Dihya al-Kahina, a Judiac Berber

The majority of Ashkenazi Jews, from the territory of Khazaria to Poland, Germany, Russia, Britain, America, etc., are Turkic-Mongol-Indo-European atheists.

The majority of Sephardic Jews, from the territory of North Africa to Spain, Portugal, Holland, Greece, Turkey, Britain, America, etc., are Berber-Moorish-Semitic-Turkic-Indo-European atheists.

The majority of Mizrahi Jews, from the territory of Palestine and Arabia, to Georgia, Afghanistan, Baghdad, Persia, Ethipia, North Africa, etc. are Semitic, Persian, Pashtun, Caucasian, and so on.

The majority of Palestinian Arabs are Semitic Muslims and Christians. Certainly many of them have ancestors who were Greek, Roman, Israelite, Canaanite, Judean, Samaritan, Coptic, Armenian, and so on.

Hopefully the world will someday peacefully be rid of nonsensical, mythological, artificial groupings and divisions such as Pan-Arabism, Pan-Turanism, and Zionism.

The existence of the Amazigh (Berbers) is living proof that there is no 325,000,000-strong “Arab World”. As well as the Amazigh, there are Arabic-speaking Copts, Kurds, Armenians, Persians, Jews, and so on. Just because English is spoken from Alaska to Texas, that doesn’t mean the speakers are a “Pan-Anglican” race.

Every true follower of Christ is an Israelite.

Pope Miltiades, an Israelite Berber

Where did Arab Christians came from? Did they just fell from outer space?

Virtually all early Christians were Israelites.

The Christians of Najran were fanatically persecuted by the Judaic Arab king Dhu Nawas in Anno Domini 523. Al-Harith, the leader of the persecuted Christian Arabs of Najran, is Saint Aretas.

Caesar Marcus Julius Philippus Augustus, an Arab, was born in the district of Trachonitis, east of the Sea of Galilee. His birthplace was renamed Philippopolis, and is now Shahba, in Syria. Provincia Arabia, of which Philippopolis was a part, had been extensively Christianized in the period before Emperor Philip’s birth. If he was not himself Christian, Caeser Philip would probably have been familiar with Christians in his hometown as well as Bosra and other nearby settlements. Christians were not persecuted under Philip’s rule. St Jerome called Philip, “the first of the Christian sovereigns of Rome.”

Eusebius claimed that Philip’s reign was one in which “the faith was increasing and our doctrine was being proclaimed openly in the ears of all.” There are five references in Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica to Philip’s Christianity; three directly, and two by implication. At 6.34, he describes Philip visiting a church on Easter Eve [Antioch, A.D. 244.04.13] and being denied entry by the bishop there because he had not yet confessed his sins. At 6.36.3, he writes of letters from Origen to Philip and to Philip’s wife, Marcia Otacilia Severa. At 6.39, Eusebius explains Decius’ persecution as the result of that emperor’s enmity toward Philip. The remaining two references are quotations or paraphrases of Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, Philip’s contemporary (he held the patriarchate from 247 to 265). At 6.41.9, Dionysius contrasts the tolerant Philip’s rule with the intolerant Decius’. At 7.10.3, Dionysius implies that Alexander Severus (r. 222-235) and Philip were both openly Christian.

Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 6.34:

