Collection of quotes on Zionism and how Zionists see Palestinian Arabs

compiled by Ed Corrigan

Zionism quotes I

How the Israeli leaders see Palestinians!

1. "There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy." Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10,2001

2. "The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more".... Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000

3."[The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs." Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, 'Begin and the Beasts". New Statesman, 25 June 1982.

4. "(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) [Yitzhak Shamir] in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

5."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, New York Times, 14 April 1983.

6."How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.

7. "There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed." Golda Meir Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969

8. "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, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972.

9. David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister):" 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? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121-.

Ben Gurion also warned in 1948 : "We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return." Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. "The old will die and the young will forget."

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

Zion quotes II

"We shall try to spirit the penniless population (the Arabs) across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country...both the process of expropriation and removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly." Theodor Herzl-1898, Tagebuches Vol.II, p.24

"If we (the Zionists) move into a region where there are wild animals to which the Jews are not accustomed-big snakes, etc.-I shall use the natives (the Palestinians), prior to giving them employment in the transit countries, for the extermination of these animals." ibid, Vol. I, pp.108-109

"In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country (the Palestinians)...the four great powers (UK, US, USSR and France) are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhibit that ancient land" Balfour, A.J.-1919 (Quoted by Doreen Ingrams in Seeds of conflict, p.73)

"...The difficulty of Zionism is essentially one thing only, its attempt to settle a country that is already settled...Jerusalem was as Arab as Cairo or Baghdad, and the Zionist Jews were as foreign to it as I was myself" Sheean, Vincent 1935 Personal History, New York, 1935, p.381

"Do we sin only against the refugees? Do we not treat the Arabs who remained as second class citizens? Did a single Jewish farmer raise his hand in the parliament in opposition to a law that deprived the Arab peasants of their land? How lonely, in the city of Jerusalem, sits the Jewish conscience." Moshe Smilansky-Zion and the Jewish National Idea-in the Menorah Journal, Vol XVI, 1958

"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial," Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -Sunday, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online (in response to the international fact-finding mission, headed by former US senator George Mitchell, investigating what sparked the 2000 September Intifada)

"There was no such thing as Palestinians. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." Golda Meir -quoted in The Sunday Times, 15 June 1969

"Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen." Golda Meir -1961, in a speech to the Knesset, reported in Ner, October 1961

"This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy". Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971

"This land has been promised to us and we have a right to it." Begin's statement at Oslo. "Davar" 12 December 1978

"If one possesses the Bible, if one considers oneself to be the people of the Bible, one should also possess the biblical lands, those of the Judges and the Patriarchs, of Jerusalem and of Hebron, of Jericho and others besides." Moshe Dayan. "Jerusalem Post" 10 August 1967

"It is my considered opinion that the State of Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of this term. In this state people are discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most important areas of life, only because of their origin. This racist discrimination began in Zionism and is carried out today mainly in cooperation with the institutions of the Zionist movement." Professor Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and Chairman of Israeli League for Civil and Human Rights

"I would not like to do any injustice. The Muslim world has treated the Jews with considerable tolerance. The Ottoman Empire (of which the Arabs were a part) received the Jews with open arms, when they were driven out of Spain and Europe, and the Jews should never forget that". Chaim Weizmann's testimony, in 1946 before The Anglo-American Commission in Jerusalem

"When you start knocking down buildings with bulldozers, don't expect people not to respond to this kind of activity. When you start announcing more settlement activity, this does not create conditions that would cause the other side to be less responsive or less violent." U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, quoted in Haaretz Monday, July 16,
2001

"No animal is worse than the Arab...all the nations of the world hate Israel" -Shas Spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (quoted in Haaretz 9 August 2000)

"We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we have to slander and malign them, to besmirch their name. Instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did and trying to undo some of the evil we committed...we justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them." Nathan Chofshi (Jewish Newsletter, New York, 9 February 1959, cited in Erskine Childers, 'The Other Exodus' in Spectator, London, 12 May 1961)

"(Palestinians are) unhuman neighbors...people you do not want your daughter to get married to." (Israeli Knesset Speaker) Avraham Burg comments on ABC’s Nightline on August 02, 2001

Zion quotes III

(List of rotating quotes on the CPRR website: http://www.rightofreturn.org)

"What is peculiar about the Palestine conflict is that the world has listened to the party that has committed the offense and has turned a deaf ear to the victims." -- Arnold Toynbee, quoted in "Forward", in The Transformation of Palestine: Essays on the Origin and Development of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Ed. Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Northwestern University Press, 1971, p. viii

"If I was an Arab leader I would never make [peace] with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country." -- David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.

"Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of U.N. disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its own withdrawal? If we agree that armed attack can properly achieve the purpose of the assailant, then I fear we will have turned back the clock of international order." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Address to the Nation, 20 February 1957.

"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, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972.

"If it is proper to 'reconstitute' a Jewish state which has not existed for two thousand years, why not go back another thousand years and reconstitute the Canaanite state? The Canaanites, unlike the Jews, are still there." -- H.G. Wells, quoted in Palestine Dilemma: Arab Rights Versus Zionist Aspirations, by Frank C. Sakran, Public Affairs Press, 1948, p. 204.

