I won’t argue for either side here — but will note that the Israel/Palestine situation is a good counter-example to the leftist view that democracy and elected governments are the best way to ensure peace and stable government in any country. This turns out to be true only when the majority of voters actually WANT peace. Both the Knesset and the PA parliament have been dominated by pro-war factions for decades — indeed, both of them dissolved in votes of no confidence rather than ratify the quite balanced Oslo accord in 1993.

I don’t believe permanent peace will ever come to Israel/Palestine until one of the following happens.
(1) One of them (probably Israel) exterminates its opponents to the last man.
(2) Some strong outside country conquers both of them and imposes its rule with an iron hand. (And today, I don’t think even the US is strong enough to do this if it tried.)

I *do* believe that there will soon be a nuclear war in the region. If I lived there, no matter what my religion/race, I would move far away. Now.

The interesting thing about the Rothbard piece is not any “argument from authority” nonsense. It is the actual content of the piece. Read it instead of knocking down strawmen.

(The whole post-9/11 period has been like that for a lot of libertarians, I hope, since many of us thought we agreed on virtually _everything_ back in the 90s when no one was paying much attention to foreign policy, and suddenly we realized we had radical hawks and radical doves and other curious creatures among us.)