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crumbbum · 05-17-2003, 08:07 PM

Oh man, this will take forever, but I feel like it's too important to leave outstanding. I'm going to go through the quotes, Sun-Tzu.
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"' New Statesman, June 25,1982:

"[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."
What is unclear is whether or not he was talking about Palestinian terrorists- I personally would indeed consider anyone who commited many of the horrific atrocities by Palestinian terrorists a beast. To give your own life for the sake of murdering as many innocent people as possible is beastly- be it on 9/11, in Israel, in Morocco, in Moscow, anywhere. It is sick, disgusting and inhuman.

David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff.
From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978:

"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."
This is out of context- why did the Galilee need to be rid of its arab population? What is unsaid is the reality, which is that the Galilee was a center of the Fedayeen, that were conducting raids on the nearby kibbutzes and killing people. There were indeed retaliatory strikes and the like before 1948- it was self-defense. Quotes like this must be taken in historical context, and understand what was really going on. At this time the Jews in Palestine were not a military power, but were struggling to defend their fledgling farm communities from raids, and the roads from bandits and murderers.

Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department.

From Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5:

"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."

It is no secret that after the 67 war, there was a drive to build settlements on the hilltops in the territories. The hilltops were chosen for defensive purposes. No Arab land was stolen, the land claimed was ownerless (though some legal scholars would say the Israelis had the most right to it, as they had captured it in a self-defensive war). Once the land came under Israeli control, there was a rush to build settlements in strategically important places, before the high ground was claimed by the arabs (there were and are many arab settlements as well. There are more illegal arab settlements than Jewish ones today, particularly in the Negev- as of yet, Israel has not dismantled any of them).

Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine, "Complete Diaries," June 12, 1895 entry.:

"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."
First of all, herzl only lived to see the first wave of Jewish immigration, he died soon after. Obviously, the early settlers hoped to gain land in the area. As it turned out, they purchased it legally from the arabs, often at ridiculous prices. Herzl's idea here of driving the arabs out by denying them employment- first of all, why was it the Jews' responsibility to employ the arabs? The vast majority of the Palestinians today are descended from arabs who came from surrounding countries seeking employment. Only a small minority of the Palestinians are descended from arabs who actually had lived in the land for any significant length of time. As far as Herzl's statement, I assume he was aware of the population figures, and Arab and Jewish immigration statistics. I assume he was aware of the reality of the situation- that the majority of the arab population in Palestine was arabs who had come seeking employment opportunity, which the jewish settlement had created. Since this was the only thing bringing arabs to the land, he suggested that by denying them employment they would leave. This is perfectly legitimate. The jewish immigrants did not drive anyone out, or steal land, or any other such behavior, in the interest of procuring property. They bought the land fair and square. There is nothing wrong with Herzl's statement- his intent was not to drive out the authentic arab population, but to encourage the arabs who had only come for employment to look elsewhere, freeing up available land.

Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, head of the Kever Yossev Yeshiva (school of Talmud) in Nablus stated:

"The blood of the Jewish people is loved by the Lord; it is therefore redder and their life is preferable."
Ginsburg is infamously crazy. No one takes him seriously, and he does not speak for the Jewish religion. His statements are deemed irrelevant by other rabbis.

Yitzhak Ginsburg, "Five General Religious Duties Which Lie Behind the Act of the Saintly, Late Rabbi Baruch Goldstein, May his Blood be Avenged":

"The killing by a Jew of a non-Jew, i.e. a Palestinian, is considered essentially a good deed, and Jews should therefore have no compunction about it."
Same as above- this is btw a false statement about the Jewish religion.

In 1923, radical Zionist Ze'ev Jabotinsky-- spiritual father of not only of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin but of Brooklyn Rabbi Meir Kahane-- wrote:

the "sole way" for Jews to deal with Arabs in Palestine was through "total avoidance of all attempts to arrive at a settlement"-which Jabotinsky euphemistically termed the "iron wall" approach. Not coincidentally, a picture of Jabotinsky graces Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's desk. Source: The Village Voice, "Death Wish in the Holy Land," Dec. 12, 2001.
I don't know about the picture on Sharon's desk. I know that the Village Voice has been virulently pro-palestinian. As far as Jabotinsky- so what? Yasser Arafat, as well as the PM of Pakistan, Musharref, have both referred in speeches to the "Treaty of Hubadiah"- Arafat in reference to agreements with Israelis, and Musharref with the US. It refers to a peace treaty Muhammed made with an enemy city. After ten years, he aquired enough strength to take the city, thus breaking the peace agreement. False agreements, like Oslo (where the PLO was politically resurrected, given an autonomous government west of the Jordan, and armed, in return for nothing but false promises), are a typical strategy used in Arab warfare. The people the Jews in Palestine were dealing with in Jabotinsky's time, were mostly 2 groups- arabs in Palestine who welcomed Jewish immigration and benefited from it, and arabs, led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, who collaborated with the nazis, and had control of many vicious gangs, who harassed the Jews and stirred up Pogroms, like the one in Hebron in 1929, where 133 Jews were killed by an Arab mob, primarily with axes and knives, and nearly 400 wounded. It was wise not to indulge in negotiation with such people at the time, who only seeked the destruction of the Jews in the area. He was right at the time he said it. He realized that the only way there could only be a peaceful settlement once th arab rejectionists had accepted that the Jewish presence in palestine was permanent. This is true today as well.

