Eugene Volokh challenges this call by the Jersusalem Post for Europeans to return any and all property once owned by Jews that was taken by questionable means:
Lists of confiscated Jewish communal property in Europe should be expanded to include not just buildings taken by the Nazis or the Soviets, but by their medieval forebears as well. The Foreign Ministry, working together with Jewish organizations, should press the Europeans to come clean, and demand the return of our stolen patrimony.
Eugene, quite reasonably, thinks this is problematic:
First, the argument rests on the notion of group guilt and group entitlement, which has so often been used against Jews, now being used supposedly on behalf of Jews. So some Jews in Spain had their property stolen. That’s horrible. But why should it now be given to completely different Jews today, simply because they share the same ethnicity or religion?
Second, the argument completely ignores the rights of subsequent owners of the property. There are people, entirely innocent people, who now own or use the property that was stolen 500 years ago. They’ve invented their time, effort, and money to keeping it up, improving it, and investing orders of magnitude more into it than it was worth 500 years ago when it was taken.
The Post edititorial anticipates this argument,
There can be no time limit when it comes to justice, and there can be no excuse for holding back on returning stolen Jewish property.
Centuries may have passed, but that in no way dilutes Europe’s moral obligation to correct what can still be corrected. There is simply no reason why buildings such as Monti-Sion, or Jewish religious objects which sit gathering dust in convents and monasteries across the Continent, should not be restored to their rightful owners, the Jewish people.
But peoples don’t own property, individuals do. It’s absurd to suggest that 500-year-old claims have any merit. By that reasoning, all the military conquests throughout history must be reversed. Indeed, none of the European diaspora’s claims to North America are nearly 500 years old. By the Post’s reasoning, we should give it all back to the aboriginal tribes. The legacy of misconduct simply can’t be passed through generations.
