“The great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises brilliantly explained the importance of property rights, and his words explain the root cause of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: “If histrorical experience could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.”He also said: “social cooperation and the division of labor can be achieved only in a system of private ownership of the means of production, i.e., within a market society, or capitalism. All the other principles of liberalism democracy, personal freedom of the individual, freedom of speech and of the press, religious tolerance, peace among the nations are consequences of this basic postulate. They can be realized only within a society based on private property.”, and most pertinently: “What elevates man above all other animals is the cognition that peaceful cooperation under the principle of the division of labor is a better method to preserve life and to remove felt uneasiness than indulging in pitiless biological competition for a share in the scarce means of subsistence provided by nature.” As I explain in detail in my book Principles of Economics, building on Mises’ work, private property is the only workable solution for dealing with scarcity, so it is only with clear property rights that the division of labor and market cooperation emerge, and only through that can humans rise above animals and live in peaceful civilization. There can be no human civilization unless it is established on a solid bedrock of respect for property rights, and the only alternative to property rights is conflict, and a descent into the rank of subhuman animals engaged in pitiless competition for the subsistence provided by nature, as Mises put it. Palestine is the perfect illustration of the truth and wisdom in Mises’ words. Tellingly, the great Mises, who was Jewish himself, never expressed a shred of sympathy or support for the Zionist project in all the many thousands of pages he published on a wide variety of topics.”