Instructive Quotations
Behind the Israeli Propaganda
by Various Authors
DOSSIER
(Swans - January 17, 2005)
- Israel "will never withdraw from the occupied territories."
—Menachem Begin's speech on West Bank for Israel independence day, see, New York Times Mid-May 1981. - "For Europe we would constitute over there part of a bulwark against Asia as well as the advance post of civilization against barbarism. As a neutral state we would have relations with all of Europe, which would guarantee our existence."
—Theodore Herzl, Judenstaat, French translation, publisher La Découverte, Paris, 1989, p. 47. - "Our right in Gaza is exactly like our right in Tel Aviv. We are colonizing Gaza exactly in the same manner in which we colonized Yafa. Those who doubt our right in Gaza should doubt our right in Tel Aviv as well."
—Israel Galili, quoted in Haaretz, April 18, 1972 as reprinted in Israel: Utopia incorporated, Uri Davis, Zed Press, London, 1977, p. 15. - "We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village."
—Moshe Dyan, March 19, 1969, speech at the Technion in Haifa, "Israel" quoted in Haaretz, April 4, 1969. (385 villages have been destroyed within pre-1967 Israel...) - Ben Gurion, referring to American Jews, called them "Human dust."
—cf. Israel: Utopia incorporated, Uri Davis, Zed Press, London, 1977, p. 19.
WHOSE LAND IS PALESTINE?
- "The population of Palestine was basically composed of Moslem and Christian Palestinian Arabs. The Palestinians had lived in the country since the dawn of history. They did not come to Palestine with the Moslem Arab invasion of the seventh century as is sometimes erroneously thought. They are the earliest and the original inhabitants of Palestine. The Palestinians of today are the descendants of the Canaanites, the Philistines, and the other early tribes which inhabited the country. Professor Maxime Rodinson points out that the Arab population of Palestine was native in all senses of that word. There were infusions of other racial elements into the Palestinian stock, mainly from the Greeks, the Romans, the Moslem Arabs and the Crusaders. But this Palestinian stock, which comprises both Moslems and Christians, continued to constitute the main element of the population until the majority of the original inhabitants of Palestine were displaced by the Israelis in 1948."
—Henry Cattan, Palestine and International Law, p. 13, 1976. - "If the views of the advanced Zionists prevail there is trouble ahead. Many, very many, intelligent and informed Jews admit this. It is conceded that the present inhabitants of Palestine have occupied their lands for centuries; indeed, some of the Syrian communities claim descent from the Hittites who were in possession at the dawn of history. Be that as it may, all who know the situation from actual contact and not from propaganda leaflets admit that these people have dwelt in their present homes for two thousand years, that the occupancy of the Jews does not go back to immemorial times, and that their sojourn before the Dispersion was brief. Why should these 'old settlers' be expelled, they ask, to make room for newcomers?"
—Stephen Bonsal, Suitors and Suppliants at Versailles, p. 45, 1919. - "...the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a 'right' to Palestine based on an occupation of two thousand years ago, can hardly be seriously considered."
—Report of the King-Crane Commission, August, 1919. - "Palestine is not the original home of the Jews. It was acquired by them after a ruthless conquest, and they have never occupied the whole of it, which they now openly demand. They have no more valid claim to Palestine than the descendants of the ancient Romans have to this country. The Romans occupied Britain as long as the Israelites occupied Palestine, and they left behind them in this country far more valuable and useful work.
"If we are going to admit claims based on conquest thousands of years ago, the whole world will have to be turned upside down..."
—Lord Sydenham, Hansard, House of Lords, 21 June, 1922. - "If it is proper to 'reconstitute' a Jewish State which has not existed for two thousand years, why not go back another thousand years and reconstitute the Canaanite state? The Canaanites, unlike the Jews, are still there."
—H.G. Wells, quoted by Frank C. Sakran in Palestine Dilemma, p. 204. - "Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English, or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct."
