"The decision to prevent someone from voicing their opinions by arresting and deporting them is typical of a totalitarian regime. A democratic state, where freedom of expression is the highest principle, does not shut out criticism or ideas just because they are uncomfortable for its authorities to hear. It confronts those ideas in public debate."
(Oded Peler, May 2008)

"We thought the Israeli Bomb was aimed at the Americans, not to launch it at the Americans, but to say, 'If you don't want to help us in a critical situation we will require you to help us; otherwise we will use our nuclear bombs.'"
(Francis Perrin, January 2000)

"[I see] many similarities in the oppression of blacks in South Africa and of Palestinians"
(Dennis Goldberg, March 2005)

"The Jews should be denied everything as a nation, but granted everything as individuals"
(Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre, 1791)

"The Jews should be denied everything as a nation, but granted everything as individuals…. They must constitute neither a state, nor a political corps, nor an order. They must individually become citizens."
(Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre, 16 December 2005)

"But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of Justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?

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. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can e restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.

The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred."
(Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1983, 2005)

"The development of air traffic has made Palestine indispensable for the British Empire; no connection with India, the Persian Gulf and Iraq is possible without it. Haifa, built with Jewish money, has become more important to them, and if they need Aqaba we'll build it up."
(Moshe Sharet, 1935)

"[The] unshakable resolve to keep the whole Mediterranean in European hands forms the firm ground on which any Arab claim must be discussed lest the discussion be useless and fruitless ...

“Piedmont” is a political term which hardly needs explanation. We have only to add that the sympathy one generally pays to the role of Piedmont in the Italian Risorgimento does not necessarily imply that the world ought to hail the idea of an Arab Piedmont with the same enthusiasm. The Italian revival held beautiful promises which we miss, so far, in the case of PanArabia.. . it would only – and certainly – succeed in forming a permanent nest of agitation, intrigue and trouble ... These considerations force us to think that the Arab claims can only have some chance of success at this moment if they are formulated with the utmost moderation. The independence of Syria, for instance, is clearly and hopelessly out of the question ... it would ... be understood by France, Italy and Britain alike as a most fateful attempt against the security of their colonial empires."
(Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1917)

"Still ringing in my ears is the wailing of Arab women from the village of Jaony, now Rosh-Pina, on the day their families left to settle in the Golan, on the east side of th Jordan. The men were riding the donkeys, and the women followed them walking and sobbing. The valley was filled with their lamentations. From time to time they stopped and kissed the rocks and the ground ... Will the dispossessed keep silent and accept what has been done to them?"
(Yitzhak (Isaac) Epstein, 1907)

"the attempt to solve the Jewish question through the migration of Jews to Palestine can be seen for what it is, a tragic mockery of the Jewish people."
(Leon Trotsky, July 1940)

"Herzl promised Palestine, but he did not deliver it. It is impossible to keep Zionism alive by this kind of trickery. Zionism has exhausted its miserable contents. ... Tens of intriguers and hundreds of simpletons may yet continue to support Herzl’s adventures, but Zionism as a movement is already doomed to losing all rights to existence in the future."
(Leon Trotsky, 1904)

"I think that [the economic measures taken to curb hyper-inflation in 1985, which bankrupted many Israeli companies] marked the major change in the kibbutz movement. Before 1985, the kibbutz could always say it worked, but after that they couldn't. It was a huge economic and psychological blow to the movement. ... Unlike other communes around the world, the kibbutz movement was never isolated from Israeli mainstream society. It was tied to it like an umbilical cord. Just as Israeli society became more capitalistic, I think it was almost inevitable that the communities would follow suit."
(Daniel Gavron, 21 February 2007)

"We know what you expect from us. We shall have to be the guards of the Suez Canal. We shall have to be the sentinels of your way to India via the Near East. We are ready to fulfil this difficult service, but it is essential to allow us to become a power in order to enable us to do our task."
(Max Nordau, 1919)

"I have learned to despise Jane Fonda, who gained a reputation as a fighter for peace and human rights, and who now sells this name to various fascists, among them Israelis, in order to advance her career and that if her husband [Tom Hayden]"
(Uri Avnery, 22 December 1982)

"In any case, there is no doubt that the appearance of Fedayeen under direct Egyptian guidance was a phenomenon which emerged following-the [28 February 1955] Israeli attack on Gaza."
(Ehud Ya'ari, 1975)

"[The PLO does not abandon the Palestinian National Covenant] for the same reason that the Government of Israel has never renounced the decisions of the Basle Zionist Congress, which supported the establishment of a Jewish state in the historic land of Israel -- including Transjordan. No political body would do this. Similarly Herut and the Irgun never abandoned their map [which includes Transjordan]. We demand a ritual abandonment of the Covenant - a kind of ceremony of humiliation - instead of concerning ourselves with the decisions that were accepted by the PLO from 1974, which support the establishment of a Palestinian state in the territories evacuated by Israel."
(Mattityahu (Matti) Peled, around 1980)

"The point I was trying to make is that a lot of the general AIPAC lines have been internalized in the U.S. political mainstream. And in the process, AIPAC has established itself as synonymous not just with Israel, but with philo-Semitism. What you see at that annual AIPAC conference where Democrats and Republicans line up to kiss ass is a graphic demonstration of the fact that AIPAC no longer even needs to go after the politicians, they come to AIPAC cap in hand. It's not even a behavior or a principle about which mainstream politicians bother to think any more, it's par for the course."
(Tony Karon, September 2007)

"In other words, the State of Israel may be a client state of America, but America is a client state of the American Jewish Zionist elite, which is probably in the process of establishing itself as the permanent national "meritocratic" elite."
(Joachim Martillo, 15 March 2008)

"If the Jews are faced with a choice between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps, on the one hand, and aid for the national museum in Palestine, on the other, the Jewish sense of pity will prevail and our people’s entire strength will be directed at aid for the refugees … We are risking Zionism’s very existence if we allow the refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine problem."
(David Ben-Gurion, 17 December 1938)

"And I know – and I know that when I visit AIPAC I’m among friends – good friends, friends who share my strong commitment to make sure that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, unbreakable tomorrow – unbreakable forever."
(Barack Obama, 6 June 2008)

"Now let me be clear; Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable; the Palestinians need a State – the Palestinians need a State that is contiguous and cohesive and that allows them to prosper, but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish State with secure, recognized, defensible borders. And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided."
(Barack Obama, 4 June 2008)

"If we do not admit the rightfulness of anti-Semitism we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism... Instead of establishing societies for defence against the anti-Semites who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defence against our friends, who desire to defend our rights."
(Jacob Klatzkin, 1925)

"If we do not admit the rightfulness of anti-Semitism we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism... Instead of establishing societies for defence against the anti-Semites who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defence against our friends, who desire to defend our rights."
(Jacob Klatzkin, some date before 1949)

"If he [Lewis Namier] came across latent anti-Semitism he stirred it into a flame."
(Isaiah Berlin, some time before his death)

"Aha, so now the gang wants to be happy, does it?"
(Hermann Cohen, some date before 1919)

"We Jews of America have found America to be our Zion."
(Henry Morgenthau, some date before his death)

"I resent the activities of Dr. Weizmann and his followers in this country. The Jews of France have found France to be their Zion. The Jews of England have found England to be their Zion. We Jews of America have found America to be our Zion. Therefore I refuse to allow myself to be called a Zionist. I am an American."
(Henry Morgenthau, 1921)

"We [Israel] are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon [9-11], and the American struggle in Iraq."
(Benjamin Netanyahu, 16 April 2008)

"I can explain! I did it for my country!"
(Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, 6 June 1968)

"The killer, Sirhan Sirhan, seemed at the time to fit the pattern of the wild-eyed lunatic that is often associated with political assassins. James Reston, the eminent New York Times columnist, called the murder "a wholly irrational act". Most Americans saw it that way. Only now is it clear how wrong this view was. Far from being a "maniacally absurd" crime, [...], the Robert Kennedy assassination was in fact an eminently political act. It was the first "blowback" attack the United States suffered as a result of its Middle East policies."
(Stephen Kinzer, 13 June 2008)

"when Jews and Palestinian vacationers were sitting on the beaches side by side it hurt the business of the surrounding yishuvim"
(Yigal Slovik, May 2008)

"My own experiences of these matters are in part what made me write this book. The life of an Arab Palestinian in the west, particularly in America, is disheartening. There exists here an almost unanimous consensus that politically he does not exist, and when it is allowed that he does, it is either as a nuisance or as an oriental."
(Edward Said, 1978)

"We who live in the West Bank know too well what it means to live next to a Jewish settlement. It means constant harassment, unending vandalism and perpetual terrorism, both psychological and physical."
(Khalid Amayreh, 15 June 2008)

"We were here when your forefathers were drinking wine, burying their daughters alive and worshipping idols"
(Mordechai Kedar (Keidar), 12 June 2008)

"The townspeople detest him [Sherif Hussein] and by his parsimony over the [British] subsidy and the pilgrim payments he has alienated the tribes. It would serve him right if he were pushed out altogether. The Wahabis [the followers of Ibn Saud] are very rigid Moslems . . . but the Hejaz people are so sick of King Hussein that they would welcome almost any change."
(Edward Hodgkin, September 1924)

"Oh really? I had heard that "Commentary" and "Dissent" had merged and formed "Dysentery.""
(Woody Allen, 1977)

"Israel's war experience is a story of folly, recklessness, and self-made trap. None of the wars - with a possible exception of the 1948 War of Independence - was what Israel refers to as Milhernet Ein Brerah ("war of necessity"). They were all wars of choice or wars of folly."
(Zeev Maoz, 12 May 2006)

"In the opinion of the Committee it is, however, evident from these statements that His Majesty's Government were not free to dispose of Palestine without regard for the wishes and interests of the inhabitants of Palestine."
(British Government, 16 March 1939)

"There is, was, and will be, no equality for the Sephardo-Orientals in Israel."
(Kalman Katznelson, 1964)

"In an otherwise very dismal situation in Ireland, allow me to highlight one of the very few points in regard to which we can take pride. I refer to the action of one girl, Mary Manning, who in response to the dictates of her conscience and with a sense of moral understanding and responsibility on her own, took the initiative to refuse to handle South African fruit in one of the chain stores in Dublin. She has now been joined by several of her colleagues, who are picketing Dunnes Stores in Henry Street in protest against the sale of goods plundered from the people of South Africa. Mary Manning and her colleagues have responded to the dictates of their consciences and have been prepared to make tremendous sacrifices in order to defend an ideal and a principle. We should salute them."
(Sean McBride, 19 March 1985)

"As much as the city of New York signifies the central entrance gate to America, so we have to build our city, and it will become one day an [Eretz] Israel New York."
(Arieh Akiva Weiss, 1906)