Ἔτεσιν δὲ ὅλοις ἓξ Γορδιανοῦ τὴν Ῥωμαίων διανύσαντος ἡγεμονίαν, Φίλιππος ἅμα παιδὶ Φιλίππῳ τὴν ἀρχὴν διαδέχεται. τοῦτον κατέχει λόγος Χριστιανὸν ὄντα ἐν ἡμέρᾳ τῆς ὑστάτης τοῦ πάσχα παννυχίδος τῶν ἐπὶ τῆς ἐκκλησίας εὐχῶν τῷ πλήθει μετασχεῖν ἐθελῆσαι, οὐ πρότερον δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ τηνικάδε προεστῶτος ἐπιτραπῆναι εἰσβαλεῖν, ἢ ἐξομολογήσασθαι καὶ τοῖς ἐν παραπτώμασιν ἐξεταζομένοις μετανοίας τε χώραν ἴσχουσιν ἑαυτὸν καταλέξαι· ἄλλως γὰρ μὴ ἄν ποτε πρὸς αὐτοῦ, μὴ οὐχὶ τοῦτο ποιήσαντα, διὰ πολλὰς τῶν κατ’ αὐτὸν αἰτίας παραδεχθῆναι. καὶ πειθαρχῆσαι γε προθύμως λέγεται, τὸ γνήσιον καὶ εὐλαβὲς τῆς περὶ τὸν θεῖον φόβον διαθέσεως ἔργοις ἐπιδεδειγμένον.

Gordianus had been Roman emperor for six years when Philip, with his son Philip, succeeded him. It is reported that he, being a Christian, desired, on the day of the last paschal vigil, to share with the multitude in the prayers of the Church, but that he was not permitted to enter, by him who then presided, until he had made confession and had numbered himself among those who were reckoned as transgressors and who occupied the place of penance. For if he had not done this, he would never have been received by him, on account of the many crimes which he had committed. It is said that he obeyed readily, manifesting in his conduct a genuine and pious fear of God. [Translation: A. C. McGiffert]

In 1917, Freemason Lord Balfour gifted the Holy Land to Freemason Lord Rothschild. Rabbi Kook declared, “I…not only…thank the British nation, but…congratulate it for being privileged to make this declaration. The Jewish people is the ’scholar’ among the nations, the people of the book, a nation of prophets; and it is a great honor for any nation to aid it. I bless the British nation for having extended such honorable aid to the people of the Torah, to return to its land and assist it in renewing its homeland.”

Emperors Leo IV & Constantine VI, Romanoi-Khazari Israelites (actually iconoclastic, countered by iconodule champion, the Romanoi Israelite Empress Irene Sarantapechaina the Athenian).

Gibran Khalil Gibran bin Mikhā’īl bin Sa’ad, an Israelite Arab

A Judaic Khazar

A Judaic Khazar

Saint Abo of Tiflis, an Israelite Arab (formerly a Baghdadi Mohammedan)

Saint Maroun, an Israelite Syriac

Saint John of Damascus, يوحنا الدمشقي (Yuḥannā Al Demashqi), Ιωάννης Δαμασκήνος (Iôannês Damaskênos) Ιωάννης Χρυσορρόας (Iôannês Chrysorrhoas; John the Golden Speaker), an Israelite Arab

Shattering a ‘national mythology’

By Ofri Ilani, Haaretz, 2008.01.10

Of all the national heroes who have arisen from among the Jewish people over the generations, fate has not been kind to Dahia al-Kahina, a leader of the Berbers in the Aures Mountains. Although she was a proud Jewess, few Israelis have ever heard the name of this warrior-queen who, in the seventh century C.E., united a number of Berber tribes and pushed back the Muslim army that invaded North Africa. It is possible that the reason for this is that al-Kahina was the daughter of a Berber tribe that had converted to Judaism, apparently several generations before she was born, sometime around the 6th century C.E.

According to the Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand, author of “Matai ve’ech humtza ha’am hayehudi?” (“When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?”), the queen’s tribe and other local tribes that converted to Judaism are the main sources from which Spanish Jewry sprang. This claim that the Jews of North Africa originated in indigenous tribes that became Jewish – and not in communities exiled from Jerusalem – is just one element of the far- reaching argument set forth in Sand’s new book.

In this work, the author attempts to prove that the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period. Their origins, according to him, are in varied peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history, in different corners of the Mediterranean Basin and the adjacent regions. Not only are the North African Jews for the most part descendants of pagans who converted to Judaism, but so are the Jews of Yemen (remnants of the Himyar Kingdom in the Arab Peninsula, who converted to Judaism in the fourth century) and the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe (refugees from the Kingdom of the Khazars, who converted in the eighth century).

