Resources and posts about Israel v. Palestine etc. As I have noted before, my position has shifted on Israel. Influenced by Ayn Rand, I used to be extremely pro-Israel. But then, as I sometimes say, it turned into: My heart is with Israel, my brain is with the Palestinians. By heart, I meant: their culture and society seems closer to the western one I prefer and am part of than is Islam and Arabia. In any case, see:
- Overview and resources: A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre
Walter E. Block, Alan G. Futerman and Rafi Farber, “The Legal Status of the State of Israel” A Libertarian Approach,” The Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law III (June 2016): 435–553- Walter E. Block and Alan G. “Futerman,” The Classical Liberal Case for Israel (Springer, 2021)
- Block and Futerman, “The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas,” Wall Street Journal (Oct. 11, 2023): “Israel is entitled to do whatever it takes to uproot this evil, depraved culture that resides next to it.”
- Hoppe, “An Open Letter to Walter E. Block,” LewRockwell.com and HansHoppe.com (Jan. 31, 2024)
- Walter E. Block and Alan G. Futerman, “Rejoinder to Hoppe on Israel vs. Hamas,” MEST Journal (2024)
- David Gordon and Wanjiru Njoya, “The Classical Liberal Case For Israel,” LewRockwell.com (Feb. 2, 2024; Mises.org version)
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- Alan G. Futerman and Walter E. Block, “Rejoinder to Gordon and Njoya on Israel and Libertarianism,” MESTE Journal (Position Paper) (2024).
- Kinsella, “Block on Israel, Self-Defense, Pacifism,” StephanKinsella.com (April 24, 2025)
- Kinsella, “Ammous vs. Block on Israel,” StephanKinsella.com (Jan. 29, 2024)
- Kinsella, “Van De Haar and Besada on Hayek, Mises, Rothbard on Zionism,” StephanKinsella.com (March 8, 2026)
- Walter E. Block and Oded J.K. Faran, “Self-defense and its libertarian enemies,” Walter’s Newsletter (substack) (July 2, 2026)
Some recent twitter posts:
Isn’t being anti war a gutless, virtue signaling position? I mean, most people would rather there not be a need for war, but sometimes it’s either war or being conquered.
— Michael Liebowitz (@Lieboisout) April 24, 2025
Not any more than your being opposed to aggression is virtue-signaling. Your way of wording is loaded since it subtly implies an analogy or similarity between self-defense by an individual and that by a state. This is a bit disengenuous. As I pointed out previously…
— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 24, 2025
I haven’t weighed in much on the Walter Block/Mises Institute/Hoppe Israel stuff, since I know what areas I specialize in and this is not one of them (libertarians often want to chime in about things they know little about; I try to resist this or provide appropriate…
— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) September 6, 2024
Completely disagree. Just like with IP. The case against IP is not anarchist and doens’t rest on anarchy, only on understanding the nature and basis of property rights. Similarly even if you are a minarchist you can recognize that justifying individual self defense is different…
— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 24, 2025
I had actually written about this after talking about Israel with Block.
“My heart is with Israel, my brain is with the Palestinians” is, in a way, the opposite of my stance. I believe it to be logical to prefer Israel to Palestine, based on a consequentialist judgment of a lesser evil, but to be moral to prefer Palestine to Israel, considering Israel is guilty of what may amount to the genocide of Palestinians, ignoring a counterfactual possibility of Palestinians doing that on Israelis.
https://libertarianism.uk/2025/07/26/the-israel-trap/