"The Haskalah origins of the Zionist Movement ensured that movement's evolution along fundamentally anti-Semitic lines. In effect, the Zionists would attempt to mold their new society in a manner which would invalidate the accusations of their oppressors. This was to be the goal. And indeed not just this alone, for nothing would more definitely ensure the approval of anti-Semites for "the new Jewish society" than its success in recreating the Jew in the image of his oppressor - what we might call the "Aryanization" of the Jew."
(Michael Selzer, 1967)

"[The Iranians should] read the writing on the wall . . . This was a dress rehearsal, and the Iranians should read the script before they continue with their programme for nuclear weapons. If diplomacy does not yield results, Israel will take military steps to halt Tehran’s production of bomb-grade uranium."
(Unnamed Israeli political official quoted in The Times, 21 June 2008)

"[W]hen the State came into being more than 22% of the Jewish population of Israel was made up of Orientals who to this day are not 'integrated' into Israeli society to anywhere near the same degree that even post-1948 European immigrants are. One of several indices by which this can be measured is a comparison of the living standard of Orientals who immigrated before 1948 with that of Europeans who immigrated after that date. Statistics show that the Europeans in the latter category enjoy a notably higher standard of living than that of the Oriental 'veterans'. An Israeli's standard of living is therefore determined by his ethnicity rather than by the number of years he has been living in Israel."
(Michael Selzer, 1967)

"If you look at what is happening in Kfar Shalem and compare it to, for example, Kibbutz Galil Yam, then it is possible to argue that this is a discriminatory policy that verges on illegality."
(Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar, July 2007)

""It was a mitzvah [a good deed] to settle this place [Salameh]," says Miriam Harazi, who recalled how she had evicted an Arab woman from Jaffa, who had offered to sell her home to her."
(Meron Rapoport, 15 July 2007)

"We've known him for a long time, and just merely to look at him, let alone approach or, heaven forbid, touch him was enough to make us feel sick. But our disgust, until now, was moderated by pity; we sought extenuating, historical explanations for his being so crooked, sleazy, and shabby a specimen. Moreover, we told ourselves that he was, after all, our fellow tribesman, though we had no cause to be proud of his fellowship . . . . who is this Yid, anyway? A type, my dear friends, a figure that pops up time and again, the dreadful companion of the Jew, and so inseparable from him that they have always been mistaken for one for the other. The Jew is a human being like any other, no better and no worse .... The Yid, on the other hand, is a hideous distortion of the human character, something unspeakably low and repulsive."
(Theodor Herzl, 15 October 1897)

"In our own day, even a flight from religion can no longer rid the Jew of the Yid. Race is now the issue - as if the Jew and the Yid belonged to the same race. But go and prove that to the anti-Semite. To him, the two are always and inextricably linked. ... And then came Zionism! .... We’ll breathe more easily, having got rid once and for all of these people whom, with furtive shame, we were obliged to treat as our fellow tribesmen. ... Watch out, Yid. Zionism might proceed like Wilhelm Tell ... and keep a second arrow in reserve. Should the first shot miss, the second will serve the cause of vengeance. Friends, Zionism’s second arrow will pierce the Yid’s chest."
(Theodor Herzl, 15 October 1897)

"we can cry in Auschwitz and later order a stripper to our Warsaw hotel"
(Yair Lapid, 20 June 2008)

"I'm afraid, Lew, that I can't make a pro-Zionist speech. I hate to say 'no' to you, but I believe the Arabs have rights under the McMahon letters, and I doubt that Great Britain had the power to issue the Balfour Declaration. In addition, I don't believe that a Jewish homeland can exist and be self-sufficient in a huge Arab sea."
(John F. Kennedy, early 1947)

"I've spent a lot of time on this. I have read everything you [Lewis Weinstein] sent me. I'm convinced that you're right. I think that a democratic Jewish state is what America needs in the Middle East. I'll give the speech. I've concluded that I was wrong."
(John F. Kennedy, 29 May 1947)

"America's responsibility is to exercise its position of leadership, and give new hope and new heart to the fear-ridden people of the world. Today, the United Nations has before it the solution of the Palestine problem. It is my conviction that a just solution requires the establishment of a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth in Palestine, the opening of the doors of Palestine to Jewish immigration and the removal of land restrictions, so that those Jews who desire to do so, may work out their destiny under their chosen leaders in the Land of Israel. If the United States is to be true to its own democratic traditions, it will actively and dynamically support this policy."
(John F. Kennedy, 15 June 1947)

"each country can absorb only a limited number of Jews, if she doesn’t want disorders in her stomach. Germany already has too many Jews."
(Chaim Weizmann, 18 March 1912)

"If the possibility arises of evicting all its inhabitants and destroying it [a village in the Negev], this must be done."
(Binyamin Mintz, 18 December 1947)

"The genealogy of Israel’s ruling class rests on a surprisingly small number of family trees – primarily Hacohen, Ruppin, Shertok (later Sharet) and Elyashar – whose thick trunks and multiple branches are intimately interlaced with one another, as well as with many other dominant families. The resulting octopus-like structure makes the spheres of government, business, military, culture and opinion-making so entangled, that ‘state’ and ‘capital’ can longer be clearly separated."
(Jonathan NitzanShimshon Bichler, September 2002)

"During that time, I was very close to the Zionist high echelon in London. There were the family ties with Ahad Ha’am, the personal contacts in his London home and in the Jewish movement offices with Dr. Chaim Weitzman and Nahum Sokolow, and with the entire leadership of the Jewish movement which had come from the continent to London. Almost all of them were long-time friends of my father, and visited us when they came to Israel.… My parents’ house was a meeting place for visiting VIPs: Weitzman, Jabotinsky, James Rothschild, Professor Friedlander from the U.S.A, Dr. Eider, council members, high ranking British officers and members of important British families"
(David Hacohen, 1981)

"[The Sephardi Jews are] ideal agents for dealing or negotiating with the Arabs, with whom they have maintained a close and friendly contact ever since the Expulsion from Spain in 1492. ... [Since World War I] more use might and should have been made by the Zionists of the Sephardim [in promoting friendship between Arabs and Jews]."
(Ronald Storrs, 1937)

"[U]ntil the new racial doctrines have spread their poison among the Arab communities, Jews and Arabs were able [sic] to live in relations of sincere and genuine friendship. As deputies of Sephardic Jewry, who by our mentality and our way of life are rather closer to the Semitic World, it may be permissible for us to declare before you not only on the strength of personal experience that the alleged “enmity” between Jews and Arabs is not at all inevitable and that without promoting and incitement from non-Arab quarters, the Arabs would never have come to racial persecutions."
(Sephardic Communities in Palestine, 1946)

"I do not believe in absolutely exclusive racial states . . . you might just as well try to do that in England with the Welshmen and the Scotsmen or, what is worse, try to make Glasgow completely Scotch and see how you get on, or Cardiff completely Welsh. It is impossible."
(Ernest Bevin, July 1945)

"There is a certain inclination in Great Britain and America to state the [Palestine] problem in terms of a conflict of two races and two nationalisms, and to picture the British and American governments as impartial peacemakers and judges in no way involved i nthe conflict. . . . This is not the correct view. You will never understand the problem aright unless you realise that Great Britain and America are essentially involved in it. They are not only judges, they are also actors in the tragedy."
(Albert Hourani, March 1946)

"Barack Obama’s Palestinian problem is not the Palestinians’ problem. Palestinians have struggled for their inalienable right to resist the colonial occupation of their homeland for over sixty years, and they will continue to have the support and sympathy of every decent human being on Earth. Obama’s Palestinian problem spells out the particulars of his own moral depravity and political cowardice, his having succumbed to the oldest, most racist, anti-Semitic, cliché on Earth – that you cannot win the US presidential nomination or election "without the Jewish vote," and that fatal failure negates every single oration of "change we can believe in" that Barack Obama has delivered to his sincere and trusting young audience. He has already betrayed that trust."
(Hamid Dabashi, 26 June 2008)

"There can be no doubt that, without the cooperation of the victims, it would hardly have been possible for a few thousand people, most of whom, moreover, worked in offices, to liquidate many hundreds of thousands of other people . . . Over the whole way to their deaths the Polish Jews got to see hardly more than a handful of Germans."
(Robert Pendorf, 1961)

"There is a systematic pattern of limb injury [caused by the Israeli army] that is clearly organized to cause fractures that will not result in mortality ... They [Israeli soldiers] definately do not appear to be out of control. That is one of the darker things we saw. These are not aberrations. Its a pattern that is controlled, a systematic pattern over a wide geographical area. It's as if they've been instructed. The injuries could be far worse. ... What is impressive is the number of fractures per patient. These patients look as if they had been put through a washing machine ringer. They would have had to hold them down and just keep beating them."
(Jennifer Leaning, 14 February 1988)

"The first priority is to use force, might, beatings"
(Yitzhak Rabin, January 1988)

"A detainee sent to Fara'a Prison will be freed in 18 days unless the authorities have enough evidence to charge him. He may then resume stoning soldiers. But if troops break his hand, he won't be able to throw stones for a month and a half. It is unclear how legal such actions are, ... some soldiers still don't have riot control equipment and are presumably expected to kick Palestinians and hit them with bare fists and rifle butts."
(Joshua Brilliant, January 1988)

"When you observe from afar you know that things are bad, but you do not know how bad. Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen here. In a certain sense, it is worse, worse, worse than everything we endured. The level of the apartheid, the racism and the brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid. The apartheid regime viewed the blacks as inferior; I do not think the Israelis see the Palestinians as human beings at all. How can a human brain engineer this total separation, the separate roads, the checkpoints? What we went through was terrible, terrible, terrible - and yet there is no comparison. Here it is more terrible. We also knew that it would end one day; here there is no end in sight. The end of the tunnel is blacker than black. Under apartheid, whites and blacks met in certain places. The Israelis and the Palestinians do not meet any longer at all. The separation is total. It seems to me that the Israelis would like the Palestinians to disappear. There was never anything like that in our case. The whites did not want the blacks to disappear. I saw the settlers in Silwan - people who want to expel other people from their place."
(Mondli Makhanya, July 2008)

"We came here [to Palestine] lacking in knowledge and are thirsty to know. We are shocked by what we have seen until now. It is very clear to us that the situation here is intolerable."
(Edwin Cameron, July 2008)

"I have used the customary expression of 'the return of the Jews to Palestine, but it must be recognized that the word 'return' prejudices an important historical question. Can it be rightly said that the modern people who profess the Jewish faith really came originally from Palestine? Are the Jews ethnically a distinct and homogenous race which is descended from people who once had their home there? ... The people who profess the Jewish faith are a mixture of many races which in course of history have been made proselytes to Judaism. The original Palestine Semitic strain is but one of many. ... To speak therefore of the 'return' of Jews of so many non-Palestinian strains to Palestine is absurd; they never came from Palestine in the first place. And if their claim to Palestine is based upon their loyalty to a religion which had its origins there, then all Calvinists would have a claim to unlimited immigration into Switzerland, all Roman Catholics to Italy, and all Episcopalians, whether American, Chinese or Esquimaux, to England."
(Bertha Spafford Vester, 1950)

"I was working in Haifa and after its fall, I returned to my village Tantoura where I was born. The Jews attacked and occupied Kafr Lam in the north, and Ceasaria (Kisarya) to the south. To the east, there was Zikhron Yacoub colony and to the west, the sea. We were surrounded. The people decided to resist, more so because they were the last Arab village. On the night of 22/23 May the Jews attacked from 3 sides and landed in boats from the seaside. We resisted in the streets and houses and in the morning the corpses were seen everywhere. I shall never forget this day all my life. The Jews gathered all women and children in a place, where they dumped all bodies, for them to see their dead husbands, fathers and brothers and terrorize them, but they remained calm.