—Mahatma Gandhi, Tendulkar, Mahatma, Vol. IV, 1938, p. 312. - "Golda Meir struck me as a very impressive and persuasive personality, though she has shown little or no understanding for the Arabs of Palestine or for the justice of their demands. She has always talked a great deal about the 'historical and spiritual rights of the Jews', but it is difficult to accept the validity of 'historic rights' which can only be achieved at the expense of people who have been living in the same place for 2,000 years. The principle which she applies on behalf of the Jews, and by which she justifies the expulsion of the Palestinians, would, if applied elsewhere, reduce the world to a state of total chaos."
—General Odd Bull, former Chief of Staff of UNTSO, War and Peace in the Middle East, p.42. - "The Arabs of Palestine used to have the same rights over Palestinian territory as the French exercise in France and the English in England. These rights have been violated without any provocation on their part. There is no evading this simple fact."
—Maxime Rodinson, Israel and the Arabs, 1968. - "We Germans feel that the Palestinian people are entitled to self-determination as much as any other people in the world, as much as we Germans."
—Chancellor Helmut Schmidt speaking at a press conference in Cairo on 28 December 1977.
WHY DID THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES GO?
- "I believe it was the intention of the Zionists, right from the beginning, to dispossess the Palestinians from their homes, and I believe the British Government was aware of this."
—Arnold Toynbee, in the introduction to an address by Sir John Richmond at a meeting in the House of Commons, London, 27 May 1971. - "...the extent to which the refugees were savagely driven out by the Israelis as a part of a deliberate masterplan has been insufficiently recognized."
—John H. Davis, Commissioner-General of UNRWA 1959-63, The Evasive Peace, p. 57, 1968. - "We shall try to spirit the penniless population (sc. Arab) across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country."
—Theodore Herzl's Tagebuches, Vol. I, p. 98. - "Among ourselves, it must be clear that there is no place in the country for both peoples together.
"With the Arabs we shall not achieve our aim of being an independent people in this country. The only solution is Eretz-Israel, at least the west part of Eretz-Israel, without Arabs... And there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries. Transfer all of them, not one village or tribe should remain..."
—Joseph Weitz, entry in his diary for 1940 (Quoted in his article: "A solution to the Refugee Problem: An Israeli State with a small Arab Minority", published in Davar, 29 September, 1967. - "Jewish terrorism, not only by the Irgun, in such savage massacres as Deir Yassin, but in milder form by the Haganah itself, 'encouraged' Arabs to leave the areas the Jews wished to take over for strategic or demographic reasons. They tried to make as much of Israel as free of Arabs as possible."
—I. F. Stone, New York Review of Books, 3 August 1967. - "I gathered all of the Jewish mukhtars, who have contact with Arabs in different villages and asked them to whisper in the ears of some Arabs that a great Jewish reinforcement has arrived in Galilée and that it is going to burn all of the villages of the Huleh. They should suggest to these Arabs, as their friends, to escape while there is still time... The tactic reached its goal completely. The building of the police station at Halsa fell into our hands without a shot. The wide areas were cleaned..."
—Yigal Allon, Ha Sepher Ha Palmach, Vol. 2, p. 268, 1948 - "Nearby, a loudspeaker burst out in Arabic. Haganah broadcasting to civilian Arabs, urging them to leave the district before 5:15 a.m.: "Take pity on your wives and children and get out of this blood bath," it said. "Surrender to us your arms. No harm will come to you. Or get out by the Jericho road, that is still open to you. If you stay, you invite disaster."
—H. Levin, Jerusalem Embattled, p. 160, 1948. - "...as uncontrolled panic spread through all Arab quarters, the Israelis brought up jeeps with loudspeakers which broadcast recorded 'horror sounds'. These included shrieks, wails and anguished moans of Arab women, the wail of sirens and the clang of fire-alarm bells, interrupted by a sepulchral voice calling out in Arabic: "Save your souls, all ye faithful: The Jews are using poison gas and atomic weapons. Run for your lives in the name of Allah'."
—Leo Heiman, Israeli Army Reserve Officer who fought in 1948. Marine Corps Gazette, June 1964. - "The Arab Higher Committee has resolved that it is in the interest of Palestine that no Palestinian should be permitted to leave the country except under special circumstances, such as for political, commercial or extreme health reasons."
