Scott interviews Sheldon Richman about his new book, a collection of essays on the history of Israel and Palestine. He explains that almost everything we’ve heard about the official narrative of the founding of Israel is wrong—far from a country of peaceful Jews constantly under threat of being pushed into the sea by a bunch of hateful Arabs, Richman says the Israelis continues to exist only by occupation, colonization, and removal of Palestinians from land that their families have occupied for years. Richman addresses another popular point of argument, which is the biblical justification for the Jewish right of return to the land. Even if you’re a fan of that argument, he says, the non-Jews in the Middle East probably have a better claim to the land than Jews who live in Europe and America, since today’s Middle Easterners are the ones that are actually descended from the Jews who were kicked out by the Romans 2000 years ago. Richman’s book is the place to go to understand this history and many other arguments around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Discussed on the show:

• Coming to Palestine
• “”Ancient History”: U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention” (Cato Institute)
• Six-Day War
• The Invention of the Jewish People
• The Thirteenth Tribe
• Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History
• “The Myth of the U.N. Creation of Israel” (Foreign Policy Journal)

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of the Libertarian Institute and the author of America’s Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited. Follow him on Twitter @SheldonRichman.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Washinton Babylon; Liberty Under Attack Publications; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.

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