They gathered men in another place, took them in groups and shot them dead. When women heard this shooting, they asked their Jewish guard about it. He replied we are taking revenge for our dead. One officer selected 40 men and took them to the village square. Each four were taken aside. They shoot one, and order the other three to dump his body in a big pit. Then they shoot another and the other two carry his body to the pit and so on.

I waited my fate until I heard the order: get in the bus. They took us to Zakhron Yacoub and were led to a damp dark cellar. It seemed that I entered a mass grave. We were about 300. There was standing room only. We stayed 3 days without food. I felt dizzy and exhausted. Some had to walk over lying bodies. Then suddenly the door was opened. We were anxious about what is next. We were packed standing in waiting trucks. When the truck was full, they shut it and ordered everyone to sit down. They threatened to shoot any head they can see. But how can we sit? They knocked and beat all standing heads. There was so much splashed blood. Under guard we were driven to Um Khalid [now absorbed by Netanya]. There we were taken to a concentration camp and from there to forced labor. We had to cut and carry stones all day [in a quarry]. Our daily food was only one potato in the morning and half dried fish at night. They beat anyone who disobeyed orders. After 15 days they moved 150 men to another camp. I was one of them. It was a shock for me to leave my two brothers behind. As we left the others, we were lined up and ordered to strip naked. To us this is most degrading. We refused. Shots were fired at us. Our names were read, we had to respond 'Sir' or else. We were moved to a new camp in Ijlil village. There we were put immediately to forced labor which consisted of moving stones from Arab demolished houses. We remained without food for 2 days, then they gave us each a dry piece of bread...etc. One day an English speaking officer announced that we shall be treated as POW and Geneva convention was to apply. We were elated. Next our treatment was improved a little...etc. Five months later we were moved again back to the first camp...[.....]. Two months later, 20 people escaped. I was one of those who remained. Next morning, when the escape was discovered, they put Tantoura people in a cage, poured oil on our clothes and took away our blankets. We were then moved from one camp to another.

Then we were released after a long time. I did not believe I could come out alive."
(Marwan Iqab Al-Yihya, 1951)

"After the 1937 Peel Commission partition proposal, settlement was aimed at expanding the territory that would be apportioned to the Jewish state. Settlement became the military foundation for the state in the making. And if it was necessary to deceive the mandatory authorities to carry out these tasks, then putting the cause above the law also became a value."
(Gershom Gorenberg, 15 July 2008)

"The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity."
(Jared Diamond, January 2006)

"Now I need to be clear here, that I am not criticizing an individual for choosing to not observe a particular faith into which they were born. That is clearly a valid choice. It is the fact that one has substituted what has in practice become a racist ideology, for that religion, and then proudly declare oneself a Jew AND a Zionist which gives me great pause."
(Bill Friend, 3 March 2001)

"There is a similarity between Nazi Germany and Israel."
(Gabi Nitzan-Ginsberg, 1992)

"It is a telling and interesting piece of trivia to note that there are more places in Israel named after Jabotinsky than there are after David Ben-Gurion or any other Zionist leader."
(Bill Friend, 3 March 2001)

"'Choose Life' (Chai) and 'Do not do unto others, that which is hateful to yourself, that is the entire Torah, all the rest is commentary.' Under these conditions, Zionism and its creation, the state of Israel, is decidedly un-Jewish."
(Bill Friend, 3 March 2001)

"I am not only a Zionist, I am a super-Zionist. For me, Zionism was and remains the right of the Jews to control their fate and their future. I consider the right of human beings to be their own masters a natural right. A right of which the Jews were deprived by history and which Zionism restored to them. That is its deep meaning. And as such, it is indeed a tremendous revolution that touches the lives of each of us. I felt that revolution when I immigrated to Israel alone at the age of 16. Only then, when I disembarked at Haifa from the ship Artza, did I stop being an object of others' action and became a subject. Only then did I become a person who is in control of himself and not dependent on others."
(Ze'ev Sternhell, 7 March 2008)

"In the rather simple, unsystematic, virtually non-ideological way he made his own when dealing with such questions, [Chaim Weizmann] was nothing if not an eastern European Jewish nationalist, a man who was sure he knew his people and understood them, and one who never hesitated to speak for them, nor in the event, to decide for them -- if necessary without consulting them."
(David Vital, 1987)

"[Pinchas] Rutenberg was very far from being a Zionist in the familiar mould. It is an open question whether, in terms of inner belief, he was ever a Zionist, or Jewish nationalist, at all."
(David Vital, 1987)

"I accept the White Paper because when the time is ripe, I shall make it a blue paper. The Arabs must go elsewhere."
(Chaim Weizmann, 1922)

"My misgivings about Palestine became deeper. The more I read the official papers of 1914-1920 the sharper grew my doubts. Every standard seemed to have been sacrificed to expediency. I had known little of international or political matters. But I was certain that the standard of rectitude established by, and expected from, bankers and manufacturers, was far higher.

I asked myself the questions: Is Great Britain being really honest to the Arabs? To the Jews? To herself? The questions gnawed at my conscience and refused to be silenced."
(Edward Keith-Roach, some date before 1955)

"Even though the land could not yet absorb sixteen millions, nor even eight, enough could return, if not to form The Jewish State (which a few extremists publicly demanded), at least to prove that the enterprise was one that blessed him that gave as well as him that took by forming for England "a little loyal Jewish Ulster" in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism."
(Ronald Storrs, 1937)

"... what is absolutely inexcusable is the behavior of liberal critics of US war policy toward Iran. Bill Moyers, ignoring the abundant evidence published in all the major financial media on the economic sanctions against the oil companies spearheaded by the ZPC [Zionist Power Configuration], argues that the Middle East wars are "about oil.""
(James Petras, 17 July 2008)

"To continue to masquerade as 'war critics' while ignoring the central role of the Zionist Power Configuration makes pundits like Chomsky, Moyers and Powers and their acolytes irrelevant to the anti-war struggle. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution."
(James Petras, 17 July 2008)

"[A French declaration in favour of a Jewish state] would be laughable."
(Jean Goût, August 1916)

"[The Balfour Declaration was] definite contract between the British Government and Jewry"
(H. W. V. Temperley, 1924)

"There is no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. Many young (Arab) girls were raped and later slaughtered. Old women were also molested."
(Richard Catling, 1948)

"However, it is rather astonishing to find out how short the Israeli collective memory is. The failed IDF rescue of Regev and Goldwasser, following Hezbollah's successful ambush evolved into Israel launching the Second Lebanon War. In an act of retaliation, retribution and vengeance Israel demolished Lebanon's infrastructure, it flattened southern Lebanon towns and villages as well as some neighbourhoods in Beirut. It killed thousand of Lebanese civilians. Somehow the Israelis managed to forget all of this. The only thing the Israelis see is two black coffins. They even managed to neglect the fact that in return they themselves traded 190 plain coffins containing the bodies of Hezbollah militants.
The Israelis are pretty gifted in seeing themselves only. In their eyes, their pain is somehow superior to the pain others feel. Yet something puzzles me. In the light of the Israeli collective necrophilic weeping event I find myself rather confused. If Israel and the Israelis can hardly get over two tragic Israeli military casualties, how will they be able to cope with the global war they insist upon launching against Iran. If the Israelis cannot cope with two coffins, how will they ever be able to cope with Tel Aviv turning into the site of a mass grave? Their war cries suggest that this is something they seem to insist upon involving themselves in."
(Gilad Atzmon, 18 July 2008)

"If we go to war with Iran it is not because of any perceived US interests; it is pure and simple the rabid attachment our president and vice-president have to the state of Israel, and its overblown fears of what would happen if Iran's nuclear facilities are not destroyed to the extent they can be at present, before Cheney and Bush leave."
(Ray McGovern, 18 July 2008)

"The blood of the victims is screaming out at us; the blood of the innocent is calling on all of us to wake up; to make the Arabs of east Jerusalem realize that terrorism comes with a price. A painful price. A price paid by the terrorist’s family, his relatives, brothers, and brothers-in-law."
(Hanoch Daum, 4 July 2008)

"Save the Children concluded that one-third of beaten [Palestinian] children were under ten years old, and one-fifth under the age of five. Nearly a third of the children beaten suffered broken bones."
(Save the Children, 25 July 2008)

"Israeli interrogators routinely ill-treat and torture Arab prisoners. Prisoners are hooded or blindfolded and are hung by their wrists for long periods. Most are struck in the genitals or in other ways sexually abused. Most are sexually assaulted. Others are administered electric shock."
(Ralph Schoenman, 19 June 1977)

"It is not an exaggeration to say that the elected democratic mayor of West Jerusalem is also the military governor of East Jerusalem."
(Uri Avnery, 26 July 2008)

"A fact that should be remembered in any discussion about Jerusalem: there is no resemblance between the Jerusalem of the Bible and the "Jerusalem" of the current Israeli map."
(Uri Avnery, 26 July 2008)

"Your children [Palestinian citizens of Israel] will never have it good here."
(Israel Koenig, March 2002)

"I put them all together [the Germans and the Nazis]. And I don't feel any differently today. When I read of the Queen Mother unveiling the statue to Bomber Harris who was responsible for the bombing of Dresden, I was very pleased."
(Joseph Harmatz, 15 March 1998)

"On that basis [his history of modern Hebrew literature] he [Joseph Klausner] was appointed to the chair of modern Hebrew literature, which remained the only subject he was allowed to teach at the [Hebrew] university [in Jerusalem] for some twenty years. Only in 1944, at the age of seventy, was he finally appointed to a chair of the History of the Second Temple, the period and subject to which he had devoted most of his work. That appointment was made possible by his friends and longtime admirers, who endowed a chair for him."
(Raphael Patai, 1992)

"Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir warned today that rioters would be crushed ''like grasshoppers.''"
(Reuters, 1 April 1988)

"We say to them [the Palestinians], from this hilltop and from the perspective of thousands of years of history, that in our eyes they are like grasshoppers."
(Yitzhak Shamir, 1 April 1988)

" It is, however, ironic, and particularly scandalous for Zionism, in this regard to find that a young David Ben Gurion had postulated in 1918 that it was indeed the Palestinian peasants who were the descendants of the Jews who had remained in Palestine, and that, despite the Islamic conquest, these peasants had held on to their Hebrew ancestors' traditions, most obviously through maintaining the same names for their villages. Ben Gurion went so far as to assert that "in spite of much intermixing, the majority of the [Palestinian] fellahin in Western Palestine are unified in their external appearance and in their origin, and in their veins, without a doubt, flows much Jewish blood—from the Jewish peasants who in the days of the persecutions and terrible oppression had renounced their tradition and their people in order to maintain their attachment and loyalty to the land of the Jews.""
(Joseph A. Massad, Winter 2005)

