Again, wonderful. These posts are almost too good to disagree with. I would point out one thing. I have worked with Aboriginal law for the best part of my career in one way or another and my understanding of where we have to go as a community does include the question of the title to my small mortgaged square. I also know, however, that maybe five nations have some degree of claim which makes for lively debate and in the end they would all likely agree that I am a sap for buying into the fee simple concept in the first place, which as a Scots Highlander is an extremely compelling argument except for the entire retirement years thing. Posted by: Alan McLeod at August 24, 2006 12:03 PM I take your point, Alan. Land claims are complicated by all sorts of issues, most notably the radically different treaties contexts when traveling from Newfounland to British Columbia. Not to mention peculiar legal constructions such as the notion of "time immemorial". That said, I am after something simpler with this post. The same people who would deny Israel's existence ignore not only a 3500 year continuous Jewish presence in the Holy Land they do so while ignoring the histories underlying their own mortgages or rental agreements. Posted by: Ghost of a flea at August 24, 2006 12:08 PM Yes, quite right. My aside was of the most aside-y of asides. On another one of a lesser aside-i-ness, I have a question about the right of any nation to existence that is difficult to frame without appearing to invite claims of anti-Semitism. I think there is a vast difference between a communtiy of culture and a present day nation and, especially where there are overlapping claims, the idea that absolute jurisdictional sovereignty eternal is, well, God given is not reasonable. I would invite consideration of the Scots and Quebec and other instances like the nations of Gaul in Roman times well before applying this to the mid-East. And please remember as I know you will that I am not considering this in anyway related to any group that would call for the slaughter of all the Welsh (or any other group) and frame that as the "existence of a nation" question. Genocide is bad. I am sure I am not the first to say that but I hold its truth close to my heart. Posted by: Alan McLeod at August 24, 2006 12:19 PM I have a question about the right of any nation to existence that is difficult to frame without appearing to invite claims of anti-Semitism. Indeed. This is because the question is never posed of anyone except of the Jews. Posted by: Ghost of a flea at August 24, 2006 12:25 PM See, I disagree entirely. Consider the Confederacy, the Welsh or Biafra. Nations that were denied. Posted by: Alan McLeod at August 24, 2006 12:30 PM I have missed all those demos condemning the Welsh as blood-drinking Nazis. I believe you will find Wales on any map and its "denial" extends to tax-payer funded Welsh languange television and radio, Welsh-language schools and a national assembly. Somehow International ANSWER has overlooked its obligation to protest the occupation of Biafra alongside its erasure of countless (and uncounted) deaths in Rwanda, Darfur, Somalia, etc. etc. In fact, the only street protests from your list involve men in white hoods longing for their lost Confederacy. Your point will have some weight as soon as the United Nations screens Birth of a Nation with the same enthusiasm with which it denounces the Jews. Then again, given the rehabilitation of the Nazis in "progressive" circles I doubt the KKK can be far behind. Some related unthinkable thoughts. The occupied territories were taken in war from Syria, Jordan and Egypt, countries whose pedigree as nation-states is hardly older than is Israel's. Yet it seems only Israel which is to be forever considered a recent imposition on a landscape outside time. Meanwhile nobody speaks of a right-of-return for those hundreds of thousands of Jews ethnically cleansed from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. It is not that sovereignty cannot be argued about or disputed as a concept (I can provide some sources if you like). It is that the Jews are uniquely disinherited from it in the rhetoric of the "anti-war" left. Posted by: Ghost of a flea at August 24, 2006 12:38 PM Not to cut in on your discussion, but I must also complement The Flea for going out and buying a thousand used typewriters and hiring the thousand monkeys to work away on them ... keep up the great, fun and interesting work! Bloggish Enlightenment, thy name is Flea. Posted by: The_Campblog at August 24, 2006 12:42 PM Thanks, Mike. I had planned to post Christina Ricci in a tight shirt today but I got side-tracked. Posted by: Ghost of a flea at August 24, 2006 12:44 PM I think I have proven the difficulty of raising the point. Let me try again. For the existence of any nation to be a general principle it is independent of the moral claim of the community to nationhood. Just as we denounce the dream of Greater Serbia as a fantasy of a few so should we denouce the claims that Biafra was not a nation at the time or at the time that the Confederacy was not a nation. We should denounce it as it is not not a matter of moral claim but their military weakness that ended their nationhood. The results of the falling part of the Soviet Union shows certainly that you do not have to be swell to get to be a nation. Which leads perhaps to the question's restatement. Do all nations have a right to existence? Or just the ones we morally align with? If the latter, we are accepting a questionable principle which means there ought to be a firmer principle behind it. It may be that nations have the right to self defend - which is entirely fine and good - and that has transferred into a right to exist. Posted by: Alan McLeod at August 24, 2006 12:55 PM The difficulty of raising the point in the way you have is twofold. First, and for the second time, because it is off-topic to my post. Second, because you conflate "nation" and "nation-state" in ways which render your argument unclear. If your point is that Westphalian notions of sovereignty have to be rethought, I can only agree. If your point is that the concepts of "nation" and "nationhood" are socially and historically contingent and often used in ways which are pernicious or opportunistic, I agree. But if your argument is founded on the phrase "right to exist" without acknowledging that concatenation of words is only ever applied to the Jews your argument is built on sand. Posted by: Ghost of a flea at August 24, 2006 01:00 PM You are most correct that I have deviated but I think it is upon an implicit principle in your post and recent postings that has to be described. But do move it. I am going to cut and paste the entire thing for further self-education as I may still be entirely clouded still.