The influential Israeli Rabbi Ovadia Yosef exclaimed during a sermon preceding the 2001 Passover holiday, :

"May the Holy Name visit retribution on the
Arab heads, and cause their seed to be lost, and annihilate them." He added: "It is forbidden to have pity on them. We must give them missiles with relish, annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones." -- Source: Ha'aretz April 12, 2001.
He was undountedly referring to the terrorists, probably, based on his statement about the missiles, leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and other terrorist groups, that the IDF has made a policy of targeting and killing, often with missiles.

Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 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!'"
A hand gesture that said "drive them out"? That's not really legit. The context is unclear, and this is Dayan's interpretation of a hand gesture- a fairly ambiguous thing. Maybe he meant that, maybe not- the situation and context is unclear from the statement, and there isn't enough to go on here.

David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1978, p. 99:

"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."

I don't know much about this guy, but again it is presented out of context. It is true, that there are few places in Israel today where arabs once lived (though the area was only lightly populated). What is not said is that the land was sold completely legitimately to the Jews. There is nothing controversial about saying that before Jewish immigration, the land was inhabited primarily by arabs. It was. There was a Jewish presence there at all times, as well, but it was a small minority in most places, with the exception of Jerusalem. The statement is a bit of an exaggeration- the land was only lightly populated, and mostly barren and empty. There were many places where no one lived. The land itself, however was mostly owned by arabs, if not inhabited.

Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, 'Begin and the "Beasts"', New Statesman, 25 June 1982:

"We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return."

Duh. This would result in the destruction of the State of Israel. This has always been the official Israeli position.

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 shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters."

" I don't know about this, what does it mean "leaked censored version of Rabin's memoirs"? I don't know whether he said it or not. That said, it should be noted that the Arab population in Palestine before Jewish immigration was almost exclusively poor farmers and peasants, living in squallid condition. They lived in mud huts, and malaria and other diseases were widespread. Most were illiterate. So I don't know exactly what this quote suggests they will be reduced from. Once Jewish immigration was underway, they mostly worked for the Jews. That said, this quote is also out of context- it says it was after a battle? For all I know, maybe he was just pissed after winning the battle. He was a general after all. I don't know what a big deal this quote is, it depends on the context. I wouldn't want to hear what things other soldiers and officers and generals have said after winning battles, about "krauts" or "sand niggers" or "japs" or whatever. Who cares?

David Goldman wrote:

"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."

Who is David Goldman?

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's infamous quote:

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian."
I have explained this before- what she meant is that the term "Palestinian", in referring to Palestinian arabs, is a misnomer. Before 1948 the Jews were referred to as the Palestinians- the Jerusalem Post was once called the "palestine post". The Palestinians today are the descendants from arabs of various surrounding countries. The Palestinians never identified themselves as a distinct nation until after 1967. Arafat himself, along with Edward Said, the famous Palestinian propagandist, who teaches at Columbia, are Egyptians.

Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998:

"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."

Duh, again. See above comment on Ben-Gurion's supposed quote.

Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum":

"If I was an Arab leader I would never make [peace] with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country."

Don't know much about Israel Koenig, but he's wrong- there was never any country in the land that made up Palestine, in 800 years of arab rule. Never. The only country or sovereign entity that ever existed on that land was the Kingdom of Judah, that was destroyed by the Romans, and Israel today. It was never more than a backwater province of the Ottoman empire. Perhaps he was referring to the Palestinians today, who do indeed believe that Israel stole their country. They have been brought up to believe this, by the PA school system and media, among other things. It is a reality to them, even if it isn't based in truth. Perhaps this is what he meant.

And finally:

Michael Ben-Yair, Attorney General of Israel, 1993-1996 (in Ha'aretz):

"The Intifada is the Palestinian's people's war of national liberation. We [Israel] enthusiastically chose to become a colonialist society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the Occupied Territories, engaging in theft and funding justification for all these activities.. we [Israel] established an apartheid regime."