"In spite of much intermixing, the majority of the [Palestinian] fellahin in Western Palestine are unified in their external appearance and in their origin, and in their veins, without a doubt, flows much Jewish blood—from the Jewish peasants who in the days of the persecutions and terrible oppression had renounced their tradition and their people in order to maintain their attachment and loyalty to the land of the Jews."
(David Ben-GurionYitzhak Ben-Zvi, 1917, 1918)

"The most famous and dramatic case of a successful diaspora nationalism is Israel. ... The human transformation involved in the Jewish case went counter to the global trend: an urban, highly literate and sophisticated, cosmopolitan population was at least partly returned to the land and made more insular."
(Ernest Gellner, 1983, reissued 2005)

"the fellahin are considered in this context as the descendants of the ancient Hebrew and Canaanite residents 'together with a small admixture of Arab blood'"
(Dov Ber Borochov, early 20th century)

"the Moslems [of Palestine] are the ancient residents of the land ... who became Christians on the rise of Christianity and became Moslems on the arrival of Islam."
(Ahad Ha'am, early 20th century)

"The Palestinians didn’t even mention self-determination so a leader like Rabin could have thought that, okay, we will have an agreement that will create something which is a state-minus. This was Rabin’s expression. He never thought this will end in a full-fledged Palestinian state. There was a lot of ambiguity, constructive ambiguity might Kissinger say, but I think it was destructive ambiguity. It helped—this destructive ambiguity helped in clinching the Oslo Agreement, but it was a minefield for those who went to Camp David and later on to Taba to try and solve all the pending issues."
(Shlomo Ben-Ami, 14 February 2006)

"There are certain facts and stories from Korea that editors and publishers have printed which were pure fabrication... Many of us who sent the stories knew they were false, but we had to write them because they were official releases from responsible military headquarters and were released for publication even though the people responsible knew they were untrue."
(Robert C. Miller, some date between 1950 and 2004)

"There's two sides to every story and I think we've got to tell both sides. Perhaps we've only been telling one side. That's been some of the concerns expressed to me by Jewish community leaders"
(Jason Koutsoukis, 14 September 2007)

"We must receive Palestine without any reduction or restrictions. There is a known quantity of Arabs living in Palestine and they will receive their due. Whoever wants to will cultivate his plot. Whoever does not want to will receive compensation and seek his fortune in another land."
(Yosef Sprinzak, June 1919)

"Two important phenomena, of the same nature but opposed, are emerging at this moment in Asiatic Turkey. They are the awakening of the Arab nation and the latent effort of the Jews to reconstitute on a very large scale the ancient kingdom of Israel. These two movements are destined to confront each other continuously, until one prevails over the other. On the final outcome of this struggle, between two peoples that represent two contradictory principles, depends the destiny of the whole world."
(Naguib Azuri, January 1905)

"Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hizbollah. Our great advantage vis-a-vis Hizbollah is our firepower, not in face-to-face combat."
(Haim Ramon, 28 July 2006)

"I am happy that our movement has finally veered around to the point where we are all, or nearly all, talking about a Jewish state.. But I ask... are we again, in moments of desperation going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism which is likely to defeat Zionism... Zionism is not a refugee movement. It is not a product of the Second World War, nor of the first. Were there no displaced Jews in Europe ... Zionism would still be an imperative necessity."
(Abba Hillel Silver, October 1946)

"Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and – some would say – encouragement of the international community."
(Karen Koning Abu Zayd, 23 January 2008)

"In an era when Israel needs the FBI to crack its homegrown organized crime, the United States can stress more forcefully, both to Israelis and Palestinians, their dependency - in order to shake them out of the status quo."
(Uzi Benziman, 27 August 2008)

"My ultimate aim, like that of many others, is greater, broader, incomprehensible but not unattainable. The final goal is eventually to gain control of Palestine and to restore to the Jewish people the political independence of which it has been deprived of for two thousand years. Don't laugh this is not illusion. The means for realising this goal is at hand: the founding of settlements in the country based on agriculture and crafts, the establishment and gradual expansion of all sorts of factories, in brief - to make an effort so that all the land, all the industry will be in Jewish hands. In addition, it will be necessary to instruct young people and the future generation in the use of firearms (in free, wild Turkey anything can be done), and then - here I too am plunging into conjecture - then the glorious day will dawn of which Isaiah prophesised in his burning and poetic utterances. The Jews will proclaim in a loud voice and if necessary with arms in their hands that they are the masters of their ancient homeland."
(Vladimir (Ze'ev) Dubnow, 21 September 1882)

"The thing we must do now is to become as strong as we can, to conquer the country, covertly, bit by bit ... We will not set up committees so that the Arabs will know what we are after, we shall act like silent spies, we shall buy, buy, buy."
(Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, July 1882)

"We have made it a rule not to say too much, except to those ... we trust ... the goal is to revive our nation on its land ... if only we succeed in increasing our numbers here until we are the majority [Emphasis in original] .... There are now only five hundred [thousand] Arabs, who are not very strong, and from whom we shall easily take away the country if only we do it through stratagems [and] without drawing upon us their hostility before we become the strong and populous ones."
(Eliezer Ben-YehudaYehiel Michael Pines, October 1882)

"The ultimate aim or pia desideria is to take control of Palestine in due time and to return to Jews the political independence they have been deprived of for two thousand years. Don't laugh, this is not a delusion ... In brief: to try to make sure that all land and production is in Jewish hands. ... In addition, it is necessary to teach the young people today and the coming generation the use of arms (in free and wild Turkey, anything is possible). Then ... and here I can only guess ... that grans day will arrive, the day whose coming was prophesised by Isaiah in his empassioned vision in the song of consolation. The Jews will yet arise, weapons in hand (if need be); and, in a loud voice, they shall proclaim themselves the lords and masters of their ancient homeland."
(Vladimir (Ze'ev) Dubnow, 20 October 1882)

"You can’t give him [Jimmy Carter] a podium, because people will draw the conclusion [that the Democratic Party supports Carter’s views on the Middle East]. I wouldn’t let him within 100 miles of the convention center, because it would be used by an unscrupulous Republican Party that doesn’t care about the truth in character assassination against our candidate."
(Jerrold L. Nadler, August 2008)

"I think it's hard to ask a political party to take a former president [Jimmy Carter] and say, 'We're not going to hear you at all.' The party is very sensitive to the American Jewish community, and it's very sensitive to ever conveying that this is anything but a pro-Israel party."
(Ira Forman, August 2008)

"But now here comes Israel's environment minister, Gideon Ezra, with an equally huge whopper as he warns of an even bigger, more terrible war should Hizbollah attack Israel again. "During the (2006) war, we considered the possibility of attacking Lebanon's infrastructure but we never (sic) resorted to this option, because we thought at the time that not all the Lebanese were responsible for the Hizbollah attacks... At that time, we had Hizbollah in our sights and not the Lebanese state. But the Hizbollah do not live on the moon, and some (sic) infrastructure was hit." This was a brazen lie. Yet the Americans, who arm Israel, said nothing. The European Union said nothing. No journalistic column pointed out this absolute dishonesty."
(Robert Fisk, 30 August 2008)

"And whoever holds some knowledge as to our settlement’s history from its inception knows, that our familiarity with our neighbors and peaceful coexisting with them was the first responsibility of the natives, that we have accomplished, and if we succeeded in our work, we succeeded even more, because we appreciated and acknowledged our neighbors, that next to them we built our houses. But – and over here comes the bitter truth: that both our managers, and many of the pioneers that came from the Diaspora in order to supervise us, did not at all realize the significance of good relations with our neighbors, on this basic and simple rule. They either did not understand, or did not wish to understand, and this attitude now leads to many difficulties, and turned into the most distressing problem in the settlement, and many have noticed, and wrote, and said in public that from the day Hertzel appeared with the idea of the Political Zionizm, the Zionist propaganda described in all the countries and in all the languages the land in which we are about to build our national home as a land deserted and desolated, empty from inhabitants, and after such descriptions of the country both in writing and by heart, only as a virgin soil - on behalf of which were created all the Zionist methods in building the country, that encompass everything but the one thing that was completely forgotten - and that is an attention to those who already inhabit this country."
(Yosef Eliyahu Shlush, 1929)

"We have two Israeli cabinet ministers, one deals with war and the other with negotiations, and that is the Israeli involvement here. Both war and peace are in the hands of Israeli Jews.""
(Mikheil Saakashvili, August 2008)

"I am a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist."
(Joseph R. Biden, Jr., on or before 4 April 2007)

"Israel should be proud of its military which trained Georgian soldiers [because] a small group of our soldiers were able to wipe out an entire Russian military division, thanks to Israeli training."
(Temur Yakobashvili, August 2008)

"Halkin and Meged, however, do not want the facts to get in the way of the myths that have come to surround the birth of Israel. They would like school history books to continue to tell only the heroic version of Israel’s creation. In effect, they are saying that in education one has to lie for the good of the country. Patriotism, it would seem, remains the last refuge of the scoundrel."
(Avi Shlaim, 1 December 2003)

"One of the first things that Ms Livnat did on becoming minister of education was to order new history text books for secondary schools to be written, removing all traces of the influence of the new historians."
(Avi Shlaim, 1 December 2003)

"It is incumbent on the leaders of the Arabs - the local population - to do one of two things. Either they must reach an agreement with leaders of the Zionists to settle the differences between the interests of both parties . . . or they must gather all their forces to oppose the Zionists in every way, first by forming societies and companies, and finally by forming armed gangs which oppose them by force. Some [Arabs] say this is the first thing to be done because cauterization is the only way - and cauterization is the ultimate remedy, as it is said [in an Arabic proverb]."
(Rashid Rida, 1914)

"[The Democrats' support for Israel] comes from our gut, moves through our heart, and ends up in our head. It's almost genetic."
(Joseph R. Biden, Jr., 5 October 2006)

"In my 34 year career, I have never wavered from the notion that the only time progress has ever been made in the Middle East is when the Arab nations have known that there is no daylight between us and Israel. So the idea of being an 'honest broker' is not, I think, like some of my Democratic colleagues call for, is not the answer. It is being the smart broker, it is being the smart partner."
(Joseph R. Biden, Jr., 20 March 2007)

