The myth of Roman exile as a justification for a "return"
- Quotation from Benyamin Netanyahu “ it is under the Arab conquerors that the Jews lost their homeland” — Dec. 5 2022
Netanyahu gets rid of the fable of the expulsion of the Jews by the Romans, just to replace it by another fable, an arabophobic one, that of the elimination of the Jews from Palestine by Islam in the 7th-8th centuries CE. - Quotation from Tzipi Hotovely “My dream is to see the Israeli flag flying over the Temple Mount” — Oct. 25 2015
Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, approving a central project of the religious Zionists, the israeli control over the al-Haram ash-Sharif. - Quotation from Ofer Akunis “I resolutely oppose … a Palestinian state in the place where our nation was born” — Mar. 8 2014
Minister of Science, Technology and Space (2019). - Quotation from Naftali Bennett “When you were still climbing trees, we had here a Jewish state” — Sep. 2010
At the time leader of the Zionist-religious party Our Home, addressing in a typically racist manner the Palestinian deputy of Israel Mohamed Tibi during a televised meeting. - Quotation from Shimon Peres “Jerusalem will not be on the negotiating table with the Palestinian” — Feb. 13 1996
Becoming Prime Minister after Yitzhak Rabin, explicitly locks Oslo agreements. - Quotation from Menachem Begin “In your country there are many cities with biblical names” — Jul. 19 1977
In his first meeting with US President Jimmy Carter at the White House, exploiting the relationship with Christian Zionism and biblical religious roots. - Quotation from Abba Eban “Hereditary difference between the ...level of a person whose father lived in the jungle” — 1974
Abba Eban, Foreign Minister of Israel, before the Israeli press. - Quotation from David Ben Gurion “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel” — 1956
Conversation with Nahum Goldmann. - Quotation from David Ben Gurion “Let me first tell you one thing: it doesn't matter what the world says about Israel” — 1953
Addressing Ariel Sharon, who had just killed 69 Palestinian civilians in Kibya in 1953 by locking them up and blowing up their homes; as reported by Sharon. - Quotation from Gandhi “The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me” — Nov. 26 1938
In a text in the newspaper Harijan exposing his position on the "Arab-Jewish question". - Quotation from David Ben Gurion “The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the Jewish state could give us” — Jul. 12 1937
Expressing its wish to take over the Peel Commission's proposal for partition (2 incomplete versions). - Quotation from David Ben Gurion “But I say on behalf of the Jews that the Bible is our Mandate” — Jan. 7 1937
Before the Peel Royal Commission. - Quotation from Moshe Beilinson “In Syria, in Iraq, in the Arabian Peninsula lies the homeland of the Arab people” — Dec. 4 1929
Writer, journalist and spokesperson for Ben Gurion's Labour Party, writes. - Quotation from Yitzhak Ben-Zvi “The vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors” — 1929
Future 2nd president of Israel, he sees in the Palestinians descendants of Jews converted to Islam. - Quotation from Martin Buber “Reject with abhorrence the methods of nationalistic domination” — Sep. 1 1921
At the 12th Zionist Congress in Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad), accepting all the beginnings of Zionism but recoiling from its consequences, he rejected with horror the methods of nationalist domination from which he himself had suffered. - Quotation from Aharon David Gordon “Such creations, or even the creation of the Bible alone, give us a perpetual right” — 1921
Influential member of the Zionist labor movement, in a public letter. - Quotation from Israel Zangwill “And therefore we must generally persuade them to 'trek'” — 1920
Having returned from the failure of his territorialist option, he found himself in the general racist current. - Quotation from Asher Ginsberg “Better to die in the Exile than … if that land is considered the 'homeland' of the Arabs” — 1920
“National" writer of Russian origin, commenting on the proposals to make Palestine a large federation (with the Palestinians). - Quotation from Arthur Balfour “The Four Great Powers ... are committed to Zionism” — Aug. 11 1919
In a private memorandum to the British Cabinet dated August 11, 1919, expresses that the great powers do not care about the Palestinians - 90% of the population at the time - and that with help, Zionism will help solve the "Jewish problem". - Quotation from Fayçal Ben Hussein al-Hachimi “We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home” — Mar. 3 1919
Said "Faisal of Arabia", in a letter - written by T.E. Lawrence - in favor of Zionist projects, sent to Felix Frankfurter the day after the Paris conference. - Quotation from Jules Cambon “The French Government … can but feel sympathy for your cause” — June 4 1917
Secretary General of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a letter to Nahum Sokolov, Weizmann's partner (unpublished letter at the time), giving official support to the myth of the "rebirth of Jewish nationality", i.e. to Zionism. - Quotation from Max Nordau “This race cannot and must not merge with the others” — Dec. 21 1903
Max Nordau, a fervent supporter of "social Darwinism" who had become a co-founder of political Zionism with Theodor Herzl, explained to the French anti-Semitic leader Edouard Drumont his fundamental agreement with Drumont on the "racial" separation between Jews and non-Jews. - Quotation from Vladimir Ilitch Lenin “The idea that the Jews form a separate nation is reactionary politically” — 1903
Expresses his absolute opposition to a premise of Zionism. - Quotation from Edouard Drumont “I don't mind as long as that homeland is not mine” — 1900
Founder of the newspaper La Libre Parole, antidreyfusard, nationalist and anti-Semitic, author of La France juive (The Jewish France , 1886), seeing a departure of Jews in Palestine in a positive light. - Quotation from Anthony Ashley Cooper “And has not England a special interest in promoting such restoration” — 1876
Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, English statesman, in an address to the British Parliament in 1876. - Quotation from Henry Dunant “... agricultural colonies, with the help and labor of those of their Eastern co-religionists...” — Jan. 1 1970
In 1866, Henry Dunant, Calvinist and founder of the Red Cross, recommended to Emperor Napoleon III the creation of a settlement society in Palestine for Eastern European Jews. The project never got off the ground. Dunant attended the First Zionist Congress of 1897. - Quotation from Henry John Temple “It would be of manifest importance to the Sultan to encourage the Jews to return” — 1840
For more than 60 years, Henri John Temple served british imperial interests. He shows little regard in « jewish » interests but insists on « return » as a means to check Egypt and increase the Sultan financil status. Here in a letter to the British Ambassador in Constantinopolis. - Quotation from Alexander Lindsay “Waits for the return of her banished children” — 1838
Scottish aristocrat known as an art historian and collector, in a book where he develops an authentic pre-Zionist discourse. - Quotation from François-René de Chateaubriand “These legitimate masters of Judea ” — Apr. 20 1819
Chateaubriand, an ultraroyalist conservative writer and diplomat, gives alms to the Catholic myth of the exile to the Jews of Jerusalem, and hopes for a military adventure of the Holy Alliance. - Quotation from John Adams “I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation” — Mar. 15 1819
Second President of the United States (from 1797 to 1801), in a letter to a Jewish traveler of the time, Mordechai Noah, wanted a "restoration" of the Jews in Judea with a view to their conversion. - Quotation from Thomas Brightman “Shall they return to Jerusalem” — 1615
A clergyman and influential Bible commentator, he was one of the early Protestant progenitors of the Zionist project.