The Israeli left controls the Justice system in Israel. I don't know who this guy was, but he's wrong- no land w

05-17-2003, 08:07 PM	#40 (permalink)
crumbbum Crazy Location: CT,NYC,NJ(have been all over)	Oh man, this will take forever, but I feel like it's too important to leave outstanding. I'm going to go through the quotes, Sun-Tzu. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"' New Statesman, June 25,1982: "[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs." What is unclear is whether or not he was talking about Palestinian terrorists- I personally would indeed consider anyone who commited many of the horrific atrocities by Palestinian terrorists a beast. To give your own life for the sake of murdering as many innocent people as possible is beastly- be it on 9/11, in Israel, in Morocco, in Moscow, anywhere. It is sick, disgusting and inhuman. David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978: "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." This is out of context- why did the Galilee need to be rid of its arab population? What is unsaid is the reality, which is that the Galilee was a center of the Fedayeen, that were conducting raids on the nearby kibbutzes and killing people. There were indeed retaliatory strikes and the like before 1948- it was self-defense. Quotes like this must be taken in historical context, and understand what was really going on. At this time the Jews in Palestine were not a military power, but were struggling to defend their fledgling farm communities from raids, and the roads from bandits and murderers. Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5: "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." It is no secret that after the 67 war, there was a drive to build settlements on the hilltops in the territories. The hilltops were chosen for defensive purposes. No Arab land was stolen, the land claimed was ownerless (though some legal scholars would say the Israelis had the most right to it, as they had captured it in a self-defensive war). Once the land came under Israeli control, there was a rush to build settlements in strategically important places, before the high ground was claimed by the arabs (there were and are many arab settlements as well. There are more illegal arab settlements than Jewish ones today, particularly in the Negev- as of yet, Israel has not dismantled any of them). Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine, "Complete Diaries," June 12, 1895 entry.: "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." First of all, herzl only lived to see the first wave of Jewish immigration, he died soon after. Obviously, the early settlers hoped to gain land in the area. As it turned out, they purchased it legally from the arabs, often at ridiculous prices. Herzl's idea here of driving the arabs out by denying them employment- first of all, why was it the Jews' responsibility to employ the arabs? The vast majority of the Palestinians today are descended from arabs who came from surrounding countries seeking employment. Only a small minority of the Palestinians are descended from arabs who actually had lived in the land for any significant length of time. As far as Herzl's statement, I assume he was aware of the population figures, and Arab and Jewish immigration statistics. I assume he was aware of the reality of the situation- that the majority of the arab population in Palestine was arabs who had come seeking employment opportunity, which the jewish settlement had created. Since this was the only thing bringing arabs to the land, he suggested that by denying them employment they would leave. This is perfectly legitimate. The jewish immigrants did not drive anyone out, or steal land, or any other such behavior, in the interest of procuring property. They bought the land fair and square. There is nothing wrong with Herzl's statement- his intent was not to drive out the authentic arab population, but to encourage the arabs who had only come for employment to look elsewhere, freeing up available land. Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, head of the Kever Yossev Yeshiva (school of Talmud) in Nablus stated: "The blood of the Jewish people is loved by the Lord; it is therefore redder and their life is preferable." Ginsburg is infamously crazy. No one takes him seriously, and he does not speak for the Jewish religion. His statements are deemed irrelevant by other rabbis. Yitzhak Ginsburg, "Five General Religious Duties Which Lie Behind the Act of the Saintly, Late Rabbi Baruch Goldstein, May his Blood be Avenged": "The killing by a Jew of a non-Jew, i.e. a Palestinian, is considered essentially a good deed, and Jews should therefore have no compunction about it." Same as above- this is btw a false statement about the Jewish religion. In 1923, radical Zionist Ze'ev Jabotinsky-- spiritual father of not only of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin but of Brooklyn Rabbi Meir Kahane-- wrote: the "sole way" for Jews to deal with Arabs in Palestine was through "total avoidance of all attempts to arrive at a settlement"-which Jabotinsky euphemistically termed the "iron wall" approach. Not coincidentally, a picture of Jabotinsky graces Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's desk. Source: The Village Voice, "Death Wish in the Holy Land," Dec. 12, 2001. I don't know about the picture on Sharon's desk. I know that the Village Voice has been virulently pro-palestinian. As far as Jabotinsky- so what? Yasser Arafat, as well as the PM of Pakistan, Musharref, have both referred in speeches to the "Treaty of Hubadiah"- Arafat in reference to agreements with Israelis, and Musharref with the US. It refers to a peace treaty Muhammed made with an enemy city. After ten years, he aquired enough strength to take the city, thus breaking the peace agreement. False agreements, like Oslo (where the PLO was politically resurrected, given an autonomous government west of the Jordan, and armed, in return for nothing but false promises), are a typical strategy used in Arab warfare. The people the Jews in Palestine were dealing with in Jabotinsky's time, were mostly 2 groups- arabs in Palestine who welcomed Jewish immigration and benefited from it, and arabs, led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, who