10.10.11

Not sure where this falls on the old anti-semitism spectrum (if it falls at all), but there's a raging debate on the facebooks about whether Israel's post-Exodus entry into the promised land is a legitimate or illegitimate use of the occupy/possess distinction,* or something else entirely. If I were really to venture a guess on this one, I'd think God's gift of the land to Abraham precedes any Canaanite claims to the same land, or at least trumps them.

Either way, though, I feel it's safe to say that the alleged infraction happened long enough ago to have no moral relevance to any current state of affairs.


*ie, native Americans were displaced from their lands on the argument that though they occupied it in a perfectly legitimate fashion, they made poor use of it and so couldn't be said to possess it (which I think is approximately Locke's position--it's certainly not Grotius'); the distinction had wide play in the late-medieval/early-modern period as the justification for all sorts of colonial adventures.

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