Unlike other “new historians” who have tried to undermine the assumptions of Zionist historiography, Sand does not content himself with going back to 1948 or to the beginnings of Zionism, but rather goes back thousands of years. He tries to prove that the Jewish people never existed as a “nation-race” with a common origin, but rather is a colorful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion. He argues that for a number of Zionist ideologues, the mythical perception of the Jews as an ancient people led to truly racist thinking: “There were times when if anyone argued that the Jews belong to a people that has gentile origins, he would be classified as an anti-Semite on the spot. Today, if anyone dares to suggest that those who are considered Jews in the world … have never constituted and still do not constitute a people or a nation – he is immediately condemned as a hater of Israel.”

According to Sand, the description of the Jews as a wandering and self-isolating nation of exiles, “who wandered across seas and continents, reached the ends of the earth and finally, with the advent of Zionism, made a U-turn and returned en masse to their orphaned homeland,” is nothing but “national mythology.” Like other national movements in Europe, which sought out a splendid Golden Age, through which they invented a heroic past – for example, classical Greece or the Teutonic tribes – to prove they have existed since the beginnings of history, “so, too, the first buds of Jewish nationalism blossomed in the direction of the strong light that has its source in the mythical Kingdom of David.”

So when, in fact, was the Jewish people invented, in Sand’s view? At a certain stage in the 19th century, intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people “retrospectively”, out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people. From historian Heinrich Graetz on, Jewish historians began to draw the history of Judaism as the history of a nation that had been a kingdom, became a wandering people and ultimately turned around and went back to its birthplace.

Actually, most of your book does not deal with the invention of the Jewish people by modern Jewish nationalism, but rather with the question of where the Jews come from.

Sand: “My initial intention was to take certain kinds of modern historiographic materials and examine how they invented the ‘figment’ of the Jewish people. But when I began to confront the historiographic sources, I suddenly found contradictions. And then that urged me on: I started to work, without knowing where I would end up. I took primary sources and I tried to examine authors’ references in the ancient period – what they wrote about conversion.”

Sand, an expert on 20th-century history, has until now researched the intellectual history of modern France (in “Ha’intelektual, ha’emet vehakoah: miparashat dreyfus ve’ad milhemet hamifrats” – “Intellectuals, Truth and Power, From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War“). Unusually, for a professional historian, in his new book he deals with periods that he had never researched before, usually relying on studies that present unorthodox views of the origins of the Jews.

Experts on the history of the Jewish people say you are dealing with subjects about which you have no understanding and are basing yourself on works that you can’t read in the original.

“It is true that I am an historian of France and Europe, and not of the ancient period. I knew that the moment I would start dealing with early periods like these, I would be exposed to scathing criticism by historians who specialize in those areas. But I said to myself that I can’t stay just with modern historiographic material without examining the facts it describes. Had I not done this myself, it would have been necessary to have waited for an entire generation. Had I continued to deal with France, perhaps I would have been given chairs at the university and provincial glory. But I decided to relinquish the glory.”

Inventing the Diaspora

“After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom” – thus states the preamble to the Israeli Declaration of Independence. This is also the quotation that opens the third chapter of Sand’s book, entitled “The Invention of the Diaspora.” Sand argues that the Jewish people’s exile from its land never happened.

“The supreme paradigm of exile was needed in order to construct a long-range memory in which an imagined and exiled nation-race was posited as the direct continuation of ‘the people of the Bible’ that preceded it,” Sand explains. Under the influence of other historians who have dealt with the same issue in recent years, he argues that the exile of the Jewish people is originally a Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.

“I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land – a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled.”

If the people was not exiled, are you saying that in fact the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians?

“No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don’t leave until they are expelled. Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, ‘the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.‘”

And how did millions of Jews appear around the Mediterranean Sea?