—Arab Higher Committee for Palestine - 1948, in letters to the Prime Minister of Egypt and other Arab governments, 8 March 1949. - "The Jewish combatants there and elsewhere made skillful use of psychological warfare to break their opponents' morale, and the effect upon the civilians was only what was to be expected. At a later stage, the Israeli armed forces did not confine their pressure on the Arab civilian population to playing upon their fears. They forcibly expelled them: for example, the population of 'Akka (including refugees from Haifa) in May; the population of Lydda and Ramleh (including refugees from Jaff) in July; and the population of Beersheba and Western Galilée in October."
—George Kirk, The Middle East 1945-50" OUP 1954, p. 264. - "As for the Arab refugees, he (Ben Gurion) was quite emphatic: 'We must do everything to ensure they never do return'."
—David Ben Gurion, 1948, from his diary 18 July 1948 (Quoted by Michael Bar Zohar in The Armed Prophet, p. 157). - "The Zionist version of the Palestinian exodus is a myth manufactured after the cataclysm took place. If the Zionists could show that the refugees had really fled without cause, at the express instructions of their own politicians, they would greatly erode the world's sympathy for their plight -- and, in consequence, the pressure on themselves to allow them to return. Thus in public speeches and scholarly-looking pamphlets they peddled this myth the world over. It was not until 1959 that the Palestinian scholar Walid Khalidi, exposed it for what it is. His painstaking researches were independently corroborated by an Irish scholar, Erskine Childers, two years later. Together, they demonstrated that the myth was not just a gross misrepresentation of accepted or even plausible facts; the very 'facts' themselves had been invented. Orders for the evacuation of the civilian population had not simply been issued, the Zionists said, they had been broadcast over Arab radio stations. One had come from the Mufti himself. This was the cornerstone of the Zionist case. Yet when these two scholars took the trouble to examine the record -- to go through the specially opened archives of Arab governments, contemporary Arabic newspapers and the radio monitoring reports of both the BBC and the CIA -- they found that no such orders had been issued, let alone broadcast, and that when challenged to produce chapter-and-verse evidence, the date and origin of just one such order, the Zionists, with all the apparatus of the State of Israel now at their disposal, were quite unable to do so. They found, on the contrary, that Arab and Palestinian authorities had repeatedly called on the people to stay put and the Arab radio services had consistently belittled the true extent of Zionist atrocities."
—David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch, Faber, 1977, pp. 136-7.
THE MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT. WHY?
- "The cause of unrest in Palestine, and the only cause, arises from the Zionist movement, and from our promises and pledges in regard to it."
—Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 14 June 1921. - "A Zionist state in Palestine can only be installed and maintained by force and we should not be a party to it..."
—President Franklin Roosevelt, 5 March 1945, Department of State's Foreign Relations, 1945, Volume III. - "Because we took the land this gives us the image of being bad, of being aggressive. The Jews always considered that the land belonged to them, but in fact it belonged to the Arabs. I would go further: I would say the original source of this conflict lies with Israel, with the Jews -- and you can quote me."
—Yehoshofat Harkabi, former Israeli Chief of Military Intelligence, in "Peace Won't be a Plane Ticket to Cairo," International Armed Forces Journal, October 1973, p.30. - "Let us not today fling accusations at the murderers. Who are we that we should argue against their hatred? For eight years now they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their very eyes, we turn into our homestead the land and the villages in which they and their forefathers have lived."
—Moshe Dayan, 1953, quoted by Uri Avneri in Israel without Zionists, p. 134. - "I don't understand your optimism. Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country."
—David Ben Gurion, 1956, quoted by Nahum Goldmann in The Jewish Paradox, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p.99. - "It seemed to me to be symptomatic of a certain blindness to the human reactions of others that so many Israelis professed not to understand why the Arabs who had been driven from their lands should continue to hate and try to injure those who had driven them out."
—General E.L.M. Burns, Chief of Staff of UNTSO, Between Arab and Israeli, p. 162.
ZIONISM
- "You cannot have humane Zionism, it is a contradiction in terms."
—Dr. Israel Shahak, In "An Interview with Israel Shahak", Chairman of Israeli League for Civil and Human Rights; Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume IV, No. 3, 1975, p. 3. - "It is my considered opinion that the State of Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of this term: In this state people are discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most important areas of life, only because of their origin. This racist discrimination began in Zionism and is carried out today mainly in co-operation with the institutions of the Zionist movement."
