Quotations

• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “If we know the family, strike mercilessly, women and children included” — Jan. 1 1948
  Exposing its doctrine of reprisals.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “The law is whatever people determine it to be” — 1948
  Replying to Pinhas Rosen on the issue of borders on the eve of independence. Israel has still not declared borders...
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “We could accomplish our aim of cleansing the Galilee” — 1948
  From an Israeli government protocol [that would have been] translated from Hebrew by Israel Shahak.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “Almost 40 percent non-Jews. Such a composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish state” — Dec. 30 1947
  Speech to the Central Committee of Histadrut, expressing the Zionist "democratic" conception and the coming ethnic cleansing.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “Expulsion of the residents along with the seizure of the place” — Dec. 19 1947
  Barely twenty days after the UN General Assembly voted for the establishment of two states, and one month before the arrival of the first ALA fighters opposed to a Jewish state, Ben-Gurion provided the Haganah with rules of engagement, according to which any attack would result in the material or human destruction of the premises.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “At least 80% Jews for a viable and stable state” — Dec. 3 1947
  In a speech to the leading members of the Mapai party, Ben-Gurion clearly indicated the ethnic objective to be achieved in the wake of the UN partition plan.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “Every school child knows that there is no such thing in history as a final arrangement” — Dec. 3 1947
  Writes in his diary, four days after the 1947 UN partition plan and its "acceptance" by Israel.
• Quotation from Menachem Begin “Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever” — Nov. 30 1947
  Leader of the terrorist group Irgun (later Prime Minister), the day after the vote on UN Resolution 181.
• Quotation from Chaim Weizmann “I am certain that the world will judge the Jewish State by what it will do with the Arabs” — Nov. 28 1947
  On November 26, 1947, in New York, on the occasion of his 73rd birthday, Weizmann reassured the good consciences three days before the vote of the UN General Assembly. This did not prevent him from becoming the first president of Israel in the aftermath of the ethnic cleansing (Nakba) of 1948.
• Quotation from Yehuda Leib Maimon “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates” — Jul. 9 1947
  Rabbi, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, in his testimony before the UN Commission of Inquiry in 1947.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “Consider … a Jewish state in a part ...while reaffirming our right to the whole of Palestine” — Jul. 8 1947
  Before the UN commission (UNSCOP) that came to investigate in Palestine.
• Quotation from Gandhi “They have erred grievously in seeking to impose themselves on Palestine” — Jul. 14 1946
  In 1946, Gandhi said of the Jews that “the world should have been their home”, and estimates that they ‘erred greviously’ in “seeking to impose themselves on Palestine with the aid of America and Britain, and now with the help of naked terrorism”.
• Quotation from Harry Truman “I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents” — Nov. 10 1945
  President of the USA, in front of the Arab ambassadors.
• Quotation from Hannah Arendt “Only folly could ... trusts a distant imperial power for protection” — Oct. 1945
  In her book "Zionism Reconsidered", she wrote.
• Quotation from Berl Katznelson “Was not Kibbutz Merhavia built on a transfer?” — Jul. 7 1944
  Leader of mainstream Zionism, editor of daily Davar and founder of Am Oved, Katznelson advocated openly the « transfer » of Palestinians. Here he reminds that Palestinians of al-Fula were expelled before WWI.
• Quotation from Yitzhak Tabenkin “Our aim is the entire Land of Israel on both banks of the Jordan” — Mar. 1944
  One of the founders of the kibbutz movement, summarizing the imperial objective.
• Quotation from Martin
  Buber “As many Jews as it is possible … but not in order to establish a majority against a minority” — 1944
  Advocating colonization as intense as possible but against all likelihood, without "establishing a majority".
• Quotation from Yitzhak Gruenbaum “NO! and I say again, NO! Not one cow here for ten thousand Jews in Germany” — Feb. 18 1943
  Chairman of the Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency, in an address to the Zionist Executive Council.
• Quotation from Yitzhak Gruenbaum “Let them say that I am anti-Semitic” — Jan. 18 1943
  Chairman of the Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency during World War II, addressing the Zionist Executive Committee in response to Rabbi Ishe Meir Levin d'Agudat Yisrael.
• Quotation from Ronald Storrs “A little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism” — 1943
  The first British governor of Jerusalem, comments on the British logic behind the decision of the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “The catastrophe of the European Jewry is not, in a direct manner, my business” — Dec. 1942
  Fewer Jews in Europe? It is annoying for the Zionist colonization….
• Quotation from Walter [Lord Moyne] Guinness “Racial domination by these newcomers over the original inhabitants” — June 9 1942
  Expressing in the British House of Lords his hostility to the Zionist project. This hostility led to his assassination in Cairo on 6 November 1944 by two Lehi terrorists. The bodies of the two assassins are now buried at the "Monument of Heroes" in Jerusalem.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “Complete transfer without compulsion … is hardly imaginable” — Oct. 15 1941
  In a memo titled "Contours of Zionist Politics", he wrote.
• Quotation from Yosef Weitz “Without ... transfer … we will not be able to solve our question by land buying” — Feb. 13 1941
  Director of the Jewish National Fund (KKL/JNF), in his diary dated February 13, 1941.