“The people did not spread, but the Jewish religion spread. Judaism was a converting religion. Contrary to popular opinion, in early Judaism there was a great thirst to convert others. The Hasmoneans were the first to begin to produce large numbers of Jews through mass conversion, under the influence of Hellenism. The conversions between the Hasmonean Revolt and Bar Kochba’s rebellion are what prepared the ground for the subsequent, wide-spread dissemination of Christianity. After the victory of Christianity in the fourth century, the momentum of conversion was stopped in the Christian world, and there was a steep drop in the number of Jews. Presumably many of the Jews who appeared around the Mediterranean became Christians. But then Judaism started to permeate other regions – pagan regions, for example, such as Yemen and North Africa. Had Judaism not continued to advance at that stage and had it not continued to convert people in the pagan world, we would have remained a completely marginal religion, if we survived at all.”

How did you come to the conclusion that the Jews of North Africa were originally Berbers who converted?

“I asked myself how such large Jewish communities appeared in Spain. And then I saw that Tariq ibn Ziyad, the supreme commander of the Muslims who conquered Spain, was a Berber, and most of his soldiers were Berbers. Dahia al-Kahina’s Jewish Berber kingdom had been defeated only 15 years earlier. And the truth is there are a number of Christian sources that say many of the conquerors of Spain were Jewish converts. The deep-rooted source of the large Jewish community in Spain was those Berber soldiers who converted to Judaism.“

Sand argues that the most crucial demographic addition to the Jewish population of the world came in the wake of the conversion of the kingdom of Khazaria – a huge empire that arose in the Middle Ages on the steppes along the Volga River, which at its height ruled over an area that stretched from the Georgia of today to Kiev. In the eighth century, the kings of the Khazars adopted the Jewish religion and made Hebrew the written language of the kingdom. From the 10th century the kingdom weakened; in the 13th century is was utterly defeated by Mongol invaders, and the fate of its Jewish inhabitants remains unclear.

Sand revives the hypothesis, which was already suggested by historians in the 19th and 20th centuries, according to which the Judaized Khazars constituted the main origins of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.

“At the beginning of the 20th century there is a tremendous concentration of Jews in Eastern Europe – three million Jews in Poland alone,” he says. “The Zionist historiography claims that their origins are in the earlier Jewish community in Germany, but they do not succeed in explaining how a small number of Jews who came from Mainz and Worms could have founded the Yiddish people of Eastern Europe. The Jews of Eastern Europe are a mixture of Khazars and Slavs who were pushed eastward.”

‘Degree of perversion’

If the Jews of Eastern Europe did not come from Germany, why did they speak Yiddish, which is a Germanic language?

“The Jews were a class of people dependent on the German bourgeoisie in the East, and thus they adopted German words. Here I base myself on the research of linguist Paul Wechsler of Tel Aviv University, who has demonstrated thatthere is no etymological connection between the German Jewish language of the Middle Ages and Yiddish. As far back as 1828, the Ribal (Rabbi Isaac Ber Levinson) said that the ancient language of the Jews was not Yiddish. Even Ben Zion Dinur, the father of Israeli historiography, was not hesitant about describing the Khazars as the origin of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and describes Khazaria as ‘the mother of the diasporas’ in Eastern Europe. But more or less since 1967, anyone who talks about the Khazars as the ancestors of the Jews of Eastern Europe is considered naive and moonstruck.”

Why do you think the idea of the Khazar origins is so threatening?

“It is clear that the fear is of an undermining of the historic right to the land.The revelation that the Jews are not from Judea would ostensibly knock the legitimacy for our being here out from under us. Since the beginning of the period of decolonization, settlers have no longer been able to say simply: ‘We came, we won and now we are here’ the way the Americans, the whites in South Africa and the Australians said. There is a very deep fear that doubt will be cast on our right to exist.”

Is there no justification for this fear?

“No. I don’t think that the historical myth of the exile and the wanderings is the source of the legitimization for me being here, and therefore I don’t mind believing that I am Khazar in my origins. I am not afraid of the undermining of our existence, because I think that the character of the State of Israel undermines it in a much more serious way. What would constitute the basis for our existence here is not mythological historical right, but rather would be for us to start to establish an open society here of all Israeli citizens.”

In effect you are saying that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.

