Former President Barack Obama recently spoke out regarding the situation in the Middle East.
In an October 2026 interview with journalist Susan McKay, Obama declared that Israel’s reliance on military and technological superiority risks undermining its moral standing. He warned that Israel has “ceded moral ground” by refusing concessions and engaging in excessive military engagements. Obama also noted that approximately 7 million Palestinians live in the region and will not leave, meaning force alone cannot guarantee long-term security.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was having none of this. He maintained, in sharp contrast, that the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers or a colonial enterprise. He said, “Our land is not stolen land. This is our homeland … Judea. That’s where Jews come from.”
According to John Locke, the preeminent philosopher of private property rights, they emanate from homesteading. The first people to “mix their labor” with the land become the rightful owners of it. That is, unless and until they abandon it.
Jews have been busily homesteading the land in the Middle East for some 3,000 years. They have been making (at least parts of) the desert bloom. Want some proof? The Al Aqsa Mosque lies above the Jewish Second Temple, which is placed above the Jewish First Temple. So, who was there first? This question answers itself. But the land upon which these holy buildings are set hardly comprises all of the territory between river to the Sea. At most, only a scant few acres of it.
Here is some more evidence. The major sport in the United States is football. That in Canada? Hockey. The most popular athletic competition in virtually all of the remainder of the world is hockey. What is the equivalent in Israel?
It is archeology. The Jews there are forever digging, all over the place, from the river to the sea, or, at least, the terrains they can get their shovels and pickaxes on. And what do they discover? The first few feet down, to be sure, just like the Al Aqsa Mosque, in many areas, they find Arab materials: coins, clothing, jewelry, etc. But when they dig deeper, it is all Hebrew. They were there first. The Arabs, the Palestinians, the Gazans are all Johnny-come-latelys.
But did not the Jews abandon this territory? After all, the Arabs have been in possession of goodly parts of the contested areas for several centuries.
No, they did not! Yes, they were conquered, expelled, murdered, raped, burnt alive by a series of marauders including the Romans and the Ottomans. But they never came within a million miles of abandoning the territory. All throughout the centuries they were banned from their ancestral homes, there were some few who remained. And those in the diaspora prayed, “Next year in Jerusalem.”
So, yes, the Hebrews, not the Arabs are the rightful owners of the contested lands. They ought to adopt the motto: “From the river to the sea, Israel will be free.”
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Would they then be accused, rightfully, of plagiarism? After all, the supporters of a Palestinian state were indeed the originators of this phrase. Well, indeed, yes, the supporters of a “Greater Israel” do indeed owe this phrase to the former group. However, they were using it incorrectly. They, improperly, maintained that it was Arabs who should own this contested land. Not true, not true at all. Based on Lockean principles, it belongs to the progeny of the original homesteaders, the Jews. Further, there are lots of infelicities worse, far worse, than mere plagiarism.
The Arabs own over 99% of the Middle East. The Jews claim less than 1% of it. One would think, in a rational world, there would be room for both. If one thought that, one would be wrong, as evidenced by the continual invasions by the Arabs of that little sliver of land owned by the Hebrews.
Walter E. Block, Ph.D., is the Harold E. Wirth eminent scholar endowed chair and professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans.