Abstract
Zionism aimed to establish a national home for Jews in Palestine. It involved settlement of Zionist Jews in the region, despite facing resistance from many local Arabs. Was the unilateral Zionist settlement morally permissible, or was it an instance of wrongful colonialism? Three objections will be discussed here and they all stem from the Kantian ethics of state-building and the minimalistic conception of statehood that follows from it. According to the ‘neutralist objection’, the establishment of a national home is not a just cause for a state building project. The ‘cosmopolitan’ objection argues that unilateral settlement is permissible only in extreme circumstances and that typically, it violates the locals’ right to self-rule. Finally, the imperialist objection argues that Zionist unilateralism exploited the wrongful colonial rule to which Arab Palestinians were subject. I will show that no Kantian objection to Zionism is decisive.
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© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Do Socially Constructed Norms have Moral Force? Précis to a Symposium
- Moralism and Realism in Theorizing Social Norms
- Two Types of Social Norms
- Political Obligations and Respect for Social Norms
- Must I Honor Your Convictions? On Laura Valentini’s Agency-Respect View
- Social Norms and Obligation: Rescuing the Joint Commitment Account
- General Part
- Moral Paradigms of Intergenerational Solidarity in the Coronavirus-Pandemic
- The Weight of History After October 7 and the Gaza War: Shaping a New Future
- Germany, Israel’s Security, and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism: Shadows from the Past and Current Tensions
- Kantian Rights and the Zionist Settlement in Palestine
- War and Self-Defense: Some Reflections on the War on Gaza
- Discussion
- What is Classical Realism?
- Do We Learn Anything from Kirshner?
- Classical Realism is not ‘Everything, Everywhere, All at Once’
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Do Socially Constructed Norms have Moral Force? Précis to a Symposium
- Moralism and Realism in Theorizing Social Norms
- Two Types of Social Norms
- Political Obligations and Respect for Social Norms
- Must I Honor Your Convictions? On Laura Valentini’s Agency-Respect View
- Social Norms and Obligation: Rescuing the Joint Commitment Account
- General Part
- Moral Paradigms of Intergenerational Solidarity in the Coronavirus-Pandemic
- The Weight of History After October 7 and the Gaza War: Shaping a New Future
- Germany, Israel’s Security, and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism: Shadows from the Past and Current Tensions
- Kantian Rights and the Zionist Settlement in Palestine
- War and Self-Defense: Some Reflections on the War on Gaza
- Discussion
- What is Classical Realism?
- Do We Learn Anything from Kirshner?
- Classical Realism is not ‘Everything, Everywhere, All at Once’