“ It is essential that the suffering of Jews become worse - the anti-semites will assist us thereby in that they will strengthen the persecution and oppression of Jews. The anti-semites will be our best friends." Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization,1897
“His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country.” Lord Balfour to Lord Curzon, 1919
” Abroad we are accustomed to believe that Israel is almost empty; nothing is grown here and that whoever wishes to buy land could come here and buy what his heart desires. In reality, the situation is not like this. Throughout the country it is difficult to find cultivable land which is not already cultivated.” Achad Ha-Am, founder of cultural Zionism, 1922
“Has any People ever been seen to give up their territory of their own free will? In the same way, the Arabs of Palestine will not renounce their sovereignty without violence. A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not difficult, not dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE!… Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important… to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot – or else I am through with playing at colonizing.”Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism 1923.”
“We must expel Arabs and take their places.”David Ben Gurion, future Prime Minister of Israel, 1937.
“Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries – all of them. Not one village, not one tribe should be left.” Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department in 1940.
‘If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? We have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister), 1951
“There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here (Palestine) to the neighboring countries, to transfer all of them; not one village, not one tribe should be left.” Jospeh Weitz, Jewish National Fund, 1953
“We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters” Uri Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion’s special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960.
“How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.” Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.
“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 geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, .The Arab villages are not there either. Nahal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibat; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kfar Yehushu’a in the place of Tal al Shuman. There is not one single place that did not have a former Arab population.” Moshe Dayan,1969.
“The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war.” Israeli General Matityahu Peled, 1972.
“We must not leave a single village, not a single tribe.”Joseph Weitz, Director of the Jewish National Fund, 1973
“The Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs.” Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset in 1983
“When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces,1983.
“We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.” Chair of the Committee for the election of General Shlomo Lahat as mayor of Tel Aviv, 1983.
“To me they are like animals. They aren’t human.” Ben Dahan, deputy Defence Minister, 2015
"Those who are disloyal to the state should not be here, and anyone raising their hands on a Jew must have their hand cut off." Itamar Ben-Gvir ,Minister of National Security, 2023
Then there are these people ….
Dr. Israel Shahak, survivor of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp -“Hitler’s legal power was based upon the ‘Enabling Act’, which was passed quite legally by the Reichstag and which allowed the Fuehrer and his representatives, in plain language, to be what they wanted, or in legal language, to issue regulations having the force of law. Exactly the same type of act was passed by the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) immediately after the 1967 conquest granting the Israeli governor and his representatives the power of Hitler, which they use in Hitlerian manner.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu - “I am a black South African, and if I were to change the names, a description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could describe events in South Africa.”
Albert Einstein- “The Israeli state idea is not according to my heart. I cannot understand why it is needed … I believe it is bad ...There could be no greater calamity than a permanent discord between us and the Arab people … We must strive for a just and lasting compromise with the Arab people … Let us recall that in former times, no people lived in greater friendship with us than the ancestors of these Arabs."
Sigmund Freud - “I concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives.
Erich Fromm -“The claim of the Jews to the Land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse.”
Primo Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz - “Everyone has their Jews and for the Israelis they are the Palestinians.”
Marek Edelman, one of the leaders of the1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising -compared the Palestine resistance to ZOB, the Jewish fighters in Warsaw.
Hannah Arendt - “The trouble is that Zionism has often thought and said that the evil of antisemitism was necessary for the good of the Jewish people.”
Martin Buber, Israeli philosopher: -“How great was our responsibility to those miserable Arab refugees in whose towns we have settled Jews who were brought here from afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest; the fruits of whose gardens, orchards and vineyards we gather; and in whose cities that we put up houses of education, charity and prayer."
Isaac Asimov -“I find myself in the odd position of not being a Zionist ... I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind.”
Harold Pinter. On Israel’s 60th anniversary - “We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land."
Uri Avnery, ex-Israeli army officer - “What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints.”
Daniel Barenboim, Israeli pianist and conductor -“I don’t think the Jewish people survived for 20 centuries, mostly through persecution and enduring endless cruelties, in order to now become the oppressors, inflicting cruelty on others.”
Lenni Brenner, writer and civil rights activist - “The Zionist leaders were uninterested in Fascism itself. As Jewish separatists they only asked one question, the cynical classic: 'So? Is it good for the Jews?”
Richard Cohen, US columnist -“The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake … the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare.”
Henry Siegman, Rabbi and director of the U.S./Middle East Project - “Israel has crossed the threshold from ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ to the only apartheid regime in the Western world.”
Prof Norman Finkelstein - “Every single member of my family on both sides was exterminated. Both of my parents were in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And it is precisely and exactly because of the lessons my parents taught me and my two siblings that I will not be silent when Israel commits its crimes.”
Richard Falk, former UN special rapporteur on human rights, called Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories - “a crime against humanity.” Falk also has compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi treatment of the Jews.
Alexei Sayle - “Israel is the Jimmy Saville of nation states.”
Miriam Margolyes - “My support for the Palestinian cause is fiercer because I am Jewish.”
Noam Chomsky - “The last paradox is that the tale of Palestine from the beginning until today is a simple story of colonialism and dispossession, yet the world treats it as a multifaceted and complex story—hard to understand and even harder to solve.”