• Quotation from Yosef Weitz “Not one village must be left, not one [Bedouin] tribe” — Dec. 20 1940
  Director of the Jewish National Fund (KKL/JNF), one of the main architects of the "transfer" and destruction of Palestinian villages in 1948. In his diary (conversation with Zalman Lifschitz).
• Quotation from Berl Katznelson “Unable to fight even for a few days for small things like Hebrew schools” — Dec. 1940
  Publisher of the daily Davar, violently attacks Polish Jews in the territories conquered by the Soviet Union, showing where his priorities are heading.
• Quotation from Berl Katznelson “The day of the Patria sinking … was the biggest Zionist action in recent times” — Nov. 26 1940
  Berl Katznelson, the ideological leader of the labor movement, wrote to Shaul Avigur, one of the leaders of the Haganah, the day after the shipwreck of the Patria, caused by the Haganah and which claimed 250 victims.
• Quotation from Vladimir Jabotinsky “There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Yisrael” — Nov. 9 1939
  A Zionist leader with a fascist leaning, for a long time opposed to the idea of the necessity and even usefulness of a transfer, even if not forced. At the end of the 1930s his views changed. In the notes of a meeting with Shlomo Klinger, a member of the presidency of the New Zionist Organization, he writes.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “At the beginning of the war… the establishment of a Jewish state” — Sep. 12 1939
  Twelve days after the outbreak of World War II, Ben Gurion indicated what the Zionist objective in this war would be: to establish a Jewish state.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “For me, Zionist considerations take precedence over Jewish sentiments” — Sep. 11 1939
  Speaking before the executive committee of Histadrut against the recruitment of Jews into the allied troops.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “We shall fight the White Paper as though there was no war” — Sep. 1939
  Pronounced by Ben Gurion at the beginning of World War II.
• Quotation from Yitzhak Tabenkin “The ideals of Hitler which I like: ethnic homogeneity …. for the sake of an international order” — Aug. 29 1939
  Charismatic leader of the kibbutz movement, admirer of the Stalinist and Nazi ethnic cleansings.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “We don't belong to that Jewish people. We don't want to be that sort of Jew” — Aug. 1939
  During the XX Zionist congress held in Geneva one month before World War II.
• Quotation from Albert Einstein “We must strive for a just and lasting compromise with the Arab people” — 1939
  In 1939, Albert Einstein was frightened by the gap between his idealism and real Zionism.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “If Palestine will not absorb them another territory will. Zionism is endangered” — Dec. 17 1938
  Letter to the Zionist Executive expressing the fear that Palestine might not be the only solution to the rescue of European Jews.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “Save … only half of them ... by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative” — Dec. 7 1938
  One month after the Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom, in a speech delivered in London (meeting of MAPAM leaders).
• 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 Chaim Weizmann “We don’t want Tel Aviv to become another low-grade ghetto” — Oct. 1938
  In the autumn issue of the official British publication New Judea, reporting on a statement made in Poland.
• Quotation from Menahem Ussishkin “We cannot start the Jewish state ... of which the Arabs ... constitute almost half” — June 12 1938
  Delegate of Moscow to the first Zionist Congress, President of the Jewish National Fund.
• Quotation from Arthur Ruppin “I believe in the transfer of entire villages” — June 12 1938
  Leading Zionist planner at a Jewish Agency executive meeting.
• Quotation from Berl Katznelson “Arabs will get equal rights ... only (if) a small minority of Arabs will remain” — June 12 1938
  One of Mapai's top leaders comments on what would happen if the Peel Partition Plan is implemented.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it” — June 12 1938
  In a joint meeting of the Jewish Agency and the Committee for Zionist Action.
• Quotation from Menahem Ussishkin “No hope that this new Jewish State will survive ... if the Arabs are as numerous” — June 12 1938
  Director of the Jewish Agency, at a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive on the recommendation of the Peel Commission.
• Quotation from Menahem Ussishkin “To take a part of the Arabs and transfer and settle them … is as moral as can be” — June 12 1938
  Head of the Executive Committee of the World Zionist Organization, at a meeting of the Jewish Agency's executive committee, advocates that the British should proceed with the expulsion of 60,000 Palestinian families.
• Quotation from Moshe Sharett “We will ensure an absolute Hebrew majority in a parliamentary regime” — June 9 1938
  During an executive meeting of the Jewish Agency, stresses the importance of a reduction in the number of Palestinians during a period of transition to absolute Jewish rule.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “The more we emphasize the terrible distress of the Jewish masses …  So be silent” — June 1938
  Commenting before the executive of the Jewish Agency on his wishes for the Jewish Rescue Conference that was about to open in Evian.
• Quotation from Stephen Wise “No Jewish organisation would … sponsor a bill which would ...alter the immigration laws” — Apr. 1938
  Rabbi, leader of the American Jewish Congress and main spokesman for Zionism in the USA, in a letter addressed to elected Democrats in the aftermath of the Anchluss.
• Quotation from Albert Einstein “I should much rather see agreement with the Arabs ... than the creation of a Jewish state” — 1938
  In a speech to the National Labor Committee for Palestine in New York City.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “We shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine” — 1938
  In a note to the Jewish Agency.
• Quotation from David Ben Gurion “Politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves” — 1938
  Speech in 1938.