"On one side... one sees [the non-Israeli Jew] before treatment, a swarthy, hook-nosed, shifty, cringing Oriental, terrified of his own shadow. On the other side, we find him transformed into a muscular, blond giant, straight in body and mind, facing the world confidently and defiantly. ... Over a million Jews are now cooped up in a small country. There are few recent immigrants who do not feel that someone is discriminating against them and many older residents have similar suspicions. ... Within this crowd... there are a number who have in the past digested immense quantities of anti-Semitic literature. The insults directed against them have pervaded their subconscious minds. They are now part of their literary condition and, when they are aroused, they find expression. ... There appears to be no precedent for it in Jewish history. It must surely be attributed - at least in part - to the impact of racial theories and attitudes of Central and Eastern Europe, the persistent attempt to deny the value of Oriental achievements and... Oriental morals, habits and looks, which seem to have penetrated some of the targets at which they were aimed."
(Emile Marmorstein, 1952)

"Israelis began looking for a lobbyist to promote the necessary legislation...would I leave the Israeli delegation for six months to lobby for aid on Capitol Hill?"
(Isaiah L. (Si) Kenen, some date before 1989)

"Israel is a democracy for its Jewish citizens and a Jewish state for its Arab citizens."
(Jamal Zahalka, 16 March 2007)

"History for many in the West – especially the history of West's colonialism and imperialism in Asia, the Middle East and Africa – is something to skim through in a high school class, and then to relegate to the past as irrelevant to today's conflicts and tensions. For many people in the former colonized world, however, history is a deep and open wound that still oozes pain and distortion."
(Rami G. Khouri, 3 September 2008)

"Israel is a democracy for the Jews and Jewish for the Arabs."
(Sylvain (Zvi) Cypel, 16 April 2008)

"Forget the 78 percent. What is being negotiated now is the remaining 22 percent."
(Condoleezza (Condi) Rice, September 2008)

"I personally feel Palestinian. My colour is their colour, their language is my language, their accent is my accent. And their situation is absolutely unbearable … when we speak of equality we mean the whole city [Jerusalem], whether or not people vote."
(Ayala Sabag, September 2008)

"How can we credibly continue to search for and destroy the remaining al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and throughout the world while demanding that the Israelis stop doing exactly that?"
(Joseph (Joe) Lieberman, 14 April 2002)

"In the end, we will have to withdraw from the lion's share of the territories and, for the territories we leave in our hands, we will have to give compensation in the form of territories within the State of Israel at a ratio that is more or less one to one."
(Ehud Olmert, 29 September 2008)

"In the end of the day, we will have to withdraw from the most decisive areas of the territories. In exchange for the same territories left in our hands, we will have to give compensation in the form of territories within the State of Israel."
(Ehud Olmert, 29 September 2008)

"Note that in the picture below, the Palestinians have to walk on the left side of the fence. That's not apartheid; that's hafrada."
(Jeremiah Haber, 31 July 2008)

"Arik Sharon spoke about painful prices, and refused to elaborate them. I say, there is no choice but to elaborate. In the end, we will have to withdraw from the lion’s share of the territories, and for the territories we leave in our hands, we will have to give compensation in the form of territories within the State of Israel at a ratio that is more or less 1:1. What I am saying to you now has not been said by any Israeli leader before me. The time has come to say these things. The time has come to put them on the table."
(Ehud Olmert, 29 September 2008)

"Yes, the polls show strong support for Israel. But the polls tend to simply ask if Americans are more supportive of Israelis or Arabs. Not surprisingly, the Israelis win. But that means very little especially after 9/11. Polls which probe more deeply show that support for Israel, such as there is, is broad but it is not very deep.
This phenomenon can be seen almost every day in "Letters to the Editors" columns. Every time an op-ed about Israel appears, especially if it is critical, there are a slew of letters to the editor. Most support the Israeli position. And almost without exception, they are written by Jews. That vast majority out there which supposedly is so supportive of Israel virtually never chimes in. It's just the usual suspects putting out their robotic rhetoric."
(M. J. Rosenberg, 27 January 2007)

"Jews who are now in Israel were just now in a ghetto themselves. In Eastern countries they are still segregated in ghettos. How can these ghetto people of yesterday introduce ghettos themselves?"
(Joseph Shlossberg (Schlossberg), 1951)

"Duplicate quotation -- to be removed"
(William Zukerman, 1958)

"I'm a Zionist; I've devoted my life to Israel"
(Michael B. Oren, 2002)

"One of the characteristics of nationalist Jews is to look upon the Jewish group as isolated from the rest of humanity, particularly when it comes to suffering. They see only Jewish suffering and do not see the context of the entire world scene. The result is a distorted historical picture, showing Jews as the only sufferers, while the rest of the world presumably basks in happiness. As compensation for their suffering, it is assumed that Jews, as a group, are somehow entitled to special privileges which other people do not deserve (for instance, special immigration facilities, special fund raising, emigration from communist countries, etc.)."
(William Zukerman, some date before 1962)

"To this observer, nothing demonstrates more sharply the terribly uncanny power of modern propaganda to control minds, sway emotions and brutalize people than the Zionist propaganda on the Arab refugees during the last decade. It literally succeeded in turning black into white, a big blatant lie into truth, a grave social injustice into an act of justice glorified by thousands. [It turns] clever people with more tha naverage intelligence into starry-eyed fools, believing everything they are told, and has converted kindly and gentle men and women with a strong sense of mercy into fanatics, insensible to the suffering of any people except their own. ... In no other way can this writer explain the many paradoxes which the Arab refugee problem has created in Jewish life."
(William Zukerman, 7 December 1958)

"After witnessing the [house] demolitions, a Bedouin activist asked one of the Jewish teenagers why he had agreed to participate in the eviction. Without hesitating, the teenager replied: ‘I am a Zionist and what we are doing here today is Zionism.’ "
(Various Zionist activists, 14 December 2007)

"Scratch a neo-con and you find an Arabophobe."
(Neil Clark, 20 October 2003)

"I owe Drumont much for my present freedom of conception, because he is an artist"
(Theodor Herzl, 1895)

"There is no doubt that for many years there has been discrimination against the Arab population that stemmed from various reasons"
(Ehud Olmert, 12 October 2008)

"It is forbidden to sell or rent homes to Arabs."
(Shmuel Eliyahu, 22 October 2006)

"This morning we saw pictures of the Warsaw ghetto at Yad Vashem and this evening we are going to the Ramallah ghetto."
(Gregor Maria Hanke, March 2007)

"If Israeli society is unable to muster the courage necessary to put an end to the settlements, the settlements will put an end to the state of the Jews and will turn it into a binational state."
(Ze'ev Sternhell, 17 October 2008)

"I don't think that you have had an administration that has more actively been seeking a Palestinian state... This president... has launched the most active and robust negotiations towards a two-state solution that perhaps the region has ever seen. The Palestinians now have a peace process that is the most serious one in many many years."
(Condoleezza (Condi) Rice, 20 October 2008)

"Anti-Semitism did not play a decisive or even significant role in the growth of the Nazi movement and electorate. The appeals of nazism were many and complex. People rallied to a syncretic creed of ultranationalism, soical Darwinism, anti-Marxism, antibolshevism, and anti-Semitism, as well as to a party programs calling for the revision of Versailles, the repeal of reparations, the curb of industrial capitalism, and the establishment of a volkisch welfare state."
(Arno J. Mayer, 1988)

"Israelis were pretty disappointed in the book [Exodus, by Leon Uris], to put it lightly. The types that are described in it never existed in Israel. The novel is neither history nor literature."
(Yehiel Aronowicz (Aranowicz), February 1961)

"Those bums [the Zionists], they want to be happy."
(Hermann Cohen, some date before 1919)

"Outside of the Land of Israel Jews never dared behave in this fashion. Has independence made the Jews take leave of their senses?"
(Yehoshafat Harkabi, 1979)

"Jewish soldiers broke down the doors of my church and robbed many precious and sacred objects. Then they threw the statues of Christ down into a nearby garden."
(? Deleque, 1948)

"We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country [the total area was about 6%] we bought the lands from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal [Dayan's own village] arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat --- in the place of Jibta, (Kibbutz) Sarid --- in the place of Haneifs, and Kefar Yehoshua --- in the place of Tell Shaman. There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
(Moshe Dayan, 4 April 1969)

"[A former Clinton administration representative said] By the end, the Palestinians didn't fully trust Dennis ... they thought he was tilted too much towards the Israelis."
(Daniel C. KurtzerScott Lasensky, March 2008)

"On Fox I said that as the first African American president we wish him well. The question is, will he be Uncle Sam for the people or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations which are driving America into the ground. Fox cut it off after "corporations"."
(Ralph Nader, 7 November 2008)

"Obama is a pro-Israeli leader and will be a friend to Israel"
(Benjamin Emanuel, 5 November 2008)

"[The Palestinians] have received very little justice [ for the last 60 years]."
(R. Nicholas Burns, July 2008)

"I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power. Everything."
(Barack Obama, 4 June 2008)

"Obviously, he [my son, Rahm Emanuel] will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House."
(Benjamin Emanuel, November 2008)

"But the sneaking suspicion is that the "Abbas question" does worry Israel, and that Israel's decision to nibble away at the tahadiyeh is connected to the situation in West Bank. After all, since the cease-fire went into effect, Israel has had some pretty good reasons to renege on the agreement and to launch an assault on Gaza."
(Zvi Bar'el, 16 November 2008)

"The truce [organized by Bernadotte] is an act of war designed to break our will."
(David Ben-Gurion, September 1948)

"You should drop the attitude of conqueror and the conviction that force is the only policy that your neighbors will understand. You should make your deeds correspond to your frequent utterances of the desire for peace."
(Henry Byroade, 1954)

"To the Israelis I say that you should come to truly look upon yourselves as a Middle Eastern State and see your own future in that context rather than as a headquarter, or nucleus so to speak, of worldwide groupings of peoples of a particular religious faith who must have special rights within and obligations to the state. You should drop the attitude of the conqueror and the conviction that force and a policy of retaliatory killings is the only policy that your neighbors will understand. The Arabs must cease to think of themselves as wanting to destroy Israel and should come to terms with Israel itself"
(Henry Byroade, April 1954)

"[The Arabs] should have the right to know the magnitude of the new state. Their fears are enhanced by the knowledge that the only limitation imposed by statute on immigration into Israel is, in fact, the total number of those of the Jewish faith in the entire world. They see only one result -- future attempt at territorial expansion -- and hence warfare of serious proportion."
(Henry Byroade, 1 May 1954)

"[Israel is in a deep crisis because] too many people have been admitted too rapidly into a country which possesses almost no natural resources. Whether it will ever be possible to develop a viable economy in Israel is very uncertain ... [Yet the prime minister has spoken of a target of two million more immigrants.] ... This unrealistic approach can only lead to further economic and financial difficulties and will probably result in additional pressure to expand Israel's frontiers into the rich lands of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, and northward into the settled lands of Syria. There is a considerable element in the Army, the government, and among the people who feel that the only solution to Israel's problems is territorial expansion. As economic pressure rises, this group is likely to increase in numbers. The situation is serious both for the security of the Near East and for the future of the new state."
(US Department of State, 29 October 1953)