“I don’t recognize an international people. I recognize ‘the Yiddish people’ that existed in Eastern Europe, which though it is not a nation can be seen as a Yiddishist civilization with a modern popular culture. I think that Jewish nationalism grew up in the context of this ‘Yiddish people.’ I also recognize the existence of an Israeli people, and do not deny its right to sovereignty. But Zionism and also Arab nationalism over the years are not prepared to recognize it.

“From the perspective of Zionism, this country does not belong to its citizens, but rather to the Jewish people. I recognize one definition of a nation: a group of people that wants to live in sovereignty over itself. But most of the Jews in the world have no desire to live in the State of Israel, even though nothing is preventing them from doing so. Therefore, they cannot be seen as a nation.”

What is so dangerous about Jews imagining that they belong to one people? Why is this bad?

“In the Israeli discourse about roots there is a degree of perversion. This is an ethnocentric, biological, genetic discourse. But Israel has no existence as a Jewish state: If Israel does not develop and become an open, multicultural society we will have a Kosovo in the Galilee. The consciousness concerning the right to this place must be more flexible and varied, and if I have contributed with my book to the likelihood that I and my children will be able to live with the others here in this country in a more egalitarian situation – I will have done my bit.

“We must begin to work hard to transform our place into an Israeli republic where ethnic origin, as well as faith, will not be relevant in the eyes of the law. Anyone who is acquainted with the young elites of the Israeli Arab community can see that they will not agree to live in a country that declares it is not theirs. If I were a Palestinian I would rebel against a state like that, but even as an Israeli I am rebelling against it.”

The question is whether for those conclusions you had to go as far as the Kingdom of the Khazars.

“I am not hiding the fact that it is very distressing for me to live in a society in which the nationalist principles that guide it are dangerous, and that this distress has served as a motive in my work. I am a citizen of this country, but I am also a historian and as a historian it is my duty to write history and examine texts. This is what I have done.“

If the myth of Zionism is one of the Jewish people that returned to its land from exile, what will be the myth of the country you envision?

“To my mind, a myth about the future is better than introverted mythologies of the past. For the Americans, and today for the Europeans as well, what justifies the existence of the nation is a future promise of an open, progressive and prosperous society. The Israeli materials do exist, but it is necessary to add, for example, pan-Israeli holidays. To decrease the number of memorial days a bit and to add days that are dedicated to the future. But also, for example, to add an hour in memory of the Nakba [literally, the "catastrophe" - the Palestinian term for what happened when Israel was established], between Memorial Day and Independence Day.”

The non-Jewish origins of the Sephardic Jews

By Paul Wexler

http://books.google.com/books?id=XZwO2TX8EOcC

Explorations in Judeo-Slavic linguistics

By Paul Wexler

http://books.google.com/books?id=FfYUAAAAIAAJ

The Berber tribe of Jarawa in the Aures Mountains was led by a Dihya al-Kahina. The warrior queen ruled over a vast area and achieved brilliant victories against the Arab invaders led by Caliph Abdalmelek. After her death in battle at the end of the 7th century, the Arabs overcame Berber resistance.

Dihya al-Kahina is also called Dahia, Damia, and Diah, and Kahina is frequently spelled Kahena or Cahena, or altered to A-Cahina

Dihya al-Kahina was a woman born into a Jewish Berber tribe in the Aures Mountains some time during the 600s C.E.. During her lifetime, Arab generals began to lead armies into North Africa, preparing to conquer the area and introduce Islam to the local peoples. The Berber tribes fiercely resisted invasion, and decades of war resulted.

Very little is known about Dihya’s family, or her early life. Her father’s name was Tabat, or Thabitah. The name al-Kahina is a feminine form of “Cohen”, and it may indicate that her family or tribe were cohanim. It could also have been a title given to her personally, meaning something like ‘priestess’ or ‘prophetess’. Her followers, and their enemies, credited her with prophesy and magical knowledge.  She married at least once, and had sons. Beyond that, almost nothing is known.