collaborated with the nazis, and had control of many vicious gangs, who harassed the Jews and stirred up Pogroms, like the one in Hebron in 1929, where 133 Jews were killed by an Arab mob, primarily with axes and knives, and nearly 400 wounded. It was wise not to indulge in negotiation with such people at the time, who only seeked the destruction of the Jews in the area. He was right at the time he said it. He realized that the only way there could only be a peaceful settlement once th arab rejectionists had accepted that the Jewish presence in palestine was permanent. This is true today as well. The influential Israeli Rabbi Ovadia Yosef exclaimed during a sermon preceding the 2001 Passover holiday, : "May the Holy Name visit retribution on the Arab heads, and cause their seed to be lost, and annihilate them." He added: "It is forbidden to have pity on them. We must give them missiles with relish, annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones." -- Source: Ha'aretz April 12, 2001. He was undountedly referring to the terrorists, probably, based on his statement about the missiles, leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and other terrorist groups, that the IDF has made a policy of targeting and killing, often with missiles. Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 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!'" A hand gesture that said "drive them out"? That's not really legit. The context is unclear, and this is Dayan's interpretation of a hand gesture- a fairly ambiguous thing. Maybe he meant that, maybe not- the situation and context is unclear from the statement, and there isn't enough to go on here. David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99: "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." I don't know much about this guy, but again it is presented out of context. It is true, that there are few places in Israel today where arabs once lived (though the area was only lightly populated). What is not said is that the land was sold completely legitimately to the Jews. There is nothing controversial about saying that before Jewish immigration, the land was inhabited primarily by arabs. It was. There was a Jewish presence there at all times, as well, but it was a small minority in most places, with the exception of Jerusalem. The statement is a bit of an exaggeration- the land was only lightly populated, and mostly barren and empty. There were many places where no one lived. The land itself, however was mostly owned by arabs, if not inhabited. Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, 'Begin and the "Beasts"', New Statesman, 25 June 1982: "We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return." Duh. This would result in the destruction of the State of Israel. This has always been the official Israeli position. 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 shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters." " I don't know about this, what does it mean "leaked censored version of Rabin's memoirs"? I don't know whether he said it or not. That said, it should be noted that the Arab population in Palestine before Jewish immigration was almost exclusively poor farmers and peasants, living in squallid condition. They lived in mud huts, and malaria and other diseases were widespread. Most were illiterate. So I don't know exactly what this quote suggests they will be reduced from. Once Jewish immigration was underway, they mostly worked for the Jews. That said, this quote is also out of context- it says it was after a battle? For all I know, maybe he was just pissed after winning the battle. He was a general after all. I don't know what a big deal this quote is, it depends on the context. I wouldn't want to hear what things other soldiers and officers and generals have said after winning battles, about "krauts" or "sand niggers" or "japs" or whatever. Who cares? David Goldman wrote: "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." Who is David Goldman? Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's infamous quote: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian." I have explained this before- what she meant is that the term "Palestinian", in referring to Palestinian arabs, is a misnomer. Before 1948 the Jews were referred to as the Palestinians- the Jerusalem Post was once called the "palestine post". The Palestinians today are the descendants from arabs of various surrounding countries. The Palestinians never identified themselves as a distinct nation until after 1967. Arafat himself, along with Edward Said, the famous Palestinian propagandist, who teaches at Columbia, are Egyptians. Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998: "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." Duh, again. See above comment on Ben-Gurion's supposed quote. Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum": "If I was an Arab leader I would never make [peace] with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country." Don't know much about Israel Koenig, but he's wrong- there was never any country in the land that made up Palestine, in 800 years of arab rule. Never. The only country or sovereign entity that ever existed on that land was the Kingdom of Judah, that was destroyed by the Romans, and Israel today. It was never more than a backwater province of the Ottoman empire. Perhaps he was referring to the Palestinians today, who do indeed believe that Israel stole their country. They have been brought up to believe this, by the PA school system and media, among other things. It is a reality to them, even if it isn't based in truth. Perhaps this is what he meant. And finally: Michael Ben-Yair, Attorney General of Israel, 1993-1996 (in Ha'aretz): "The Intifada is the Palestinian's people's war of national liberation. We [Israel] enthusiastically chose to become a colonialist society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the Occupied Territories, engaging in theft and funding justification for all these activities.. we [Israel] established an apartheid regime." The Israeli left controls the Justice system in Israel. I don't know who this guy was, but he's wrong- no land w __________________ Truth is peace. We are all souls in bodies.