What If Milei Applied The Same Logic Used For The Malvinas To Israel?

On September 4, 2026, Argentine President Javier Milei made the following statement:

         “The Malvinas Islands are Argentine, by history and by right. There is no doubt about this. The islands have been part of Argentine territory since the founding of our nation. In 1833, the United Kingdom occupied the Malvinas, expelled the Argentine authorities, and established a colonial situation that persists to this day.

This implies that the islands’ inhabitants—being a population planted in a usurped territory—do not have a legitimate right to self-determination, and that any argument based on referendums held on the islands is invalid.”

Apparently, Milei uses the criterion of original appropriation of a previously unowned resource (homestead) to establish the legitimacy of land ownership. This legitimacy would be maintained only if the property were voluntarily ceded or exchanged, and lost if taken through coercion. Milei claims the Malvinas Islands fall into this latter category: they were legitimately appropriated by Argentines and coercively seized by the British—who renamed them the Falkland Islands—making their current possession of the archipelago illegitimate. If this is indeed what happened, Milei is right, and the Malvinas are Argentine. Let us examine the facts.

The Malvinas were completely uninhabited prior to the arrival of the French in 1764, which marked the beginning of the first permanent settlement, Port Saint Louis. The following year, 1765—unaware of the French presence on another island in the archipelago—British Captain John Byron landed on West Falkland and established the base at Port Egmont, claiming the archipelago for the British Crown. In 1767, Spain protested against the French colony. As France and Spain were allies at the time, the French agreed to sell and transfer their settlement to Spanish control. The Spanish renamed the site Puerto Soledad.

After nearly going to war with Spain over possession of the islands, the British decided to voluntarily abandon their only base in the archipelago, Port Egmont, in 1774. The reason was purely economic: the empire needed to cut costs due to the looming American War of Independence.

Upon leaving, British sailors affixed a lead plaque to the fort’s wall declaring that the islands still belonged to the Crown of George III. In other words, they maintained their legal claim while leaving the territory physically uninhabited.

For nearly 40 years following the British departure, Spain governed the islands without challenge from Puerto Soledad, the former French settlement. Spanish governors patrolled the coasts and even removed the lead plaque left by the British, sending it to Buenos Aires as a trophy.

The islands ceased to be Spanish in 1811, when Spain also abandoned the archipelago due to the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and independence revolutions in South America.

With the islands completely uninhabited and devoid of British or Spanish troops, the newly independent Argentina (then the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata) sent a ship in 1820 to take formal possession of the territory, regarding itself as the legitimate heir to the lands that had belonged to the Spanish Crown. It was this Argentine presence that Luis Vernet—a Hamburg-born merchant of French descent who had become a naturalized Argentine—was attempting to consolidate, and which the British decided to forcibly disrupt in 1833.

Therefore, in 1833, the British were not “buying back” or reclaiming an active colony; they decided to revive an old 18th-century claim that had been frozen in time, expelling the Argentines who had filled that territorial void.

Although the Argentine presence in the Malvinas was small—comprising the 100 to 150 multi-ethnic settlers Vernet had managed to establish on the islands—the British takeover was coercive; thus, Argentina’s claim to the Malvinas is legitimate, as Milei asserts. While it is debatable whether a mere 150 people could establish original title to a vast territory like the Malvinas—or whether anyone could legitimately settle in the islands’ uninhabited, untouched areas—the fact remains that this is not what the British Empire did at the time. Instead, it attacked the few settlers, expelled them, and used violence to assert dominion over the entire archipelago—which remains sparsely populated to this day, with a population density of 0.8/sq mi.

However, there is another territory that was also taken by force, but one in which Milei, instead of standing by the victims who were dispossessed, claims that it is the invaders who hold a legitimate claim to the land: Palestine. Let us analyze the case of Israel vs. Palestine using the same logic as the Falklands vs. Malvinas.

