I don’t want to govern the Palestinians. I don’t want them as subjects of Israel or as citizens of Israel. I want them to have their own independent state but a demilitarized state. Benjamin Netanyahu
First of all, Arafat is wrong. Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, will never be divided, and will remain the capital of the State of Israel, the capital of the Jewish people, for ever and ever. Benjamin Netanyahu
The State of Israel can be proud of what we’re doing. Benjamin Netanyahu
Our efforts are not aimed at isolating Israel or de-legitimizing it; rather we want to gain legitimacy for the cause of the people of Palestine. We only aim to de-legitimize the settlement activities and the occupation and apartheid and the logic of ruthless force, and we believe that all the countries of the world stand with us in this regard. Mahmoud Abbas
The Zionists indeed learnt well from the Nazis. So well that it seems that their morally repugnant treatment of the Palestinians, and their attempts to destroy Palestinian society within Israel and the occupied territories, reveals them as basically Nazis with beards and black hats. Norman Finkelstein
It is because I recognize the brutality with which my own multi-branched ancestors have been treated that I can identify the despicable, lawless, cruel, and sadistic behavior that has characterized Israel’s attempts to erase a people, the Palestinians, from their own land. Alice Walker
Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories. Alice Walker
Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The Bush Administration’s failure to be consistently involved in helping Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians has been both wrong for our friendship with Israel, as well as badly damaging to our standing in the Arab world. Barack Obama
Throughout its history, Israel has been anxious to make peace with its Arab neighbors. Barack Obama, 2000
Without that assured American largesse Israel would have been obliged to come to an accommodation with her neighbours. Mary Douglas
I hope that Americans will give careful and well-informed thought to root causes and historical realities, in which case I think they will question why a supposedly ‘legitimate’ state such as Israel has had to conduct decades of war against a subject refugee population without ever achieving its goals. Ismail Haniyeh
Tens of thousands have been killed or wounded by the Israeli army since 1967. During 2006, the number of Palestinians killed reached 650. Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel – about 40% of the male population. Ismail Haniyeh
I believe that the people of Israel are the chosen people of God. Jerry Falwell
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 ... Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. Mahatma Gandhi
I am frequently asked if I have visited Israel, whereas yet, it is simply assumed that I have. Well, I don’t travel. I really don’t, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t visit Israel. I remember how it was in 1948 when Israel was being established and all my Jewish friends were ecstatic, I was not. I said: what are we doing? We are establishing ourselves in a ghetto, in a small corner of a vast Muslim sea. The Muslims will never forget nor forgive, and Israel, as long as it exists, will be embattled. I was laughed at, but I was right. I can’t help but feel that the Jews didn’t really have the right to appropriate a territory only because 2000 years ago, people they consider their ancestors, were living there. History moves on and you can’t really turn it back. Isaac Asimov
If every single Jew born anywhere in the world has the right to become an Israeli citizen, then all the Palestinians who were chucked out of Palestine by the Zionist Government should have the same right, very simple. Tariq Ali
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 we bought 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 do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat – in the place of Jibta, Sarid – in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua – in the place of Tell Shaman. There is no one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population. Moshe Dayan
Meanwhile, in order to punish the population of Gaza for voting ‘the wrong way’, the Israeli army are not allowing past the checkpoints any replacements for the pipes and cement needed to keep the sewage system working. The result? Vast stagnant pools of waste are being held within fragile dykes across the strip, and rotting. Last March, one of them burst, drowning a nine-month-old baby and his elderly grandmother in a tsunami of human waste. The Centre on Housing Rights warns that one heavy rainfall could send 1.5m cubic metres of faeces flowing all over Gaza, causing ‘a humanitarian and environmental disaster of epic proportions’.
So how did it come to this? How did a Jewish state founded 60 years ago with a promise to be ‘a light unto the nations’ end up flinging its filth at a cowering Palestinian population? Ian R Crane, ‘Israel is Suppressing a Secret It Must Face: How Did a Jewish State Founded 60 Years Ago End Up Throwing Filth at Cowering Palestinians?’
November 4th 1995: Kings of Israel Square Tel Aviv 9.35 p.m. As the stricken Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is rushed to hospital few people are in any doubt over the reason for the attempt on his life. In the minds of many he had practically signed his own death warrant two years earlier ... He shakes hands with Yasser Arafat. Infamous Assassinations: Yitzhak Rabin
This apparent reconciliation infuriates Israeli right-wing extremists. ibid.
A fanatical young law student named Yigal Amir is determined to be his executioner. ibid.
May 14th 1948 Jerusalem: the Jews led by David Ben-Gurion are absolutely determined to form their own separate state. And after the last British forces have pulled out they do just that. But the Palestinian Arabs refused to recognise the new state of Israel, and the new violence escalates into all-out war. ibid.
The Yom Kippur War: the war starts on October 6th 1973 the Jewish Day of Atonement with Syria and Egypt launching a surprise attack on Israel. Three weeks later the war is over. ibid.
He takes a harsh line with Palestinians in the occupied territories when they mount demonstrations against the Israeli authorities, ordering his troops to ‘break their bones’. ibid.
If we should give in then no Israeli anywhere in the world can feel that his life is safe. It is blackmail of the worst kind. Golda Meir, re Olympic Munich Hostage Massacre of 1972
The borders are determined by where the Jews live, not where there is a line on the map. Golda Meir, addressing Golan Heights immigrants 1971
Athens Airport Sunday June 27 1976. Victory at Entebbe 1976 starring Helmut Berger & Linda Blair & Kirk Douglas & Richard Dreyfuss & Helen Hayes & Anthony Hopkins & Burt Lancaster & Elizabeth Taylor & Julius Harris & Theodore Bikel et al, director Marvin Chomsky
Sit down and be quiet. ibid. terrorist
At least eighty-three Israelis. ibid. Hopkins
Monday June 28 1976: Uganda Welcomes You. ibid. airport
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. ibid. camp bloke
The Israeli citizen is always considered a front-line soldier. ibid. Lancaster
What military option do you have ready for me now? ibid. Hopkins
The attacks have been cyclical ... Twenty-seven persons including militants were killed Wednesday in Lashkar Gah by an air strike. [snaps fingers] Gone. And there isn’t a thought in this population about the people who died. And who they were. Who was married to whom. How many children there were. But that’s what it’s like. Period. Every few days. David Halpin, Make War History