Oddbean new post about | logout
 In my view everybody has the right to exist anywhere, as long as you get your property in an ethical way. A lot of property in Israel, as it seems to me, was obtained with violence. 

I don't think whole states belong to anybody, although governments pretend to. 
 In my place, the property was once obtained with violence from native people.

How about yours.
 
 That's probably true for all land where people want to live. Btw these 'native' people did the same thing, at least in the US. 
 So what do we do, how far back does the violence have to have occurred to be "legit" or "forgotten". Currently we see the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Israelis and the Palestinians dig out various maps from various times in the past that show all sorts of things, each one in their favor.

It seems that there is some sort of consensus by the "international community" whoever that is that draws the line post WW2 1950-ish and those are the official borders now and they stay forever.

Seems pretty arbitrary to me.