Economics Giants F.A. Hayek And Murray Rothbard Rejected Mainstream Zionism

Economics Giants 1974 Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek And Murray Rothbard Rejected Mainstream Zionism

 I believe that Zionism, just like Socialism, is a flawed ideology that fooled many bright and well-intentioned people to disaster (see my article ‘Using Carl Menger’s Insights to Understand the ‘unintended’ Emergence of the Socialist and Zionist Ideological Calamities.’) Zionists erroneously saw antisemitic fallacies-tropes and Jew-gentile frictions as some ever-present insurmountable problems, or “irrational hatred” (the world’s oldest of course), that can’t really be intellectually overcome via reason, sympathy for the misguided and education just like we overcame unequal treatment of women, slavery, and so on. This fallacy fooled them into attempting to overcome antisemitism via moral condemnations, vilification, violence, and separation by motivating Jews to abandon their centuries-old organically evolved identities, humble synagogues and towns where they were really from, to create a “Jewish State” in an area overwhelmingly populated by Muslims, Christians and many anti-Zionist Jews who detested the idea of living under a “Jewish State”. A state with a coerced atheist-Herzl-designed “Jewish” flag, anthem, and overall national “identity” concocted by misguided European ideologues who inherited many of the racist and Socialist fallacies of their times. David ben Gurion, Israel’s “architect” and first Prime Minister, was an atheist and Socialist who eagerly attended Moscow in 1923 to celebrate the 7th anniversary of the Bolsheviks’ October Revolution and get a glimpse of his hero, fellow Jew Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Trotsky). Benzion Netanyahu, Bibi’s dad, wrote and believed absurdities like: “If a nation says out of conviction, I am strong and forceful, then it becomes strong and forceful. This is the law of greatness.” Impressive if written in cursive by a four-year-old, but an absurd basis for creating a country in the most sacred of locations.

By not overcoming antisemitic fallacies-tropes intellectually, and adding even more reasons to dislike Jews, Zionism increased antisemitism and emerging polarizations playing a significant role in sparking WWII, and most of the chaos in the Middle East of the last 120-or-so-years including today’s global polarizations. As summarized by US Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson who mentioned: “Hamas and Hezbollah are proxies of Iran, and they’re tied in now with Russia and China. I mean, it is a new axis of evil.” Hitler, of course, held anti-Jewish fallacies (see ‘The Economic Fallacies Underpinning Hitler’s Disastrous Views’), which grew thanks to the Zionists’ understandable desire to destroy his regime. However, vilifying and attempting to harm people making errors, instead of overcoming them via reason and education, is also a mistake just as responsible—if not more so—for all the polarizations and chaos.

Soon after the 1967 ‘Six-Day War’ Murray Rothbard (Jewish) wrote the classic essay ‘War Guilt in the Middle East’ that brilliantly summarized the history of Zionism and many of its flaws. He writes:

“The fact that Palestine was not a virgin land, but already occupied by an Arab peasantry, meant nothing to the ideologues of Zionism. Furthermore, the Zionists, far from hoping to preserve ghetto Yiddish culture, wished to bury it and to substitute a new culture and a new language based on an artificial secular expansion of ancient religious Hebrew.”

Zionists displayed the understandable European-white negligence and arrogance towards non-Europeans (Arabs). And like the Socialists who destroyed the organically evolved cultures of Russia (Christianity), China (Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism), etc., so did Zionists attempt to destroy-change traditional Jewish identity, as leading Zionist Jabotinsky wrote in 1905: “take…the Yid[Jew] of today, and try to imagine in our minds his exact opposite…the Yid is ugly, sickly, and lacks handsomeness we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew[new Jew-Zionist] with masculine beauty.… The Yid is disgusting to all.” As well as engineer a new morality, as Jabotinsky writes in his classic article “The Iron Wall” (1923) :

“We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not. There is no other morality.”

