"You may know the justification for having the Jewish state of Israel that goes something like this: 'we Jews have always lived there, we once had a kingdom there, no one else has had a kingdom there, we were exiled from there, and every year for at least 900 years we've been saying 'Next year in Jerusalem at Passover.'

"There are various problems with this: is this a rule for deciding territorial claims that just applies to Jews or is it universal? If it was universal then we might see Ireland, Wales and Cornwall talking up arms and invading England in order to set up the rightful Celtic State. You might be able to think of other examples, if that rule was applied all over the world.

"The continuous settlement argument is leaky too because it doesn't take long to figure out that there has been continuous settlement in the area for some other peoples too. Continuous settlement is not proof of exclusive settlement.

"Then there's the kingdom argument. This seems to be that if a people once had a kingdom in a place, they must be entitled to have a state now. Another dredge through history, brings up some problems here too. On this basis, the people living in what used to be Mercia could demand a new state of Mercia with Tamworth as a possible capital. What's more, why's an ancient kingdom so important? Other peoples created other forms of self-government - like city states. Are these in some way or another inferior?

"And so to 'Next year in Jerusalem'. I'm not sure why this is a legitimate claim for an ever-extending piece of land. There are many ways to wish to go to Jerusalem which don't involve putting up national borders round a stretch of land and calling it a Jewish state.

"But then we come to another problem that I see people grappling with. If the claim for the land is religious (because God promised it to us (via Abraham who was actually from what is now Iraq) and was 'won' through battle by Joshua) how come the right of return is through 'descent' and marriage? To live in Israel, you need as a minimum one Jewish grandparent, and/or a Jewish wife. As you might guess, it follows from this that some people who go to live in Israel aren't all that bothered about religion. You can in fact be an atheist, non-culturally Jewish person but if you've got the Jewish grandparent, you can live there, but you're doing so on the basis of an original religious reason. That seems contradictory to me.

"There is another problem with this 'descent' justification. It ties a people on the basis of their family origins to a piece of land. If this looks just a bit like the 'blood and soil' argument from 19th century European nationalist 'theory', then I would argue, yes indeed it does. Again, is that a basis for a nation state: blood and soil? As you know that was tried out very rigorously in the 1930s, and it didn't end well.

"And then the archaeologists and geneticists get to work. You can look this up, but the theme here is that middle eastern Jews (Mizrahis) - or at least some of them - show strong genetic links to the original inhabitants of the Levant going back 3000 years. If you're going to make an argument that genes give the right for statehood, this is encouraging. (I still think it's a blood and soil argument, which has strong and disastrous consequences for anyone deemed to be not of the blood.) However, there's another problem. Are there any other peoples who also have a strong genetic link to the Levant? Well, it turns out there are. Namely Palestinian Muslims and Christians - and Lebanese.

"Hmmm, this is a bit problematic for only one kind of blood and soil argument, because the blood and soil genetics has thrown up that both Mizrahi Jews and Palestinians and Lebanese are linked to this bit of territory.

"Those of us who think that's been the whole issue all along (ie that setting up an exclusively Jewish state was the problem not the solution) are not surprised to hear that there has of course been continuous settlement by at least two peoples - if not more, for thousands of years.

"But whoah, let's hold the phone there. Whether we take the biblical evidence or the archaeological evidence, of course there was a people and a civilisation before the Israelites arrived. This usually goes by the name of the Canaanites. And the geneticists claim that the Mizrahis and the Palestinians and Lebanese owe their genetic origins to the Canaanites.

"Oh but the Canaanities didn't have a kingdom. No, why should they? Instead, it seems as if they had city states. I don't know a lot about city states, though arguably I've once been to one - Andorra. Even so, as a model for a society, they don't sound too bad, so long as you could run your city state in a democratic way. (I don't suppose the ancient Canaanites did but bear with me.)

"Let's imagine a federation of democratic city states, (communes, if you will), in which the character of each city state could be determined by the people living in them, and the federation existed for mutual benefit (sharing electricity that sort of thing) and security, with plenty of room for diversity of culture, religion, and politics...it starts to sound OK to me. So much so that I think I'm going to start calling myself a Canaanist.

"Zionist folks often want to go back to origins. Well, I'll go further back. I'll go back to Canaan. In fact, what we need is a Canaan Liberation Front. The CLF. I say, Victory to the CLF! Victory to the CLF! What do we want? Canaan! When do want it? Now.

"Any objections to that?" --Michael Rosen