On May 14, 1948, in the region once known as Mandatory Palestine, David Ben-Gurion announced the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel. There, by 1949, as Murray N. Rothbard recounted in 1967, three-quarters of a million of Arabs “had been driven out from their lands and homes, and the remaining remnant was subject to a harsh military rule which, two decades later, is still in force.” And when thousands of Arabs were fleeing and turning into refugees, their homes, lands, and bank accounts were confiscated by the new State—a Jewish State—and handed over to Jewish immigrants. The refusal of this State to let these refugees return and reclaim the property taken from them cancels the claim that these Arabs were driven out by their own unjustified panic induced by Arab leaders and not driven out by force, as they really were. Anyhow, today, 76 years later, the State of Israel still remains undefined in its borders, holding land ownership of almost the entire land of the country and continuing to extend its territory. Undoubtedly, this control of land is strategic and crucial in the ongoing conquest with impunity of what was once Palestine.

As Rothbard spelled out in 1994, we have two absolutely irreconcilable claims in the entire Israeli region. First, we have the Palestinian Arabs, “who have tilled the soil or otherwise used the land of Palestine for centuries; and second, we have a group of external fanatics, “who come from all over the world, and who claim the entire land area as “given” to them as a collective religion or tribe at some remote and possibly legendary time in the past.” Rothbard saw so harsh the reality of this conflict that concluded:

There can be no genuine settlement, no true ”peace” in the face of this irrepressible conflict; there can be either a war to the death, or an uneasy practical compromise which can satisfy no one.

Following Rothbard, the State is a criminal organization that acquires its revenue by taxation and holds a compulsory monopoly of ultimate decision-making power over a given territory. The State means aggression and depredation against just private property rights. Hence, there is no case for any just State in a libertarian mind. However, does the State of Israel fight for the Israeli people? Rothbard explained the nature of interstate wars as follows:

The root myth that enables the State to wax fat off war is the canard that war is a defense by the State of its subjects. The facts, of course, are precisely the reverse. For if war is the health of the State, it is also its greatest danger. A State can only “die” by defeat in war or by revolution. In war, therefore, the State frantically mobilizes the people to fight for it against another State, under the pretext that it is fighting for them. But all this should occasion no surprise... For which categories of crime does the State pursue and punish most intensely... The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of person and property, but dangers to its own contentment...

If in a war between States, the State of Israel could not prove to defend its subjects vis-à-vis another State when it is actually attacking first, much less it could do so in the Palestinian case, for it cannot claim to defend Israelis against a non-existent Palestinian State, which could have been tricking Palestinians into dying in its defense. And having killed thousands of innocent children since October 2023 in a new, highly destructive phase of the conflict, the Israeli State was definitely not defending its subjects from these thousands of non-combatants.

However, the fact that the State of Israel claims ownership of all that land not only makes all of that ownership unjust, but also makes many beneficiaries of that ownership complicit in a crime against just private property rights, because the Israeli State wages war to possess more and more territory, and then leases new State property to Israeli citizens, who usually know the origin of the land and sometimes are even helped by the Jewish State to settle. Therefore, while Rothbard’s insight is applicable to all interstate wars, the claim that a State fights for its subjects is actually partially true in the case of Israel. And, by contrast, Palestinians do not have the means to successfully oppose and avoid being expelled, annihilated or subjugated as subhumans by the Israeli State.

Furthermore, the two-State “solution” has never been welcomed by the State of Israel. Otherwise, how else to explain the Israeli expansion, the Israeli funding and fighting to divide Palestinians (ideologically and territorially, respectively), and the decades-long policy of Jewish settlements backed by Israeli forces in the West Bank? To be sure, no libertarian would criticize Palestinians for not having created a State. But what normally counteracts the expansionist drive of any State is precisely the presence of another State, for there cannot be two monopolies holding a monopoly of ultimate decision-making power and of taxation over the same territory. And indeed, why would the Israeli State allow the emergence of another State that would limit its expansionism if it can continue to expel or annihilate an essentially defenseless people?

But how, then, has the State of Israel somehow managed to elude all its guilt? Partly, in the way explained by Michael Rectenwald: the primary reason has to do with its status as a State, and as a religious one to boot—“with an ideology that is particularly bewitching to many.” Of course, this status is by no means an endorsement of its innocence, but as most people are not against the institution of a State, and many others are typically fooled by religious rationalizations of things, the combination of both helps to diminish the attention over the Israeli guilt. As to some specific rationalization, Rothbard notes the dream of a Jewish State in the lands allegedly “given” to them by God several millennia in the past. In this sense, “the areas designated for a Jewish State are all the lands allegedly governed by Jews at some point in the Bible.” These limits, as Rothbard also recalled in 1994, went on to include the West Bank, designated as ”Judea” and “Samaria,” and more.

True, libertarians should not exonerate any of the parties in a conflict, nor any of the people involved in crimes committed on behalf of one side or the other. Not even by definition can the blame for a conflict be equally distributed—one side always strikes first or causes more damage than the other. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no exception. Thus, regarding taking sides in wars, Rothbard urged:

Libertarians must come to realize that parroting ultimate principles is not enough for coping with the real world. Just because all sides share in the ultimate state-guilt does not mean that all sides are equally guilty. On the contrary, in virtually every war, one side is far more guilty than the other, and on one side must be pinned the basic responsibility for aggression, for a drive for conquest, etc. But in order to find out which side to any war is the more guilty, we have to inform ourselves in depth about the history of that conflict, and that takes… the ultimate willingness to become relevant by taking sides through pinning a greater degree of guilt on one side or the other.

In consequence, if the commitment to the libertarian cause goes beyond parroting principles, every libertarian should be relevant and take sides as soon as he has some crucial knowledge to do it, or, at least, he should admit the possibility of attributing a greater guilt to one side. And it is the State of Israel, with an immense degree of superiority, which bears the greatest blame for the destruction and countless injustices committed in Palestine since 1948. But how can a libertarian somehow not oppose the Jewish State and recognize the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance if the Palestinian-Israeli conflict—apart from the involvement of neighboring Arab States against Israel for decades—has not even been a conflict between States? In fact, to be relevant, with regard to the State of Israel, Rothbard was also clear about the libertarian position when he wrote the following in 1982:

Libertarians are opposed to every State. But the State of Israel is uniquely pernicious, because its entire existence rests and continues to rest on a massive expropriation of property and expulsion from the land. Libertarians in the United States often complain about the radical libertarian adherence to “land reform,” i.e. the giving back of stolen land to the victims. In the case of expropriations centuries ago, who gets what is often fuzzy… But in the case of Palestine, the victims and their children—the true owners of the land—are right there, beyond the borders, in refugee camps, in hovels, dreaming about a return to their own. There is nothing fuzzy here. Justice will only be served, and true peace in the devastated area will only come, when a miracle happens and Israel allows the Palestinians to stream back in and repossess their rightful property. Until then, so long as the Palestinians continue to live and no matter how far back they are pushed, they will always be there, and they will continue to press for their dream of justice. No matter how many square miles and how many cities Israel conquers… the Palestinians will be there, in addition to all the other Arab refugees newly created by the Israeli policy of blood and iron.

Four decades later, Rothbard is still so right that even his final warning of 1982 remains valid today, because the slaughter and horror have continued to this day.