—Dr. Israel Shahak, "The Racist Nature of Zionism and of the Zionist State of Israel", Pi-Ha'aton (the weekly newspaper of the students of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem), 5 November 1975. - "Israel has gradually become a more and more openly racist country. Anyone not Jewish is at best second-class in Israel.
"...Now in the State of Israel, those who are tempted along the hallucinatory path of power and conquest have to justify their course by calling on the same devils who, in the Diaspora, were directed against themselves.
"---The State of Israel is presented, both at home and abroad, as the embodiment of social democracy, a mixture of all that is good in capitalism and in socialism, the original, the archetypal Welfare State.
"This suggestion is, of course, a lie.
"...Israeli society is basically a settlers' society. It does not primarily concern itself with the "Indians" or "Niggers" of the land. Its first priority is the creation of a united economic establishment for the Jewish Israelis. Only then does it concern itself (almost as an afterthought) with the captive Palestinians."
—Maxim Ghilan, 1974, How Israel Lost Its Soul, Pelican Books, London. - "We take the land first and the law comes after."
—Mr. Palmon, Arab affairs adviser to the Mayor of Jerusalem (quoted in The Guardian, 26 April 1972). - "The unpleasant truth must be faced that the Zionists in London in 1917 were undoubtedly guilty of double dealing. For every utterance of a Sokolov or a Léon Simon that the Zionists had no ambitions for a State, there were contrary assertions, usually addressed to Jews.
"In later years it became a Zionist habit to speak not only in two but in several voices, to run several lines of persuasion at the same time. A result was to debauch to movement with propaganda to an extraordinary extent so that Zionists, preoccupied with higher truth at the expense of the yet more essential lower truth, got a not undeserved reputation in the world for chronic mendacity."
—Christopher Sykes, Cross Roads to Israel, pp. 24 and 26. - "We must define our position and lay down basic principles for a settlement. Our demands should be moderate and balanced, and appear to be reasonable. But in fact they must involve such conditions as to ensure that the enemy rejects them. Then we should manoeuvre and allow him to define his own position, and reject a settlement on the basis of a compromise solution. We should then publish his demands as embodying unreasonable extremism".
—General Yehoshafat Harkabi, Ma'ariv, 2 November 1973. - "But if we are asked: 'Did you in all this wide country with her many deserts and her few Jewish farmers, did you have to make a mockery of all your oaths before yourselves and before the council of nations? Did you have to betray all the prophecies of your prophets who foresaw the return of the people to the land? Did you have to desecrate all law and all justice -- in order to steal a few thousand dunams from a handful of miserable Arab villagers?' When we are asked that, we shall not be able to lift our heads."
—Azriel Karlibach, writing under the pseudonym of Rabbi Ipcha Mistraba, Ma'ariv, 25 December 1953. - "Do we sin only against the refugees? Do we not treat the Arabs who remain as second-class citizens? -- Did a single Jewish farmer raise his hand in the Parliament in opposition to a law that deprived Arab peasants of their land?...How lonely, in the city of Jerusalem, sits the Jewish conscience."
—Moshe Smilansky, 1958, in an essay entitled "Zion and the Jewish National Idea" in the Menorah Journal, Volume XVI, 1958, reprinted in Zionism Reconsidered, Macmillan, N.Y., 1970. - "There is no Zionist settlement, and there is no Jewish State, without displacing Arabs and without confiscating lands and fencing them off."
—Yeshaayahu Ben-Porat, Yediot Aharonot, 14 July 1972.
ZIONIST EXPANSIONISM
- "To maintain the status quo will not do. We have to set up a dynamic state bent upon expansion."
—David Ben Gurion, Rebirth and Destiny of Israel, The Philosophical Press, New York, 1954, p. 419. - "During the last 100 years our people have been in a process of building up the country and the nation, of expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional settlements in order to expand the borders here. Let no Jew say that the process has ended. Let no Jew say that we are near the end of the road."
—Moshe Dayan, Ma'ariv, 7 July 1968. - "Palestine is a territory whose chief geographical feature is this: that the river Jordan does not delineate its frontier but flows through its centre."
