Quotations by Israeli Prime Ministers about the Palestinian Arabs
"We
must expel Arabs and take their places."
-- David Ben Gurion, 1937, Ben Gurion and the
Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.
"We must use terror,
assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and
the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee
of its Arab population."
-- David
Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From
Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte,
New York 1978.
"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. 121-122.
"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."
-- David
Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum
Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.
"Let us not ignore
the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the
aggressors and they defend themselves... The country
is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want
to come here and settle down, and in their view we
want to take away from them their country."
-- David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky's
Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan's
"Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing
a 1938 speech.
"If I knew that
it was possible to save all the children of Germany
by transporting them to England, and only half by
transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose
the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers
of these children but the historical reckoning of
the people of Israel."
-- David Ben-Gurion (Quoted on pp 855-56 in Shabtai
Teveth's Ben-Gurion in a slightly different translation).
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David
Ben Gurion
Prime Minister of Israel
1949 - 1954,
1955 - 1963 |
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"There
is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is
not as if we came and threw them out and took their
country. They didn't exist."
-- Golda Meir, statement to The Sunday Times,
15 June, 1969.
"How can we return
the occupied territories? There is nobody to return
them to."
-- Golda Meir, March 8, 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
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Golda
Meir
Prime Minister of Israel
1969 - 1974 |
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"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.
"[Israel will]
create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions
which would attract natural and voluntary migration
of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank
to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement
with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat."
-- Yitzhak Rabin (a "Prince of Peace"
by Clinton's standards), explaining his method of
ethnically cleansing the occupied land without stirring
a world outcry. (Quoted in David Shipler in the New
York Times, 04/04/1983 citing Meir Cohen's remarks
to the Knesset's foreign affairs and defense committee
on March 16.)
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Yitzhak
Rabin
Prime Minister of Israel
1974 - 1977,
1992 - 1995 |
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"[The
Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."
-- Israeli
Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset,
quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"'
New Statesman, June 25, 1982.
"The Partition
of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized
.... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital.
Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel.
All of it. And for Ever."
-- Menachem Begin, the day after the
U.N. vote to partition Palestine.
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Menachem Begin
Prime Minister of Israel
1977 - 1983 |
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"The
past leaders of our movement left us a clear message
to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan
for future generations, for the mass aliya (=Jewish
immigration), and for the Jewish people, all of whom
will be gathered into this country."
-- Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declares
at a Tel Aviv memorial service for former Likud leaders,
November 1990. Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service.
"The settlement
of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without
settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that
simple."
-- Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 02/21/1997.
"(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
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Yizhak Shamir
Prime
Minister of Israel
1983 - 1984,
1986 - 1992 |
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"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, speaking
to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli
journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.
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Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister of Israel
1996 - 1999 |
"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
"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.
"I would have joined a
terrorist organization."
-- Ehud Barak's response to Gideon Levy, a columnist
for the Ha'aretz newspaper, when Barak was asked what
he would have done if he had been born a Palestinian.
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Ehud Barak
Prime Minister of Israel
1999 - 2001 |
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"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."
-- Ariel
Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting
of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party,
Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
"Everybody has
to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops
as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) 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 the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse,
Nov. 15, 1998.
"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, 25 March, 2001 quoted
in BBC News Online
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Ariel Sharon
Prime Minister of Israel
2001 - 2006 |
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