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"His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment
in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and
will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement
of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing
shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious
rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or
the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other
country." - The Balfour Declaration to Baron Rothschild, on
the 2nd of November, 1917
"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 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"
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" - Uri
Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs,
1960. From "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri Jiryas.
"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.
In 1899, Davis Triestsch wrote to Herzl: " I would suggest
to you to come round in time to the "Greater Palestine"
program before it is too late... the Basle program must
contain the words "Great Palestine" or "Palestine and its
neighboring lands" otherwise it's nonsense. You do not get
ten million Jews into a land of 25,000 Km2".
One of the most enduring and deceptive slogans of Zionism
was coined by Israel Zangwill almost 100 years ago:
Palestine was a "land without people for a people without
land."
After paying a visit to Palestine in 1891, the Hebrew
essayist Achad Ha-Am commented:
" Abroad we are accustomed to believe that Israel is almost
empty; nothing is grown here and that whoever wishes to buy
land could come here and buy what his heart desires. In
reality, the situation is not like this. Throughout the
country it is difficult to find cultivable land which is not
already cultivated."
"...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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
“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.
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