Like the Socialists, the Zionists compounded the problem by tying their identity and morality to errors requiring the coercion of thousands in Palestine via their ‘Jewish State’, the West-US via the necessary taxation to fund America’s now yearly 1.5 trillion dollar military needed to destroy Israel’s enemies (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iran, etc.). And ‘hate speech’ laws that criminalize ideological opposition. CEO of the Anti-Defamation League Jonathan Greenblatt mentioned that: “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism”, and that: “Anti-Zionism is genocide”. Israeli author of the great books ‘The Invention of the Jewish People’, and ‘The Invention of the Land of Israel’, Shlomo Sand, astutely mentioned that: “Zionism has become…. a sort of Stalinism.”

By conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, Zionist myth believers expand the wars, chaos, and tyranny leading to more antisemitism just like the Socialist myth believers’ bound-to-fail ‘central plans’ increased the poverty, misery, and tyranny their ideology alleged to improve. Murray ends on a prescient and positive note:

 “Israel, therefore, faces a long-run dilemma which she must someday meet. Either to continue on her present course and, after years of mutual hostility and conflict be overthrown by Arab people’s guerrilla war. Or – to change direction drastically, to cut herself loose completely from Western imperial ties, and become simply Jewish citizens of the Middle East. If she did that, then peace and harmony and justice would at last reign in that tortured region. There is ample precedent for this peaceful coexistence. For in the centuries before 19th- and 20th-century Western imperialism, Jew and Arab had always lived well and peacefully together in the Middle East. There is no inherent enmity or conflict between Arab and Jew. In the great centuries of Arab civilization in North Africa and Spain, Jews took a happy and prominent part – in contrast to their ongoing persecution by the fanatics of the Christian West. Shorn of Western influence and Western imperialism, that harmony can reign once more.”

Let’s now turn to Hayek. Independent scholar Edwin Van de Haar summarized Hayek’s efforts:

“He sent two letters to Prime Minister Menachem Begin…, although he said he only received a courteous acknowledgement in return. Hayek’s idea was to federalize Jerusalem, which he claimed would also secure the “unswerving support of the whole Christian world” for Israel. Jerusalem had to become “a sort of District of Columbia of a Palestine federation” which had to include Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Gaza… This federation would be “administered as the common spiritual home of the three great monotheistic religions.” It was the only arrangement to promise a permanent peaceful order and in this way the city would forever belong to the Jews, if not only to the Jews. The power of the federal government should largely be limited to external affairs. Hayek advised that Israel should take the lead with this proposal, because then it would get it done within acceptable terms. He predicted that if Israel waited it would simply be forced upon it, with less favourable conditions… The Dayan letter reached the minister a few days before his death, so in the next year Hayek sent a letter to Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kolek. The main message remained the same, although the federation was now called “The Levantine Federation,” and should “possibly include East Jordan.” Hayek wrote that “originally I had remarked it would be wise to make it a Royal federation under an Arab king and an Israeli prime minister, but that would probably be expecting too much of Israeli pride”… Hayek first kept his ideas private, as to leave opportunity to the Israelis to use and introduce it…”

For Hayek, his proposal, as mentioned in his second letter to Begin dated May 2nd, 1980: “is probably the only way in which you can permanently secure to all Jews free access to Jerusalem and probably the right of settlement in all the associated federal states.” Similar to Prof. David Beito’s “…Swiss Style Canton System” proposed framework, Hayek envisioned an area of free trade and movement (“settlement in all the associated federal states”) that would become “one of the greatest financial centers” (1982 letter to Kollek). Unfortunately, Zionist ideologues, being equally human, with Soviet-like ignorance and negligence ignored Hayek, causing him to essentially throw in the towel and go public via a short letter in ‘The Times of London’ on May 14th, 1985 where he desperately writes:

“…I ought to urge publicly what I have vainly urged on Israeli friends many times, namely that Israel could make no greater contribution to the safety of its own future and to the peace of the world than by offering Jerusalem as the common capital of a Palestine Federation…amounting, at least at first, to little more than common defence and a free trade union…”

Mankind keeps paying a heavy price for disregarding intellectual giants who remain way ahead of our times like Hayek and Rothbard. We already caught up to them regarding Soviet-style Socialism, and we must soon do the same regarding Zionism to secure “the peace of the world.”

Source: https://civilizedapes.substack.com/p/economics-giants-1974-nobel-laureate