Ludwig von Mises was a champion of an ideal of liberty in an age of central planning and socialism. In his book Liberalism, the state is “the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion that induces people to abide by the rules of life in society,” and the function that Mises assigns to the state in the liberal doctrine is the protection of property, liberty, and peace. Then there is the law, which consists of the rules according to which the state proceeds. And last but not least, there is the government, which consists of the organs charged with the responsibility of administering the state.
For Mises, the government by a handful of people depends on the consent of the governed, so that no government can maintain itself—its form, regime and personnel—if the majority of the governed are not convinced that their government is good. All the other demands of liberalism result from the fundamental demand of property, which refers to private ownership of the means of production (“for in regard to commodities ready for consumption, private ownership is a matter of course and is not disputed even by the socialists and communists”).
As Mises says, if the program of liberalism were to be condensed into a single word, it would read: property.
War, Conquest, and the State of Israel
In 1948, with the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine, a government was established and the territory of its dominion was expanded without the consent of the majority of the property owners, who were expelled, killed, or subjected to the status of second-class citizens—and who were, in fact, the majority of the population inhabiting and owning vast tracts of land stolen by Israeli forces. Thus, war and conquest gave rise to the State of Israel, with a largely new population of Jews who immigrated to Palestine in the few decades before its creation and who came to form the majority of those governed in the new country of Israel. Since then, the Israeli army has not stopped waging wars in favor of Israel’s expansion, conquering new territories, which are also legally designated—like those conquered with the creation of the Israeli state—as state-owned.
From Mises’ viewpoint, if it were true that war is the father of all things, human sacrifices would be necessary to further the general welfare and the progress of humanity, and no lament for them nor any striving to reduce their numbers would justify the desire to abolish war and bring about eternal peace. However, the liberal perspective is fundamentally different. As Mises explains, it starts from the premise that peace, not war, is the father of all things. The liberal “abhors war” because it has only harmful consequences:
What alone enables mankind to advance and distinguishes man from the animals is social cooperation. It is labor alone that is productive: it creates wealth and therewith lays the outward foundations for the inward flowering of man. War only destroys; it cannot create. War, carnage, destruction, and devastation we have in common with the predatory beasts of the jungle; constructive labor is our distinctively human characteristic.
The adage applied by Israeli ex Prime Minister Menachem Begin to justify Israeli conquests was, “we fight, therefore we are.” And this could also be applied, especially if they succeed, by Palestinian Arabs to recover stolen land. In any event, Mises regards war as an evil, irrespective of the ability of either side to wage and win wars:
[The liberal] is convinced that victorious war is an evil even for the victor, that peace is always better than war. He demands no sacrifice from the stronger, but only that he should come to realize where his true interests lie and should learn to understand that peace is for him, the stronger, just as advantageous as it is for the weaker.
Even so, the ends for which each side fight are relevant for Mises:
When a peace-loving nation is attacked by a bellicose enemy, it must offer resistance and do everything to ward off the onslaught. Heroic deeds performed in such a war by those fighting for their freedom and their lives are entirely praiseworthy… Here daring, intrepidity, and contempt for death are praiseworthy because they are in the service of a good end…
In accordance with Mises, what makes human actions good or bad depends on “the end that they serve and the consequences they entail.” In this sense, he exemplifies:
Even Leonidas would not be worthy of the esteem in which we hold him if he had fallen, not as the defender of his homeland, but as the leader of an invading army intent on robbing a peaceful people of its freedom and possessions.
War, Religion, and Liberalism
When they do not base the invasion of the homeland of Palestinian Arabs and the robbing of their possessions on the ability to wage wars, Israeli leaders justify their actions on theological grounds, rationalizing war and conquest through appeals to a god that designated the Jewish people as a chosen group of men. But if this were not an argument to reject the equality before the law of liberalism, it is definitely not the ultimate ideal of the perfect cooperation of all mankind envisioned by liberalism, with the liberal domestic and foreign policies merging into the same goal of peace. That is, just as much between nations as within each nation, liberalism aims at peaceful cooperation:
… the whole policy and program of liberalism is designed to serve the purpose of maintaining the existing state of mutual cooperation among the members of the human race and of extending it still further.
For Mises, liberal thinking has the whole of humanity in view, it is cosmopolitan and ecumenical—taking in all men and the whole world.
On the other hand, liberalism limits its concerns to earthly things. The kingdom of religion is not of this world. Then, according to him, “liberalism and religion could both exist side by side without their spheres’ touching.” That they reach any point of collision is not liberalism’ fault, because it does not intrude into “the domain of religious faith or of metaphysical doctrine.” Besides, from the conviction that the assurance of peace must take precedence over everything, liberalism proclaims “tolerance for every religious faith and every metaphysical belief.” Religiously, however, Begin claimed Israel’s expansion by Jehovah’s gift in perpetuity of Eretz Israel—the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel—to the Jewish settlers, thus designating the seized land as “liberated.”
And if liberalism encountered the church “as a political power claiming the right to regulate according to its judgment not only the relationship of man to the world to come, but also the affairs of this world,” liberalism must encounter the State of Israel not only for its religious wars, but also for regulating worldly affairs in historic Palestine according to ethno-religious affiliation—through arbitrariness, bias and abuse of political and military power against the property, liberty, and peace of entire communities for decades.
War, Private Property, and Self-Determination
While the liberal “does not expect to abolish war by preaching and moralizing,” he does try to create the conditions that will eliminate the causes of war. Then, stating that the first requirement for their elimination is private property, Mises adds:
When private property must be respected even in time of war, when the victor is not entitled to appropriate to himself the property of private persons, and the appropriation of public property has no great significance because private ownership of the means of production prevails everywhere, an important motive for waging war has already been excluded… So that the exercise of the right of self-determination may not be reduced to a farce, political institutions must be such as to render the transference of sovereignty over a territory from one government to another a matter of the least possible significance, involving no advantage or disadvantage for anyone.
However, not only have the leaders of the State of Israel never bothered to eliminate the causes of war, but they have persisted in creating such causes. Given that almost all of Israel’s territory is state-owned and Israeli law stipulates that all land in Israel shall be held in public trust and not in exclusive private ownership, public property in Israel does have great significance. And being the conquering force and victor of wars since 1948, the State of Israel has appropriated more and more property from private persons to this day.
Furthermore, sovereignty over Palestine was never transferred by the British government to the Arab majority or to anyone else as a matter of the least possible significance, but was significantly channeled to a minority of Jews, many of whom, prior to the creation of the Israeli State, benefited from British sovereign power that promoted and abetted expropriations of Arab land in favor of Jewish immigration. These events reduced to a farce any promise by the British government to guarantee the civil rights of the Arab majority and any serious consideration for their right to self-determination in their homeland, entailing ever since, and from 1948 by the hands of the State of Israel, not only disadvantages for millions of Arabs, but also death and destitution in between.
In fact, as well as for the Arabs, the same right to self-determination was to be recognized for the Jewish communities in Palestine at any time before the creation of the Israeli State. And indeed, in liberal thinking, this right is crucial to prevent wars:
… whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars.
But it was precisely because the formation of the State of Israel went far beyond this right, with the power to determine the fate of the Arabs against their right to self-determination, that wars could not be prevented.
Following Mises, who was the son of a Jewish rabbi, there cannot be a chosen people who opt for war and conquest through religious rationalizations, rather than choosing social cooperation, while remaining a liberal people. In sum, the creation and continued expansion of Israel can only be defended by abandoning liberalism.
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