"If we are going to admit claims on conquest thousands of years ago, the whole world will have to be turned upside down." -- Lord Sydenham, Hansard, House of Lords, 21 June 1922.

"There was no such thing as Palestinians...It was not as though there was a Palestinian People in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people, and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." -- Golda Meir, London Sunday Times, 15 June 1969.

"There is, however, a difficulty from which the Zionist dares not avert his eyes, though he rarely likes to face it. Palestine proper has already its inhabitants." -- Israel Zangwill, The Voice of Jerusalem, London, 1920, p. 88.

"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, New York Times, 14 April 1983.

"[The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs." --Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, 'Begin and the "Beasts"', New Statesman, 25 June 1982

"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, Davar, 29 September 1967 from "My Diary and Letters to the Children", Massada, 1965, III, p. 293

"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, 'What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" --Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979; Rabin's description of the conquest of Lydda, after the completion of Plan Dalet.

"We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return" -- David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.

"To convince us that before Israel, Palestine was a desert, hundreds of villages were razed by bulldozer - their houses, walls, graveyards and their tombs" -- Israel Shahak, Racism and the State of Israel, from p. 152.

"It would offend basic principles to prevent these innocent victims of the conflict from returning to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flood into Palestine and, what's more, threatening to permanently replace the dispossessed Arab refugees who have been here for centuries" -- Count Bernadotte, UN DOC A.648, p. 14., 16 September 1948

"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." -- Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, of 14 July 1972.

"What is the difference between the way in which the Jewish people struggles to remain what it is in the midst of a non-Jewish population, and the way the Afrikaners try to stay what they are?" -- Henry Katzew, "South Africa: a Country Without Friends", Die Transvaler, quoted by R. Stevens in Zionism, South Africa and Apartheid.

"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. From "A Solution to the Refugee Problem" by Joseph Weitz, Davar, September 29, 1967, cited in Uri Davis and Norton Mevinsky, eds., Documents from Israel, 1967-1973, p.21.

"There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument:...the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary." --Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5.

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

"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. From "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri Jiryas.

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

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." -- Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces - Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New York Times 14 April 1983.

"The boundaries of Zionist aspiration include Southern Lebanon, Southern Syria, today's Jordan, all of Cis-Jordan (The West Bank) and the Sinai." -- Yeshuv head David Ben-Gurion, 1938, in a speech to the World Council of Poale Zion in Tel Aviv. Cited by Israel Shahak in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1981.

"After we become a strong force as the result of the creation of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine. The state will only be a stage in the realization of Zionism and its task is to prepare the ground for our expansion. The state will have to preserve order - not by preaching but with machine guns." -- David Ben-Gurion, 1938.

"We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moselem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai." -- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." -- Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.

"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." --Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

"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 geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." -- Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969.

"Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, be continued and make progress only under the protection of a power independent of the native population - an iron wall, which will be in a position to resist the pressure to the native population. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs..." -- Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, 1923.

"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 (precursor of Likud), The Iron Wall, 1923.

"We should instruct American Jewry to mobilize half a billion dollars in order that Iraq and Saudi Arabia will absorb the Palestinian Arabs. There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Yisrael. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic Peoples it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs." -- Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism (precursor of Likud), November 1939.

"From the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River there will be no Arab state. Judea and Samaria are part of the Land of Israel. If we want to achieve Jewish sovereignty, we have to settle. Those who have the power here will prevail - and we have the strength. I read the Bible. It doesnt talk about the borders of England. But Eretz Yisrael [the land of Israel] is in the Bible. According to the Bible, I have the right to the East Bank of Jordan too. For my generation the West Bank is enough. As for the next generation the East Bank is their problem." -- Matityahu Drobles, co-chair of the World Zionist Organization's settlement department and author of a detailed plan to colonize the occupied territories [as told to Robert I. Friedman author of Zealots for Zion, Random House, 1992, p.xxiv, in his office at the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem in the winter of 1991.]

"Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories." -- Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, tells students at Bar Ilan University, From the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.

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

"We must expel Arabs and take their places." -- David Ben Gurion, future Prime Minister of Israel, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.

"Palestinian demands [for the right of return], founded on international law (rather than ethno-religious exclusivity) have been relegated to the realm of the unattainable, the unrealistic and the impossible. Their voice has become so marginalized that their most fundamental and just claims are painted as radical and out-dated. -- LAW-the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, press release, 24 February 2000.

"...if people become accustomed to the large figure and we are actually obliged to accept the return of the refugees, we may find it difficult, when faced with hordes of claimants, to convince the world that not all of these formerly lived in Israeli territory. It would, in any event, seem desirable to minimize the numbers...than otherwise." --Israeli official Arthur Lourie in a letter to Walter Eytan, director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry (ISA FM 2564/22). From Benny Morris, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-49", p. 297.

"If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force...." --Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted in Associated Press, November 16, 2000. Zion quotes I Zion quotes II Mainpage MideastJournal.com

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