Palestine

Monday 31 October 2005

"Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."   Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, referring to the Arabs of Palestine, Complete Diaries, entry for June 12, 1895 .

"In our country there is room only for the Jews. We shall say to the Arabs: Get out! If they don't agree, if they resist, we shall drive them out by force."   Professor Ben-Zion Dinur, Israel's First Minister of Education, 1954, from History of the Haganah, 1956.

"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Israel Koenig, ‘The Koenig Memorandum,’ 1976.

"[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."   Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset quoted in New Statesman, June 25,1982 .

"We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves." Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re‑election of General Shlomo Lahat as mayor of Tel Aviv, 1983.

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel ..... We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours ... When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do will be to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle."   Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot, 13 Apr 83 and New York Times, 14 Apr 83 .

“I did nothing for the last 20 years. For Jewish Jerusalem I have done things. For East Jerusalem ? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Actually, we did build the sewerage system and improve the water system. And do you know why? I’m sure you think we did it for their benefit. No way! We did it because we heard about cholera cases, and the Jews feared the spread of an epidemic.”     Teddy Kollek, former mayor of Jerusalem.

"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail."   Rabbi Ya'acov Perin in his eulogy at the funeral of mass murderer Dr. Baruch Goldstein, cited in the New York Times, 28 Feb 94.

Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, head of the Kever Yossev Yeshiva in Nablus , stated: "The blood of the Jewish people is loved by the Lord; it is therefore redder and their life is preferable." The killing by a Jew of a non-Jew . . . is considered essentially a good deed, and Jews should therefore have no compunction about it.   Yitzhak Ginsburg, "Five General Religious Duties Which Lie Behind the Act of the Saintly, Late Rabbi Baruch Goldstein, May his Blood be Avenged."

"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours . . . Everything we don't grab will go to them."   Ariel Sharon, then Israeli Foreign Minister, Agence France Presse, 15 Nov 1998.

Israeli Minister Rechavam Ze'evi will push for the invasion of Palestinian-ruled towns to end the resistance. He "wants to cleanse the West Bank of Palestinians. The Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza have to be transferred..." He also wants the army to unleash attack dogs on Palestinian demonstrators.   Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, March 7, 2001.

During a sermon, the influential Israeli Rabbi Ovadia Yosef exclaimed: "May the Holy Name visit retribution on the Arab heads, and cause their seed to be lost, and annihilate them." He added: "It is forbidden to have pity on them. We must give them missiles with relish, annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones."    Ha'aretz, April 12, 2001.

Deputy-Minister Boim and Knesset-Member Hazan declared: “All Muslims are murderers by birth.  It is in their genes.”

            If this had been said about the Jews on any TV program in Europe or America, the station chief would have been fired.
            If this had been said about the Jews in any parliament in Europe or America, the member would have been forced to resign.
            Only in Israel does such racist talk pass almost without reaction.  In the State of "the Survivors of Racism", racism has now become routine.      Gush Shalom advert in Ha'aretz, 27 Feb 04.

What has become of a noble aspiration?

“The state of Israel will . . . foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex . . . ; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”   Paragraph 13 of Israel's Declaration of Independence.  

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“The displacement of one people by another in Israel/Palestine, involving shooting deaths, home demolitions, land confiscation, impoverishment, and retaliatory suicide bombing, is taking place day by day. And yet the rest of the world makes no effective protest. World opinion is potentially a powerful force for change and has contributed to the resolution of other recent conflicts.” Elizabeth Barlow in ‘Speaking the Truth About Zionism,’ ed Michael Prior, 2004.