"It [the massacre at Deir Yassin] had the desired effect among the Arabs. It swayed many who had been hesitating on the brink of decision, whether to flout the United Nations and go to war against the Palestine Zionists or not. For though it has become a habit among Israelis and pro-Zionists to assume that there was nothing but evil hatred behind the Arab decision to go to war against Israel, and that the Arab explanation that they came to save their brethren from attack by the terrorists was a cheap excuse for the benefit of those who cared to believe it, it must be stressed that there was great and very real Arab concern for the fate of the Palestine Arabs. This concern reached fever heat when the British information was passed on that the terrorists were becoming the decisive factor in the Jewish armed forces."
(Jon Kimche, 1953)

"Netanya is the only urban center that stands as a force against Arabs in the Triangle area, who are increasing and flourishing. I'm not even talking about the temporary border between us and the other Arabs, the cease-fire line."
(Oved Ben-Ami, August 1963)

"[I]f we must have preference, let me murmur in your ear that I prefer Arabs to Jews."
(Anthony Eden, 1941)

"We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state.  Just as we do not recognize the Arabs' political proprietorship of the land, so also do we not recognize their spiritual proprietorship and their names."
(David Ben-Gurion, 1949)

"An important tool for us is accelerated reconstruction of ancient geographical names and Hebraicization [shi ‘abur] of Arabic toponyms. In this respect the most important task is to disseminate the practical use of the new names, a process that has run into difficulties among Jews too. In Jaffa the name ‘Jibaliyya’ is still current, although ‘Giv’at Aliya’ is gradually disinheriting it. By contrast, a Hebrew name has not been found yet for ‘Ajami’, and some new immigrants still incorrectly call the Arab neighbourhood within it the ‘Ghetto’ or ‘Arab Ghetto’. It is possible, by being strictly formal and with adequate indoctrination, to make the Arab inhabitants of ‘Rami’ [in the Upper Galilee] get used to calling their village, in speech and writing, ‘Ha-Rama’ (Ramat Naftali), or to make the inhabitants of ‘Majd al-Krum’ [also in the Upper Galilee] become used to calling their village ‘Beit ha-Kerem’. From the inhabitants of what the Arabs called ‘Shafa’amer [near Haifa], I have already heard the [Hebraicized] name ‘Shefar’am’."
(Alexander Dotan, 23 November 1952)

"Listen, that [the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948] all happened at a time when transfers of population were permitted."
(Gidi Grinstein, Fall 2000)

"As foreign minister, Abba Eban outdid them all, tacking his private purchases onto the hotel bill. Still etched in my memory is the picture of Walter Eytan, the Israeli ambassador, tearing his hair out and sharing his woes with me: 'How am I going to send a bill like this to Israel?'"
(Yoel Marcus, 2 December 2008)

"Several years ago, the late Tanya Reinhart used the word “genocide” to describe the harsh repression of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories by Israel; I was among those who criticized her for using too strong of a concept. From where you are now, forgive me Tanya, because you were right and saw the true nature of the Israeli plans, and I was dead wrong: the State of Israel is conducting a rampant genocide against the people of Gaza, using the weapon of near-starvation, electricity cuts and deprivation of drinking water, provoking epidemics and preventing basic health-care. Gaza is under siege, and the war criminal Ehud Barak has just ordered a halving of even the emergency humanitarian aid conveyed by the United Nations."
(Michael Warschawski, 2 December 2008)

"Contrary to expectations, I don't think we would see a lot of change."
(Richard Perle, 2 December 2008)

"We are carrying on our usual activity in order to push the law [denaturalizing Iraqi Jews] through faster and faster and find out how the Iraqi government proposes to carry it out."
(Shlomo Hillel, 10 October 1949)

"We have openly said that the map will never again be the same as on June 4, 1967. For us, this is a matter of security and of principles. The June map is for us equivalent to insecurity and danger. I do not exaggerate when I say that it has for us something of a memory of Auschwitz. We shudder when we think of what would have awaited us in the circumstances of June, 1967, if we had been defeated; with Syrians on the mountain and we in the valley, with the Jordanian army in sight of the sea, with the Egyptians who hold our throat in their hands in Gaza. This is a situation which will never be repeated in history."
(Abba Eban, 27 January 1969)

"The notable omissions in language used to refer to withdrawal are the words the, all, and the June 5, 1967, lines. I refer to the English text of the resolution. The French and Soviet texts differ from the English in this respect, but the English text was voted on by the Security Council, and thus it is determinative. In other words, there is lacking a declaration requiring Israel to withdraw from the (or all the) territories occupied by it on and after June 5, 1967. Instead, the resolution stipulates withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal. And it can be inferred from the incorporation of the words secure and recognized boundaries that the territorial adjustments to be made by the parties in their peace settlements could encompass less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territories"
(Arthur Goldberg, 1988)

"I believe that racism is rampant. ... [An] Israeli Race Theory [is] just under our nose. It is imperative to declare a war of values on these racists, and to present a practical alternative of faith to the distortion they call 'Judaism' and which they present as our authentic faith."
(Avraham Burg, 9 December 2008)

"A Jewish homosexual [partner for my son] is preferable to a gentile bride."
(an unnamed professor at an Israeli university who attended a seminar by Avraham Burg, 28 October 2008)

"For the blue-collar worker as well as the professor, the hierarchy is obvious: a Jew, whether male or female, straight or gay, is preferable to any gentile whatever he or she is. Purists will say that racism does not exist among ordinary people. 'Am I a racist>' they would demand defensively. 'Only yesterday I had hummus in an Arab restaurant in an Arab village.' There are many slogans and technical denials of this type. Nevertheless, I believe that racism is rampant. I have many tims been party to such conversations, which stressed cooperation between Israelis [PIWP editor: sic! -- are there not Arab Israelis?] and Arabs as proof of brotherly love, but reality continues to defy them."
(Avraham Burg, 28 October 2008)

"Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg is the contemporary link in a long chain of religious and mystical ideologues that view Jewish supremacy as the center of the Jewish nation's soul. ... His deed and followers underline a reality happening just under our nose, the dissemination of Israeli Race Theory. While many study this abomination, nobody seems to care."
(Avraham Burg, 28 October 2008)

"In Israel today there are horrible layers of racism that are not essentially different from the racism that exterminated many of our ancestors. THis racism is sanctimonious and slick, so we do not always notice how dangerous it is. It is also cunning and marketable; sometimes we are mistaken to think that it is pure patriotism. It isn't. The conversion of everything into holiness, without leaving room for self-criticism, combined with the sanctity of nationhood and the hostile environment that we try daily to withstand, turns the monopolists of the Israeli religious spirit to de facto and de juro racists. It is imperative to declare a war of values with these racists, and to present a practical alternative of faith to the distortion they call 'Judaism' and which they present as our authentic faith."
(Avraham Burg, 28 October 2008)

"It is evident that Jewish colonization of Palestine must conflict, to some extent, with Arab interests. All we can do, if and when the time comes to discuss details, is to try to devise a settlement which will involve as little hardship as possible to the Arab populations."
(Hugh O'Beirne, 8 March 1916)

"When Dr. Weizmann was talking to me of Palestine he kept bringing up place names which were more familiar to me than those on the Western Front."
(David Lloyd George, 1920)

"Many of the Arab League countries are so engrossed with their quarrels with Israel and with Great Britain or France that they pay little heed to the menace of Soviet Communism. However, there is more concern where the Soviet Union is near, and in general, the northern tier of countries have an awareness of the danger. There is ... a vague desire to have a collective security system."
(John Foster Dulles, 1 June 1953)

"The conditions [of deprivation] will force the refugees to go contrary to the teachings of democracy. We want to warnyou that although we don't want war, we cannot overlook the fact that you have created a class of people who are so destitute that they are bound to go to war. ... These people of Palestine have been displaced and none have been replaced. They are replaced by other people. ... Our contention is that no proposed economic solution will settle the matter."
(Izzat Tannous, 15 May 1953)

"We have long expressed our opposition to settlement activity. But that activity has continued and has accelerated since the Annapolis process was launched. I share your frustration at this. The UK is now looking at what effective action we can take to discourage settlement expansion. ... I have already asked officials to update our official travel advice to include a specific warning that potential purchasers of property in a settlement should consider that a future peace agreement could have consequences for that property."
(Gordon Brown, 9 December 2008)

"In 1948, Israel expanded by 45 per cent in excess of the territory allocated by the decision of the United Nations. Confronted by the reality of the situation, Mapam agreed to establish settlements on land which were beyond the original 1947 borders of the state. It assuaged its ideological predicament by accepting that surplus land would be set aside for any returning Palestinian Arabs."
(Colin Shindler, 2008)

"Slowly but surely, abandoned villages are vanishing as they are resettled [by Arabs], partially or completely . . . Many thousands of dunams formerly considered abandoned lands -- are now being [cultivated] or claimed by their owners, and it is clear to me that, if the refugee problem is not shortly solved by resettlement [in Arab countries] -- the day is not far when it will be solved by itself by the return to the villages of the [lands'] owners . . . The inflitration of the refugees through all the borders . . . is . . . a growing phenomenon. Every day . . . they return . . . I fear that while you sit and debate the refugee problem at meetings in Lausanne . . . the problem is being solved . . . by itself . . . And one sees no line of action against infiltration by our government. It appears that there is no government, neither military nor civil. The reins have been loosened and the Arab, with his cunning intelligence, has already sensed this and knows how to draw the appropriate conclusion."
(Joseph (Yosef/Yossef) Weitz, 27 May 1949)

"Transjordan has best claim to inherit residue of Palestine ... occupation of Arab areas by Transjordan would counteract chances of an armed conflict between a Jewish State and other Arab States . . . King Abdullah would be prepared to acquiesce in formation of a Jewish State provided Transjordan obtained the rest of Palestine."
(Alec Kirkbride, 29 October 1947)

"The citizens of Israel knew nothing of this at the time [1970]. The State of Israel treated Nahal outposts over the Green Line as a military secret. Fearing international reactions, and especially that of the U.S., reports concerning the establishment of new outposts were forbidden. On Nov. 9th, 1970, three weeks before the official ceremony signifying the establishment of Kfar Darom, the Liaison for Activities in the Territories, Brig.-Gen. Shelomo Gazit, dispatched a letter containing the following order: 'There is no change concerning the directive concerning a black-out [of information] with regard to the establishment of the outpost in Kfar Darom, at least until the final arrival on site. Ensure that the ceremony is quiet with minimal outside participation.'"
(Haggai Huberman, 2004)

"One of the lesser-known episodes in the history of Jewish settlement took place after the Sinai Campaign, ten years after the establishment of Kfar Darom, in 1956. Religious Nahal members, belonging to groups set up by the Religious Kibbutz Movement, established a Nahal outpost close to Rafiah with a view to turning it into a religious kibbutz. They raised 350 chickens, 80 sheep and 8 cows. They managed to plough an area of 1,000 dunam, of which about 60 dunam was then used to plant a variety of vegetables. The Jewish Agency had already completed plans for the establishment of the permanent settlement of 'Nahal Rafiah' when the government decided to return the Gaza Strip to Egypt. For many years this settlement story remained secret, by orders of the I.D.F. military censor. It was published in full for the first time in 'Ha-Tzofeh' by the author of these lines in Adar 5749 (3rd March, 1989)."
(Haggai Huberman, 2004)

