Statue of Limitations

Here are the concluding paragraphs from Hardin's Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor:

We Americans of non-Indian ancestry can look upon ourselves as the descendants of thieves who are guilty morally, if not legally, of stealing this land from its Indian owners. Should we then give back the land to the now living American descendants of those Indians? However morally or logically sound this proposal may be, I, for one, am unwilling to live by it and I know no one else who is. Besides, the logical consequence would be absurd. Suppose that, intoxicated with a sense of pure justice, we should decide to turn our land over to the Indians. Since all our other wealth has also been derived from the land, wouldn't we be morally obliged to give that back to the Indians too?

Clearly, the concept of pure justice produces an infinite regression to absurdity. Centuries ago, wise men invented statutes of limitations to justify the rejection of such pure justice, in the interest of preventing continual disorder. The law zealously defends property rights, but only relatively recent property rights. Drawing a line after an arbitrary time has elapsed may be unjust, but the alternatives are worse.

I heard some newsreader on BBC World Service state how many Gazans there are (~1.2 million) and in the very next sentence he quoted some percentage (I was too agitated to remember the number) of Gazans who "are" refugees from the original Israeli occupation.

The deceptive sleight-of-hand is using a percentage of the 1948 population just after stating the 2009 population, to imply that most of the Gazans have a legitimate home in Israel. (And despite this thumb-on-the-balance behaviour, BBC et al have a reputation for favoring Israel.)

Although I ain't no lawyer, it seems to me that the statute of limitations for right of return has reached and exceeded its limit. Even if it hasn't, though, it applies only to a fraction of today's residents of Gaza.


hat tip: The Oil Drum
photo: xinhuanet.com