Debate: Is Israel’s War on Gaza Justified?

I was invited onto the Tom Woods Show to debate the critically important topic of Israel’s ongoing military assault on the Gaza Strip with Alan Futerman, who argued in favor of the debate resolution that “Israel is justified in doing ‘whatever it takes’ to ‘completely destroy’ Hamas in Gaza”.

As Tom explains in his introduction, the quotation marks within that resolution indicate specific wording used in an article that Futerman coauthored with the renowned libertarian thinker Walter Block in a Wall Street Journal opinion article titled “The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas”.

Futerman and Block also authored the book The Classical Liberal Case for Israel, which includes a Foreword by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

For my part in the debate, I accurately observed that the position that Futerman and Block are effectively advocating is that Israel has not just a “right” but a “moral duty” to commit war crimes in Gaza, which I absolutely reject for reasons that include the complete incompatibility of that position with the libertarian principle of non-aggression.

You will note that Futerman did not in any way attempt to say that I was employing a strawman argument by characterizing his position that way. The reason he did not object is because their argument is indeed that Israel has a “right” and “moral duty” to do “whatever it takes” to “completely destroy” Hamas, even if that means that the commission of war crimes by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Most of what I discussed during the debate is thoroughly documented in my book Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, so I encourage you to read the book to learn more about the conflict’s root causes and the path forward to peace.

My Prior Debate on the Conflict’s Origin

Block and Futerman along with Rafi Farber also authored a paper published in 2016 in the Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law titled “The Legal Status of the State of Israel: A Libertarian Approach”.

I debated Farber on Tom Woods Show back in September 2016. He argued in favor of the debate resolution that “Israel was founded on the basis of legitimate homesteading of land and reclamation of lost Jewish property from previous generations of Jews.” I argued in the negative.

After that debate, Farber and I continued the discussion on our respective websites and on Twitter. The essential argument that I made was that we can conclude from certain premises presented in his own paper that his position represents an absurd departure from libertarian principles. Here are links to my posts responding to each of the arguments he presented to support the original debate resolution:

• Debate: The Libertarian Case for Palestine
• On Libertarianism and the Jews’ 2,000 Year Old Claim to Palestine
• On Libertarianism and Land Ownership in Historic Palestine
• Top Ten Things That Piss Me Off About Anti-Palestinian Libertarians
• On Libertarianism and the Jews’ 2,000 Year Old Claim to Palestine, Part II
• On Libertarianism and the Jews’ 2,000 Year Old Claim to Palestine, Part III

That final post ends with the words, “And I rest my case.” All these years later, having spent an incredible amount of time studying with carefully consideration of their arguments, I stand by that conclusion that my position in the debate was the right one.

So, if you feel like diving deeply into the minute details of the debate to understand why I say that their own argument leads us to the conclusion that the Palestinians were the rightful owners of most of the land, then I encourage you to watch that prior debate and read the follow-up rebuttals in addition to watching my more recent debate with Alan Futerman.