"Jordan has no right to exist and should be divided. East of the Jordan River, it will become part of Iraq, and Arab [Palestinian] refugees will be settled there. The West Bank will be annexed to Israel, as an autonomous region. Lebanon will get rid of its Moslem regions to assure stability based on the Christian part. Britain will hold sway over Iraq, including the East Bank, and the southern Arabian Peninsula. France -- over Lebanon, perhaps Syria, with close ties to Israel. The Suez Canal will be internationalized, and the Red Sea straits will be under Israeli control."
(David Ben-Gurion, July 1987)

"If Persia is allowed to get away with it, Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries will be encouraged to think that they can try things on. The next thing may be an attempt to nationalize the Suez Canal."
(Emanuel (Manny) Shinwell, 23 May 1951)

"Arab resistance to Zionist colonisation was frequently explained away by Labour spokespeople as the work of reactionary ‘effendis’, who manipulated Arab peasants for their self-interested purposes. The objective interests of Jewish and Arab workers were said to converge, although, as Kelemen has noted, behind the call for Jewish-Arab unity lurked "the understanding that Jewish interests in Palestine had priority over those of the Arabs"."
(John Chiddick, 2001)

"I am very much concerned over the fact that the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get Congress to do anything they don't approve of. The Israeli Embassy is practically dictating to the Congress through influential Jewish people in the country."
(John Foster Dulles, 19 February 1957)

"Three tractors are completing its destruction [the village of al-Maghar in al-Ramla district]. I was surprised that nothing moved me at the sight. ... Not regret and not hatred, as this is the way of the world."
(Joseph (Yosef/Yossef) Weitz, June 1948)

"We are now spectators of the latest – and perhaps penultimate – chapter of the 60 year old conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people. About the complexities of this tragic conflict billions of words have been pronounced, defending one side or the other.

Today, in face of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, the essential calculation, which was always covertly there, behind this conflict, has been blatantly revealed. The death of one Israeli victim justifies the killing of a hundred Palestinians. One Israeli life is worth a hundred Palestinian lives.

This is what the Israeli State and the world media more or less – with marginal questioning – mindlessly repeat. And this claim, which has accompanied and justified the longest Occupation of foreign territories in 20th C. European history, is viscerally racist. That the Jewish people should accept this, that the world should concur, that the Palestinians should submit to it – is one of history's ironic jokes. There's no laughter anywhere. We can, however, refute it, more and more vocally.

Let's do so."
(John Berger, 27 December 2008)

"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price [the death of half a million Iraqi children as a result of sanctions] is worth it."
(Madeleine Albright, 11 May 1996)

"In an attempt to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorize the Jews, the Zionists planted bombs in the US information service library and synagogues, and soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews to flee to Israel."
(Wilbur Crane Eveland, some date before 1990)

"This method of operation was not invented for Egypt. It was first tried in Iraq."
(unnamed Israeli minister of defence, 1954)

"We are deeply concerned about the escalating violence. We strongly condemn the attacks on Israel and hold Hamas responsible."
(Condoleezza (Condi) Rice, 30 December 2008)

"First, it is necessary to get rid of the ruins in the heart of Jewish communities, in important centers or on central transportation arteries; rapid treatment must be given to the ruins of villages whose residents are in the country, such as Birwe, north of Shfaram, and the ruins of Zippori; in areas where there is no development, such as along the rail line from Jerusalem to Bar Giora, one receives a depressing impression of a once-living civilized land; attention must also be directed to ruins in distinctly tourist areas, such as the ruins of the Circassian village in Caesarea, which is intact but empty ... Accordingly, the Ministry of Labor should assume the mission of clearing the ruins ... It should be taken into account that the participation of nongovernmental elements requires caution, as politically it is desirable for the operation to be executed without anyone grasping its political meaning."
(Alexander Dotan, August 1957)

"The racism [Benny] Morris has openly expressed during the second intifada is prefigured by his historical method, beginning with his earliest publications during the first intifada. All his work is characterized by the near total exclusion of Arab testimony. Because of the destruction of the fabric of Arab society and the flight of most of the population in 1948, few intellectuals remained who could offer a coherent counter-narrative capable of contesting the Zionist narrative. Most efforts of those Palestinians who became citizens of the Israeli state to organize independent political and cultural institutions after 1948 were repressed. Mapam did criticize, even if for the most part ineffectually, the most extreme injustices of the Zionist project. But the activities of Arab party members were typically supervised by their Jewish comrades. Only the Communist Party offered Palestinian-Israelis a relatively free framework for cultural expression and political action. The delegitimization of Palestinian-Israeli voices, most clearly expressed at the institutional level by the military government imposed on most Arab citizens from 1949 to 1966, was one of the principal tools deployed to dig a labyrinthine memory hole in which things once known were deposited and rendered unknowable for the vast majority of Israeli Jews. Morris is uninterested in excavating this hole. He never asks how and why unsupported and demonstrably false assertions could become so widely accepted among Israeli Jews, among world Jewry and by Western public opinion, although he acknowledges that this did occur. The answers to these questions might, at least in part, explain why Morris' own work, and that of the other new historians, has had relatively little impact in transforming popular Israeli understandings of the events of 1948 and after."
(Joel Beinin, Spring 2004)

"As a company commander in Central Command, we expelled the Arabs from Zakariyya, but we did not destroy the mosque, and it is still there. I know that in the South, in the villages of Bureir and Huj, the villages were leveled and the mosques disappeared with them, but I am not familiar with an order to demolish only mosques. It doesn't sound reasonable to me."
(Mordechai (Moraleh) Bar-On, 2007)

"The ruins from the Arab villages and Arab neighborhoods, or the blocs of buildings that have stood empty since 1948, arouse harsh associations that cause considerable political damage. In the past nine years, many ruins have been cleared ... However, those that remain now stand out even more prominently in sharp contrast to the new landscape. Accordingly, ruins that are irreparable or have no archaeological value should be cleared away."
(Alexander Dotan, August 1957)

"In ancient Tiberias the army began to blow up a hefty strip of buildings in the Old City. In talks with all the responsible parties at the site, we emphasized the special importance of the ancient stone with the relief of the lions on it, which was built into one of the walls. We were promised that this antiquity dating back 3,000 years would be specially guarded, but in my last visit I found precisely this stone blown to bits."
(Jacob Pinkerfeld, September 1948)

"Gaza as a part of Israel would be like a cancer. In return for a small sliver of territory we would take responsibility for some 250-300,000 Arabs. . . . Our interest in Gaza is security. To take a small territory with a vast Arab population would be the worst possible exchange."
(David Ben-Gurion, February 1957)

"As a matter of fact, the cease-fire did not collapse, because there was no real cease-fire to start with. The main requirement for any cease-fire in the Gaza Strip must be the opening of the border crossings. There can be no life in Gaza without a steady flow of supplies. But the crossings were not opened, except for a few hours now and again. The blockade on land, on sea and in the air against a million and a half human beings is an act of war, as much as any dropping of bombs or launching of rockets. It paralyzes life in the Gaza Strip: eliminating most sources of employment, pushing hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation, stopping most hospitals from functioning, disrupting the supply of electricity and water. Those who decided to close the crossings - under whatever pretext - knew that there is no real cease-fire under these conditions."
(Uri Avnery, 2 January 2009)

"There is no humanitarian crisis, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce."
(Tzipora Livni, 1 January 2009)

"Ben-Gurion and Sharett shared the basic mindset of the entire Zionist leadership - a pro-Western and anti-Arab mindset. The disputes related to execution."
(Uri Avnery, 2008)

"There is an open secret in Washington. I learned it well during my 22-year tenure as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. All members swear to serve the interests of the United States, but there is an unwritten and overwhelming exception: The interests of one small foreign country almost always trump U.S. interests. That nation of course is Israel."
(Paul Findley, 15 October 2007)

"Israel is a NAZI state. The Jewish Soul is being tortured in Israel."
(Roseanne Barr, 1 January 2009)

"I keep the children away from the windows because the F-16s are in the air; I forbid them to play below because it's dangerous. They're bombing us from the sea and from the east, they're bombing us from the air. When the telephone works, people tell us about relatives or friends who were killed. My wife cries all the time. At night she hugs the children and cries. It's cold and the windows are open; there's fire and smoke in open areas; at home there's no water, no electricity, no heating gas. And you [the Israelis] say there's no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Tell me, are you normal?"
(Palestinian resident of Gaza, 5 January 2009)

"I consider an upgrade in EU-Israeli relations would be viewed by Israel (and the world at large) as an endorsement of gross and repeated Israeli grave breaches of IHL [International Humanitarian Law]. In my view, decision makers proceeding with such an upgrade would (especially if Israel's apparent war crimes were on going) enter what the International Commission of Jurists have recently described as a 'zone of legal risk' because their decisions could amount to criminal complicity. ... Israel must bring itself into compliance with IHL and international law in general before anything else."
(Daniel Machover, 5 January 2009)

"The implication drawn is obvious. The millions of dollars collected in the community for various causes were dispensed by the 'arbitrary wishes' of a few wealthy individuals."
(Samuel Halperin, some date before 1983)

"Anyone who tries to portray this as sort of a clean war against another army is lying. This is an all out war against the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza. And we can prove that with numbers.
And you have to remember that the average age of the Gaza inhabitants is 17 years; a very young population. 80% are living below the poverty limit of the UN. So, this is a poor and very young people, and they are able to escape absolutely nowhere because they cannot flee as other populations can in war time because they are penned-in; they are in a cage. So, they are bombing 1.5 million people in a cage. Young people, poor people... you know you cannot separate between the civilians and fighters in such a situation."
(Mads Gilbert, 5 January 2009)

"A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it."
(Avi Shlaim, 7 January 2009)

"Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era."
(Avi Shlaim, 7 January 2009)

"All this to make Israelis feel secure? What security is this kind of barbarism ever likely to gain them?"
(Saree Makdisi, 6 January 2009)

"The brute fact of the matter is that, as long as their air force is killing an entirely defenseless people, the Israeli public and media do cheer them on."
(Saree Makdisi, 6 January 2009)

"Israel's disregard for Palestinian life in Gaza today is, in short, a direct extension of its disregard for Palestinian life since 1948, and what is happening in Gaza today is the continuation of what happened six decades ago. Eighty percent of the people crammed into Gaza's hovels and shanties are refugees or the descendants of refugees that armed Zionist gangs, which eventually coalesced into the infant Israeli army, terrorized from their homes elsewhere in southwestern Palestine in 1948. They have been herded, penned, and slaughtered by a remorseless power that clearly regards them as subhuman."
(Saree Makdisi, 6 January 2009)

"Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more it resembles a big concentration camp."
(Renato Martino, 8 January 2009)

