"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).
David Ben Gurion
Prime Minister of Israel
1949 - 1954,
1955 - 1963
"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
Golda Meir
Prime Minister of Israel
1969 - 1974
"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.)
Yitzhak Rabin
Prime Minister of Israel
1974 - 1977,
1992 - 1995
"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.
Menachem Begin
Prime Minister of Israel
1977 - 1983
"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
Yizhak Shamir
Prime Minister of Israel
1983 - 1984,
1986 - 1992
"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.
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.
Ehud Barak
Prime Minister of Israel
1999 - 2001
"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
Ariel Sharon
Prime Minister of Israel
2001 - 2006