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States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals may not exist, but the book is now a reality. It was published this week by Columbia University Press as part of its series New Directions in Critical Theory, edited by Amy Allen.

I hope you judge it by the cover. (Thank you, Columbia designers!)

Here's the catalogue copy:

As citizens, we hold certain truths to be self-evident: that the rights to own land, marry, inherit property, and especially to assume birthright citizenship should be guaranteed by the state. The laws promoting these rights appear not only to preserve our liberty but to guarantee society remains just. Yet considering how much violence and inequality results from these legal mandates, Jacqueline Stevens asks whether we might be making the wrong assumptions. Would a world without such laws be more just?

Arguing that the core laws of the nation-state are more about a fear of death than a desire for freedom, Stevens imagines a world in which birthright citizenship, family inheritance, state-sanctioned marriage, and private land ownership are eliminated. Would chaos be the result? Drawing on political theory and history and incorporating contemporary social and economic data, she brilliantly critiques our sentimental attachments to birthright citizenship, inheritance, and marriage and highlights their harmful outcomes, including war, global apartheid, destitution, family misery, and environmental damage. It might be hard to imagine countries without the rules of membership and ownership that have come to define them, but conjuring new ways of reconciling our laws with the condition of mortality reveals the flaws of our present institutions and inspires hope for moving beyond them.

And, yes, there are blurbs:

"Imagining governments and citizenship unbeholden to rules of birth-that is, cleaving the state from the family (i.e. the nation)-is the single most important thought experiment in political theory since John Rawls asked us to consider justice from a position of veiled ignorance. Jacqueline Stevens is not just a punchy provacateur, she is a careful scholar and an engaging writer. States without Nations is a must read for any scholar of the politics, sociology or legal studies of the state-and anyone concerned with distributive justice." — Dalton Conley, Dean for the Social Sciences, New York University


"States without Nations is a scathing indictment of kinship-based membership. In an argument as unrelenting as it is brilliant, Jacqueline Stevens challenges feminists, liberals, and, indeed, anyone who values peace and security, to join her in recognizing and rejecting kinship as the ultimate source of violence. This original and much-needed intervention will reshape debates in international relations, political science, and women's studies." — Jodi Dean, author of Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies

"States Without Nations is a brutal exposé of the violent and mutually implicating underpinnings of liberal theory and national identity, and it constitutes nothing less than an early attempt to reconceptualize and reorganize world citizenship anew. I find it brilliant, bold, breathtaking, pioneering, far-reaching, and visionary. There's nothing else quite like it." — John Evan Seery, professor of politics, Pomona College

"No myth needs exploding more urgently than that of the tight association of state with nation, of the exigencies of governance with the idea of people defined by culture and common descent. No misconception has done more damage in modern political theory. And no theorist is better positioned to explode this myth-in its birthright, where it lives, in its premises of blood and land and birth-than Jacqueline Stevens." — Jeremy Waldron, University Professor, New York University School of Law

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This Just In: Israeli Land Policy Breaks God's Law

This morning I happened to be reading the Hebrew Bible, looking out for passages on the treatment of foreigners (for the conclusion of the book I'm finishing) and I came upon this tidbit from Ezekiel that I hadn't expected.

God is setting out the boundaries for the land of Israel and explaining to Ezekiel where within these each of the 12 tribes should reside. In the process he tells Ezekiel to tell the Israelites that aliens should be able to remain where they are and that their inheritances must be protected. Let's listen in (as told by the Revised Standard Edition):

Thus says the Lord GOD: "These are the boundaries by which you shall divide the land for inheritance among the twelve tribes of Israel. Joseph shall have two portions.
[14] And you shall divide it equally; I swore to give it to your fathers, and this land shall fall to you as your inheritance.
[15] "This shall be the boundary of the land: On the north side, from the Great Sea by way of Hethlon to the entrance of Hamath, and on to Zedad,
[16] Bero'thah, Sib'raim (which lies on the border between Damascus and Hamath), as far as Hazer-hatticon, which is on the border of Hauran.
[17] So the boundary shall run from the sea to Hazar-e'non, which is on the northern border of Damascus, with the border of Hamath to the north. This shall be the north side.
[18] "On the east side, the boundary shall run from Hazar-e'non between Hauran and Damascus; along the Jordan between Gilead and the land of Israel; to the eastern sea and as far as Tamar. This shall be the east side.
[19] "On the south side, it shall run from Tamar as far as the waters of Meribath-ka'desh, thence along the Brook of Egypt to the Great Sea. This shall be the south side.
[20] "On the west side, the Great Sea shall be the boundary to a point opposite the entrance of Hamath. This shall be the west side.
[21] "So you shall divide this land among you according to the tribes of Israel.

