20th century, not just Israel, are creations of European imperial powers rather than spontaneous formations shaped by the demography and will of the local inhabitants. Pakistan and India allowed British imperial officials to draw the border between them. Indonesia is a united country by courtesy of the Dutch, and the straight lines on the map of much of the Middle East and Africa make clear how much they were defined by European colonialists. Over and over again, a dominant ethnic group has claimed, from a European imperial power, the right to rule the territory controlled by that power, and eventually won that right either from the imperial power itself or from an international order dominated by such powers. (The result has been a series of secessionist movements and civil wars caused by resentment among the groups - Berbers and Igbo and Hutus and Eritreans - who got the short end of the stick.) These arrangements may or may not in the long run be good for everyone involved - there are pragmatic reasons why a single, large, multi-ethnic state may be better than a hodge-podge of tiny states drawn along ethnic lines - but they arose in any case under the auspices, and by way of the authority, of European imperial powers. So there is a certain bad faith in accusing the Zionist movement alone of having turned to the British rather than to the local inhabitants for permission to set up a Jewish state. All the nationalist movements of the time - Arab nationalism, Indian nationalism, Pakistani nationalism - did something similar.

Elsewhere in the past Sam points out that the acquisition of land by Jews in Mandatory Palestine may not always have respected pre-existing norms.

The Zionists tended instead to buy a plot of land from an absentee landowner and then remove all the tenant farmers in favour of immigrant Jews. They also refused to honour certain traditional easement rights (matruka), and misunderstood or tendentiously misinterpreted local laws and customs about so-called miri lands, claiming some of them as unowned when they were merely being allowed to lie fallow.

This leads me to think that when one considers the manner by which land was acquired by immigrants, settlers or colonists - call them what you will - in many other countries during the modern period, one can only reflect on the comparative good fortune enjoyed by Palestinian tenants and landowners who had dealings with Zionists.

Now go and read the rest of Sam’s post yourself.

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You’ll find my comments on previous installments in the Sam’s “Cool Hour” series behind these numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8