Jeremy Hammond has written an excellent brief book on the origin of the strife in Palestine. This is the book (available for the Kindle) to read or recommend for anyone who wants to know what’s going on in Palestine but who isn’t prepared to spend her life reading about the matter.
Thank you, Jeremy Hammond!
Remember that remark of Murray Rothbard about how national borders in the nation-state system are morally arbitrary.
ReplyDeleteWhy are the national borders in 1861, 1919, 1945, 1948, and 1956 or at any other time morally superior?
Borders in Europe are so fluid that collecting the vastly different maps of Europe is a hobby. German has no fixed borders, as A.J.P. Taylor observed.
Palestinian Revanchism is not different from any other Revanchism in it is a recipe for endless wars over one of many grievances about nationalism and nationhood.
Revanchism is a term used since the 1870s to describe a political manifestation of the will to reverse territorial losses. Revanchism draws its strength from patriotic and retributionist thought and economic or geo-political factors.
German Revanchism and irredentism would plunge Europe back into war as it reclaimed west Poland and the Sudetenland. The Balkans and eastern Europe would be plunged into war to revise the 1945 and 1919 boundaries.
Irredentism is any position advocating annexation of territories administered by another state because of common ethnicity or prior historical possession, actual or alleged.
Irish Revanchism and irredentism over Northern Ireland led to a war from 1922 onwards. Nationalists everywhere are surprisingly intolerant of secessionists and minorities.
The formation of the common market put an end to Revanchism in Europe.