And here's the kicker:

[22] You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the aliens who reside among you and have begotten children among you. They shall be to you as native-born sons of Israel; with you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel.
[23] In whatever tribe the alien resides, there you shall assign him his inheritance, says the Lord GOD.

So that's what God says. What did today's Israelis actually do? Some land they bought from absentee Arab landlords in the early twentieth century and then used the land title to evict farmers whose families had lived in Palestine for hundreds of years. Some land they traded. And most of the land, they stole during various wars. About 93% of all land in Israel is owned by the government.
As a secret report of the Israeli government indicates, despite all these efforts 39% of the land Israel claims to own is actually still titled to Arabs whose inheritance rights, which along with God's dictum, are being violated. Here's what the New York Times published about this last year in a front-page article by Steven Erlanger (November 21, 2006):

An Israeli advocacy group, using maps and figures leaked from inside the government, says that 39 percent of the land held by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians....
One case in a settlement Israel intends to keep is in Givat Zeev, barely five miles north of Jerusalem. At the southern edge is the Ayelet Hashachar synagogue. Rabah Abdellatif, a Palestinian who lives in the nearby village of Al Jib, says the land belongs to him.

Papers he has filed with the Israeli military court, which runs the West Bank, seem to favor Mr. Abdellatif. In 1999, Israeli officials confirmed, he was even granted a judgment ordering the demolition of the synagogue because it had been built without permits. But for the last seven years, the Israeli system has done little to enforce its legal judgments. The synagogue stands, and Mr. Abdellatif has no access to his land.

Ram Kovarsky, the town council secretary, said the synagogue was outside the boundaries of Givat Zeev, although there is no obvious separation. Israeli officials confirm that the land is privately owned, though they refuse to say by whom.

Mr. Abdellatif, 65, said: ''I feel stuck, angry. Why would they do that? I don't know who to go to anymore.''

He pointed to his corduroy trousers and said, in the English he learned in Paterson, N.J., where his son is a police detective: ''These are my pants. And those are your pants. And you should not take my pants. This is mine, and that is yours! I never took anyone's land.''

According to the Peace Now figures, 44.3 percent of Givat Zeev is on private Palestinian land....

[I]n the Palestinian village of Burqa, Youssef Moussa Abdel Raziq Nabboud, 85, says that some of the land of Migron, and the land on which Israel built a road for settlers, belongs to him and his family, who once grew wheat and beans there. He said he had tax documents from the pre-1967 authorities.

''They have the power to put the settlement there and we can do nothing,'' he said. ''They have a fence around the settlement and dogs there.''

Mr. Nabboud went to the Israeli authorities with the mayor, Abu Maher, but they were told he needed an Israeli lawyer and surveyor. ''I have no money for that,'' he said. What began as an outpost taking 5 acres has now taken 125, the mayor said.

Mr. Nabboud wears a traditional head covering; his grandson, Khaled, 27, wears a Yankees cap. ''The land is my inheritance,'' he said. ''I feel sad I can't go there. And angry. The army protects them.''

The words of God on this matter deserve one last mention:

[22] You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the aliens who reside among you and have begotten children among you. They shall be to you as native-born sons of Israel; with you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel.
[23] In whatever tribe the alien resides, there you shall assign him his inheritance, says the Lord GOD.

This morning's paper mentioned yet another atrocity Israel committed. Today it was the death of a Palestinian denied entry at the border so he could go to the hospital. Buried in a New York Times story about Holocaust benefits titled "Olmert Will Rework Aid Plan for Survivors of the Holocaust" we learn about Israel's own annihilation policies:

In Gaza, a Palestinian man seeking treatment in Israel for kidney failure died while waiting at the Erez border crossing. Israel had agreed to allow the man, Wael Abu Warda, 27, to travel to an Israeli hospital for treatment. He arrived Thursday night but was not allowed through; an Israeli Army spokeswoman said that Palestinian officials had withdrawn the request for him earlier on Thursday. He was told to return Friday morning. A second request was made on Friday and approved, the army said, but another patient was sent through instead. In the meantime, Mr. Warda died.

Image is from 2006 commemoration of the 1948 War that led to Arab expulsion and expropriation; it is in southern Bethlehem in protest of a wall being erected.