"He who
passively accepts evil is as much involved
in it as he who helps to perpetrate
it. He who accepts evil without protesting
against it is really cooperating with
it." Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.
"If you are neutral in
situations of injustice, you have chosen
the side of the oppressor" Bishop Desmond Tutu
"Every time anyone says that Israel is our
only friend in the Middle East, I can't
help but think that before Israel, we had
no enemies in the Middle East."
Fr. John Sheehan
of the Jesuit Order
WORLD LEADERS
"an apartheid regime (in the occupied Palestinian
areas) is worse than the one that existed
in South Africa."
South African law professor John Dugard, special
rapporteur for the United Nations on the situation
of human rights in the Palestinian territories,
in a report to the UN General Assembly.
" Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same
sense that England belongs to the English
or France to the French. It is wrong and in-human
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 be 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.
The Jews born in France are French in precisely
the same sense that Christians born in France
are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine,
will they relish the idea of being forced
to leave the other parts of the world in which
they are settled? Or do they want a double
home where they can remain at will? This cry
for the national home affords a colourable
justification for the German expulsion of
the Jews.....And now a word to the Jews in
Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going
about it the wrong way. The Palestine of the
Biblical conception is not a geographical
tract. It is in their hearts. But if they
must look to the Palestine of geography as
their national home, it is wrong to enter
it under the shadow of the British gun. A
religious act cannot be performed with the
aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle
in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs.
They should seek to convert the Arab heart..."
Mohandas (Mahatma)
Gandhi (November 1938)
ISRAELI LEADERS
"We must expel Arabs and take their places."
David Ben Gurion, 1937
David Ben Gurion Prime Minister
of Israel
(1949-54; 1955-63)
"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,
1938
"If I was an Arab leader I would never make
peace with Israel. That is natural: we have
taken their country." David
Ben Gurion
"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
"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.
Golda Meir Prime
Minister of Israel
(1969-74)
"How can we return the occupied territories?
There is nobody to return them to."
Golda Meir, 8 March 1969
"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
Yitzhak Rabin Prime Minister
of Israel
(1974-77; 1992-95)
"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, 21 February 1997
"(The Palestinians) would be crushed like
grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the
boulders and walls." Yitzhak
Shamir, in a speech to Jewish settlers
New York Times, 1 April 1988
"You don't simply bundle people onto trucks
and drive them away…I prefer to advocate a
positive policy, to create, in effect, a condition
that in a positive way will induce people
to leave." Ariel
Sharon, 24 August 1988
Ariel Sharon Prime Minister
of Israel (2001-2006)
"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, Agence
France Presse, November 15, 1998.
"The formulas for the parameters of unilateral
solution are: To maximize the number of Jews;
minimize the number of Palestinians; not to
withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide
Jerusalem." Ehud
Olmert, 5 December 2003
"I would have joined a terrorist organization."
Ehud Barak,
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.
"The only good Arab is a dead Arab…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" Rafael
Eitan, Likud leader of the Tsomet faction
(1981)"
ACADEMICS
Albert Einstein
"My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism
resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders,
an army, and a measure of temporal power,
no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner
damage Judaism will sustain - especially from
the development of a narrow nationalism within
our own ranks, against which we have already
had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish
state." Albert Einstein
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not
because of the people who are evil, but because
of the people who don't do anything about
it." Albert Einstein
"...it's utterly hypocritical for Israelis
to wonder aloud why Palestinians don't pursue
a non-violent strategy. One obvious reason
is that, whenever they have, Israel brutally
represses it." Norman
G. Finkelstein, 11 September 2003
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
"No settlement can be just and complete if
recognition is not accorded to the right of
the Arab refugee to return to the home from
which he has been dislodged…" UN
Mediator for Palestine, Count Folk Bernadotte,
1948
"The Court has reached the conclusion that
the construction of the wall by Israel in
the Occupied Palestinian Territory is contrary
to international law…"
International Court of Justice, July
2004
"If the state of Israel aspires to perceive
itself as a democracy, it should abandon once
and for all, any legal and ideological foundation
of religious, ethnic, and demographic discrimination.
The state of Israel should strive to become
the state of all its citizens. We call for
the annulment of all laws that make Israel
an apartheid state, including the Jewish law
of return in its present form"
Israeli Artist Declaration 2002
"You must end the illegal occupation." Kofi
Annan, addressing Israel in a meeting
of the UN Security Council, March 12, 2002