"I can't stand the smell of formaldehyde; rigor mortis seems to have taken over, and we are failing the world, we are failing the cause of peace"
(Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, 8 January 2009)

"[The Americans are responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by] an unscrupulous set of leaders."
(John Troutbeck, 2 June 1948)

"Deir Yassin is a warning of what a Jew will do to gain his purpose."
(John Troutbeck, 18 May 1948)

"I am very conscious of the moral principles involved in the Palestine question and it was with pain and grief that I saw how little ice they cut in the world at large and even in our own country. For there is no gainsaying the fact there is a moral case in this business and, though I can claim very little affinity with the Arabs whose language I do not understand and whose way of life is utterly strange to me, I feel strongly that the way they have been pushed out of one morally impregnable position after another is a very grave reflection on our western civilisation."
(John Troutbeck, 3 March 1949)

"I have been visiting Lord Derby. He said to me: 'Namier, you are a Jew. Why do you write our English history, why do you not write Jewish history?' I replied, 'Derby! There is no Jewish history, only a Jewish martyrology, and that is not amusing enough for me.'"
(Lewis Namier, some date before 1960)

"... the [NY] Times – and most US critical commentary – is well short of attaining full enlightenment. Kristof and even Cohen repeat the by-now standard mantra, the essence of which is "Of course Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas rockets, but not by these methods." No, the proportionality issue aside, Israel has no such "right." An oppressor is not engaged in "self defense" when it uses force in order to annihilate resistance to its repression, and that holds true even if the form of resistance-attacks intended to kill civilians-is itself morally wrong.
The implicit assumption of the critics who focus only on the "proportionality" issue is that Israel has no choice but to use some kind of (proportional) force to end the Hamas attacks. But of course it has other choices – it can withdraw from Palestinian land, end the occupation and repression of the Palestinians, and offer all the Palestinians – including Hamas – the international consensus two-state solution. If Hamas continued attacking Israel even after such a settlement, then-and only then – would it have a true "right of self defense.""
(Jerome Slater, 8 January 2009)

"I looked for President Bush and they told me he was in Philadelphia making a speech. I said, 'I don't care. I have to talk to him now'. They got him off the podium, brought him to another room and I spoke to him. I told him, 'You can't vote in favour of this resolution'. He said, 'Listen, I don't know about it, I didn't see it, I'm not familiar with the phrasing'. [I told him] 'I'm familiar with it. You can't vote in favour.'"
(Ehud Olmert, 12 January 2009)

"When we saw that the secretary of state, for reasons we did not really understand, wanted to vote in favour of the U.N. resolution ... I looked for President Bush and they told me he was in Philadelphia making a speech. I said, 'I don't care. I have to talk to him now.' They got him off the podium, brought him to another room and I spoke to him. I told him, 'You can't vote in favour of this resolution.' He said, 'Listen, I don't know about it, I didn't see it, I'm not familiar with the phrasing.' [I told him] 'I'm familiar with it. You can't vote in favour.' He gave an order to the secretary of state and she did not vote in favour of it -- a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organised and manoeuvred for. She was left pretty shamed and abstained on a resolution she arranged."
(Ehud Olmert, 12 January 2009)

"Surely, if the gathering of civilians in a building only to then bomb it or the use of phosphorous bombs and missiles are not war crimes, then what is? How many more international treaties and conventions must Zionist Israel breach before it is held accountable?"
(Ismail Haniyeh, 15 January 2009)

"When does an invasion become a massacre? How many Palestinians have to die just because they are Palestinians before we recognise another old paradigm? Herzl thought the native population of what was to become Israel would have to be ‘spirited’ across the border; now the very deaths of that population are being spirited off into arguments about the right to self-defence. If self-defence includes the bombing of ambulances and feeling no qualms about a death toll that is a third children, then we have entered a moral territory from which there may be no return. Unless of course we have merely returned to the imperial 19th century, a world of brutal and unapologetic conquest, where force was the only argument that mattered and our only choice was whether to be hypocritical about it or not."
(Michael Wood, 15 January 2009)

"We have not set up concentration camps and shall not yet do so, but we do have the mentality which makes such an action possible...When the Nation - Volk in the Nazi language - and its state power became supreme values there were no restrictions on the acts of man. We have such a mentality here. We are already behaving in the Occupied Territories, in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon in the same way as the Nazis did in their Occupied Territories in Czechoslovakia and the West. We have not yet set up concentration camps as they did in the East but how terrible is the situation that we have to mention this fact as the thing to differentiate us from the Nazis"
(Yeshayahu Leibowitz, 5 February 1988)

"We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective these [the villages] are military bases. This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorised.""
(Gadi Eisenkot, October 2008)

"Demographers predict that within ten years Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Without a separate Palestinian state the Israelis would have three options, none of them good. They could try ethnic cleansing, drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank, or they could give the Palestinians the vote. That would be the democratic option but it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Or they could try apartheid - have the minority Israelis rule the majority Palestinians, but apartheid regimes don't have a very long life."
(Bob Simon, 25 January 2009)

"But if you're not handsome and blond enough, apparently you won't get in. That creates castes just like in India"
(David Kempler, 28 January 2009)

"The High Court of Justice has given the Israel Lands Administration 60 days to explain why restrictions should not be lifted on would-be residents wishing to build their homes on state land in small communities. The court also instructed the communities in question to explain why they would not allocate lots to the petitioners. The court order comes in the context of the administration's legitimizing the use of state land in instances where potential residents are rejected on the basis of "social unsuitability." This arguably allows communities to reject Mizrahim, Arabs, gays and lesbians and the poor."
(Yoav Stern, 28 January 2009)

"Why have the schools in Gaza been shut down? Because all the children were gunned down!"
(Israeli soccer fans, January 2009)

"We pounded Zeitoun into the ground. We knew everything was booby-trapped, we knew that they would try to kidnap us and if they did that was the end, we were finished . . . so we took no chances. We pounded them with fire; they never had a chance. . . . Most of the positions had been secured and we heard that the [Hamas] fighters had gone into the other areas. We had been warned of traps and it was very tense. We were to shoot first and ask questions later."
(Israeli soldier who participated in January 2009 on Gaza, January 2009)

"Sen. Mitchell is fair. He's been meticulously even-handed. But the fact is, American policy in the Middle East hasn't been 'even handed' — it has been supportive of Israel when it felt Israel needed critical U.S. support. So I'm concerned, I'm not sure the situation requires that kind of approach in the Middle East."
(Abraham H. Foxman, January 2009)

"In the meetings I’ve participated in with George Mitchell, he made it clear he sympathized with the Palestinian position over the Israeli position, and blamed Israel more than the Palestinians for the lack of progress toward peace. We will be expressing our strong concerns that this appointment would be a mistake. It would send an additional message that Obama is going to pressure Israel more than the Palestinians."
(Morton (Mort) A. Klein, January 2009)

"I am afraid the BBC has to stand up to the Israeli authorities occasionally."
(Ben Bradshaw, January 2009)

"I never thought I would live to see (the BBC) refuse to broadcast a humanitarian appeal on the grounds that it was controversial. I know why it is - because [Tzipi] Livni, the Israeli Foreign Minister, has said there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza"
(Tony Benn, January 2009)

"Keen to claim the loyalty of Germans abroad, the Nazis racialized the notion of citizenship outside the Reich as well as inside it. "The concepts 'citizen' and 'racial comrade' do not coincide," wrote an adviser to the minister of the interior in 1936. "The race, or its single member, the racial comrade, must stand in the first place." In other words, affinity among Germans wherever they might be trumped "the formal conception of citizenship.""
(Mark Mazower, 5 June 2008)

"They’re still living in the War of Independence (1948) and the Sinai campaign (1956). With them, it’s all about tanks, about controlling territories or controlled territories, holding this or that hill. But these things are worthless. . . . The Lebanon war (2006) will go down in history as the first war in which the military leadership understood that classical warfare has become obsolete."
(Ehud Olmert, September 2008)

"The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people"
(Moshe Ya'alon, 2002)

"We’re going to keep our finger on the trigger"
(Tzipora Livni, 18 January 2009)

"We have no connection with the Arabs. Our regime, our culture, our relations, is not the fruit of this region. There is no political affinity between us, or international solidarity."
(David Ben-Gurion, 1952)

"Thus, Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, ridicules the Holocaust uniqueness claim as "a distasteful secular version of chosenness"."
(Norman G. Finkelstein, November 2001)

"We could have eased the siege over the Gaza Strip, in such a way that the Palestinians, Hamas, would understand that holding their fire served their interests. But when you create a tahadiyeh [truce], and the economic pressure on the Strip continues, it's obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahadiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire."
(Shmuel Zakai, just before 22 December 2008)

"And [Abe] Foxman criticizing one form of racism while supporting another is despicable."
(Ran HaCohen, 17 February 2009)

"The Holocaust story eliminates any comparison of Ketziot or Gaza to the concentration camps they indeed are. It memorializes the resistance of Jews in the ghettos of Europe while steadfastly denying any comparison with the resistance of Palestinians in Hebron and throughout the West Bank. It allows claims that this year's Hanukah Massacre in Gaza, with a kill ratio of 100 to one, was a "proportionate response" to Palestinian resistance to unending occupation."
(Daniel McGowan, 17 February 2009)

"The Brand Israel project, which was created during [foreign minister Tzipi] Livni's tenure, seeks to counter the country's aggressive and religious image abroad, using common marketing tools. If Israel is perceived as a hard, unpleasant place, resembling an armed evangelical village in Texas, then it is worthwhile to reveal softer sides to the West."
(Aluf Benn, 18 February 2009)

"So before we sing [Ari] Folman's praises, which will of course be praise for us all, we would do well to remember that this [Waltz with Bashir] is not an antiwar film, nor even a critical work about Israel as militarist and occupier. It is an act of fraud and deceit, intended to allow us to pat ourselves on the back, to tell us and the world how lovely we are."
(Gideon Levy, 20 February 2009)

"it is very cruel to turn someone into a refugee"
(Ephraim Seh, May 2000)

"These Jews [from Bosnia, seeking asylum in Britain] are not refugees; they have a home in Israel [They should be denied entry to Britain]"
(Uri Gordon (2), 1993)

"[Alan] Dershowitz does not engage the debate in this country about Israel on the factual, legal, moral, and humanitarian merits because he knows that his client is "guilty" of violating international law in its occupation of the Palestinian territories, as the SJP students at Hampshire College have argued. Instead, he engaged the SJP at Hampshire by calling them "anti-Israel bigots" and by writing: "There must be a price paid for bigotry." What is the function of a college or university in the United States when it is the students, and not the professor, who is threatened with sanctions under this set of circumstances?"
(Howard Friel, 25 February 2009)

"Miliband should be in London in time so he can join President Peres and unveil a special plaque at the Foreign Office, honoring British diplomats who helped save Jews during the Holocaust. I wonder how many British Diplomats will be honored for saving a single Palestinian kid within the current Israeli inflicted Holocaust?"
(Gilad Atzmon, 18 November 2008)