Unlike the Falkland Islands, where the first humans arrived only in 1764, Palestine is a territory that has been inhabited since the dawn of civilization. As I wrote in a 2024 article:

          “It is estimated that the early modern human has inhabited this world for 300,000 years and started behavioral modernity 50,000 years ago, but only the last 5,000 years of human history are known through writing. During much of recorded history, the region of Palestine was the stage of territorial conflicts and was successively occupied by Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites, Philistines, Egyptians, Hebrews, Assyrians, Babylonians, Achaemenid Persians, Greeks/Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Sassanid Persians, Arabs, European Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, French, British, and Zionists European.”

For Milei, only one of these peoples holds a legitimate claim to Palestine: the Jews. However, today’s Jews are not even the same people who—for a mere two generations, under David and Solomon—ruled part of the territory now occupied by the modern State of Israel. The Jew of today is not what was called a Jew in antiquity. The modern Jew evolved from one of the many factions of ancient Temple-centered Judaism—the Pharisees—into the synagogue-centered, Rabbinic, Kabbalistic, and Talmudic Judaism we know today. Another evolution, faithful to the prophecies of ancient Judaism, is Christianity.

Both differ significantly from the ancient religion practiced by the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Israel, which briefly ruled part of Palestine 3,000 years ago. Therefore, neither modern Christians nor modern Jews are the ancient Jews; that is why it would be better to call the ancient Jews “Judaeans”—to avoid confusion with Talmudic Jews and to dispel the absurd notion that Jesus was a Jew. Jesus was not a Jew, given the definition of “Jew” established after the consolidation of the Talmuds between the 4th and 6th centuries AD:

        “The word “Jew” did not come into existence until the year 1775. Its modern connotation points to someone who follows and adheres to a faith similar to that of the Pharisees of Judah, but is not of the tribe and stock of Judah. In other words, Jews are people from nations other than the 12 Hebrew tribes who practice a religion known as Judaism/Pharisaism, the doctrine of the Pharisees.”

In light of this, it is utterly preposterous to claim that Talmudic Jews have any legitimate right to Palestinian territory or that they are reclaiming that land from invaders. While dominant powers in the region have shifted many times, legitimate ownership belongs to the Palestinian population, who occupied the land continuously until they began to be expelled by European Zionist terrorists in the early 20th century.

In 1948, following intense immigration campaigns, Jews—who constituted a 30% minority of the total population and owned about 6% of Palestinian territory—were allocated 55% of Palestine under a UN-voted partition plan. The Jews eagerly accepted the proposal and began implementing it. The Palestinians, naturally, refused to accept this brazen theft and resisted; the ensuing war left the victor, Israel, in control of 78% of the territory of the former British Mandate for Palestine. Zionists seized control of the territory of Israel by force, stealing legitimate properties from the original owners—much like the British Empire seized the Malvinas from Argentina—yet, strangely, Milei’s logic flips (in the wrong direction) in this instance.

This is despite the fact that the Malvinas belonged to Argentina for a mere 13 years (1820–1833) and, with a land area of ​​ 4,700 sq mi, were inhabited by fewer than 200 people. Yet, that was enough for Milei to assert that “the Malvinas Islands are Argentine, by history and by right; there is no doubt about it.” What, then, of Palestine, which was continuously inhabited for millennia by millions of Palestinians living in a territory slightly more than twice the size of the Malvinas? (The territory of Palestine under the British Mandate covered an area of ​​approximately 10,000 sq mi.)

Therefore, if Milei were to apply the same logic regarding the Malvinas to Israel, he would be compelled to say the following:

       “Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, by history and by right. There is no doubt about it. Palestine has belonged to the Palestinians since time immemorial. In 1948, Zionists occupied Palestine, expelled many Palestinians, and established a colonial situation that persists to this day.

This implies that the inhabitants of Israel—being a population implanted in a usurped territory—do not possess a legitimate right to self-determination, and that any argument based on referendums held in Israel (or at the UN) is invalid.”