—Vladimir Jabotinsky, at the 16th Zionist Congress (1929) (quoted by Desmond Stewart in The Middle East: Temple of Janus, p.304). - "Take the American Declaration of Independence for instance. It contains no mention of the territorial limits. We are not obliged to state the limits of our State."
—Ben Gurion's diary, 14 May 1948 (quoted by Michael Bar Zohar in The Armed Prophet, p.133). - "Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And forever."
—Irgun proclamation against partition, quoted by Menachem Begin in The Revolt: Story of the Irgun, p.335. - "The Achilles heel of the Arab coalition is the Lebanon. Muslim supremacy in this country is artificial and can easily be overthrown. A Christian State ought to be set up there, with its southern frontier on the river Litani. We would sign a treaty of alliance with this State. Thus when we have broken the strength of the Arab Legion and bombed Amman, we could wipe out Transjordan; after that Syria would fall. And if Egypt still dared to make war on us, we would bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo. We should thus end the war and would have but paid to Egypt, Assyria and Chaldea on behalf of our ancestors."
—Ben Gurion's Diary, 21 May 1948 (quoted by Michael Bar Zohar in The Armed Prophet, p.139).
TORTURE
- "Torture of Arab prisoners is so widespread and systematic that it cannot be dismissed as 'rogue cops' exceeding orders. It appears to be sanctioned as deliberate policy."
—The Sunday Times, 19 June 1977. - "With my own eyes I have seen marks of torture on the faces and bodies of suspects and accused persons. I say it here and now, and challenge anyone to contradict it."
—Felicia Langer (Israeli lawyer) in a public address at the Conway Hall, London on 15 May 1974. - "In my opinion, the Israeli occupation regime in the conquered territories is not only not a liberal one; it is in fact one of the most cruel and repressive regimes in modern time."
—Dr. Israel Shahak, Middle East International Supplement), May 1975.
ZIONIST EXPLOITATION OF ANTI-SEMITISM
- "The Zionists'...main preoccupation is not to save Jews alive out of Europe but to get Jews into Palestine."
—Richard Crossman, Washington Diary for 1946. - "The last thing on earth that interested the Zionist leaders was humanitarian work, saving victims and refugees."
—Moshe Menuhin, The Decadence of Judaism in our Time, Exposition Press, New York, 1965. - "Paradoxically, it seems that, after complaining of centuries of persecution, Israelis are now tempted to see a lack of anti-Semitism as an obstacle to encouraging emigration to Israel."
—Ric Marsden, The Sunday Times, 16 November 1975. - "Consider the question of the Soviet Jews. It does not seem to be understood in the West the Jews are not discriminated against as Jews in the allocation of exit permits. Not only comparatively but absolutely, very many more Jews have been allowed to emigrate than have members of any other group. Last year 33,000 arrived in Israel (not to mention others who set out in that direction and switched destination en route).
"The rate is now running at 3,000 a month. But it would not be possible to find even one hundredth of that number who were granted visas among Tartars or Ukrainians or Armenians. Or even plain Russians.
"When ordinary Soviet citizens are told that a vital trade agreement awarding their country most-favoured-nation status with the US is being blocked in Congress because Soviet Jews are demanding as an absolute right something few other inhabitants can expect as a special privilege - then the result is likely to be spontaneous outbreaks of anti-Semitism."
—Alan Brien, "Soviet dissidents: friends they could do without", The Times (London), 9 September 1973. - "I shall not be ashamed to confess that if I had the power, as I have the will, I would select a score of efficient young men -- intelligent, decent, devoted to our ideal and burning with the desire to help redeem Jews -- and I would send them to the countries where Jews are absorbed in sinful self-satisfaction. The task of these young men would be to disguise themselves as non-Jews, and plague Jews with anti-Semitic slogans such as 'Bloody Jew', 'Jews go to Palestine' and similar intimacies. I can vouch that the results in terms of a considerable immigration to Israel from these countries would be ten thousand times larger than the results brought by thousands of emissaries who have been preaching for decades to deaf ears."
—Davar (Israeli Newspaper), 1952, Editor Sharan, quoted by Alfred Lilienthal in The Other Side of the Coin, Devin-Adair, New York, p.47.
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