Valdemar asked:

"The real riches of one nation is your people."

— Comment please on this sentence.

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The sentence seems to be confirmed by Levinas:

"A person is more holy than land, even a holy land, since, faced with an affront made to a person, this
holy land appears in its nakedness to be but stone and wood."

This is an important and true idea. It was made in an interview following the 1982 massacre of
hundreds of people by Christian soldiers in the camps of Chitila and Sabra in Israel, without the
intervention of the Israel Defence Force, who had responsibility for the camps. It was made against
the background of the Israel/ Palestine conflict. It was made by a Jew, a people who's history is one
of displacement, of not having a land and yet who find that they now do have a land, a land that has
caused the displacement of another people. The Israel/ Palestine issue is one of land, not of the
importance of a single person's life.

Therefore we have to ask; what is a person, a people without a land?

Are they still a nation? Does a nation need a people in order to be a nation? Do a people need a land
in order to be a people; what is the relation between a nation and its land?

Think about an empire, this covers vast areas of land and various peoples, are they all one nation?
Perhaps, perhaps not. I wouldn't want to say that the English (or French) empires were one nation,
however arguably the Nazi state was. Take the USA, (I wouldn't want to say the US is an empire —
Yet) arguably home to as many various peoples as the British empire, is one nation ('one nation
under god'). But is this only because the people once upon a time got together and decided it was?
Without the people there would be no nation. And yet soldiers defend the land of America (and its
interests) ultimately over the people.

If we ever do really recognise the priority of people over lands as Levinas indicates, then do national
boarders become obsolete? Or would they still be important in some way for a people?

It seems to me that a nation is tied to its land I think the problems we have seen over nationalism and
the problems we are now confronted with of the hostility towards refugees and asylum seekers would
be better solved if that link were broken. Take a look at Derrida's essay 'On Cosmopolitanism' for
further ideas.

Brian Tee

Dept. of Philosophy

University of Sheffield