The Berbers of the seventh century were not religiously homogenous. Christian, Jewish and pagan Berbers were spread through the region that is now Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya. They shared a common language and culture, however, and the invasion of the Arabs presented them with a common cause, to drive out the invaders. Al-Kahina emerged as a war-leader during this tense period, and proved amazingly successful at leading the tribes to join together against their common enemy. Her reputation as a strategist and sorceress spread, and she managed to briefly unite the tribes of Ifrikya, the Berber name for North Africa, ruling them and leading them in battle for five years before her final defeat.

Ze’ev Jabotinsky

“…. Settlement can thus develop under the protection of a force that is not dependent on the local population, behind an IRON WALL which they will be powerless to break down. ….a voluntary agreement is just not possible. As long as the Arabs preserve a gleam of hope that they will succeed in getting rid of us, nothing in the world can cause them to relinquish this hope, precisely because they are not a rubble but a living people. And a living people will be ready to yield on such fateful issues only when they give up all hope of getting rid of the Alien Settlers. Only then will extremist groups with their slogan ‘No, never’ lose their influence, and only then their influence be transferred to more moderate groups. And only then will the moderates offer suggestions for compromise. Then only will they begin bargaining with us on practical matters, such as guarantees against PUSHING THEM OUT, and equality of civil, and national rights.” (1923)

“The Arabs loved their country as much as the Jews did. Instinctively, they understood Zionist aspirations very well, and their decision to resist them was only natural ….. There was no misunderstanding between Jew and Arab, but a natural conflict. …. No Agreement was possible with the Palestinian Arab; they would accept Zionism only when they found themselves up against an ‘iron wall,’ when they realize they had no alternative but to accept Jewish settlement.” (1923)

“This matter is not an issue between the Jewish people and the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, but between the Jewish people and the Arab people. The latter, numbering 35 million, has [territory equal to] half of Europe, while the Jewish people, numbering ten million and wandering the earth, hasn’t got a stone. . . Will the Arab people stand opposed? Will it resist? [Will it insist] that . . . they. . . shall have it [all] for ever and ever, while he who has nothing shall share forever have nothing.” (1918)

“They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true favor the Aztecs looked upon Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie. Palestine will remain for the Palestinians not a borderland, but their birthplace, the center and basis of their own national existence.” (1923)

“The Arabs loved their country as much as the Jews did. Instinctively, they understood Zionist aspirations very well, and their decision to resist them was only natural ….. There was not misunderstanding between Jew and Arab, but a natural conflict. …. No Agreement was possible with the Palestinian Arab; they would accept Zionism only when they found themselves up against an ‘iron wall,’ when they realize they had no alternative but to accept Jewish settlement.” (1923)

“…. Settlement can thus develop under the protection of a force that is not dependent on the local population, behind an IRON WALL which they will be powerless to break down. ….a voluntary agreement is just not possible. As long as the Arabs preserve a gleam of hope that they will succeed in getting rid of us, nothing in the world can cause them to relinquish this hope, precisely because they are not a rubble but a living people. And a living people will be ready to yield on such fateful issues only when they give up all hope of getting rid of the Alien Settlers. Only then will extremist groups with their slogan No, never lose their influence, and only then their influence be transferred to more moderate groups. And only then will the moderates offer suggestions for compromise. Then only will they begin bargaining with us on practical matters, such as guarantees against push them out, and equality of civil, and national rights.” (1923)

“Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native [Palestinian] population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop under the protection of a force independent of the local population –an iron wall which the native [Palestinian] population cannot break through. This is, in to, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy.” (1925)

“In this sense, there is no meaningful difference between our militarists and ourvegetarians. One prefers an Iron Wall of Jewish bayonets, the other proposes an Iron Wall of British bayonets, the third proposes an agreement with Baghdad, and appears to be satisfied with Baghdad’s bayonets-a strange and somewhat risky taste–but we all applaud, day and night, the Iron Wall.” (1925)

“If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find a benefactor who will maintain the garrison on your behalf. … Zionism is a colonizing adventure and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces.”

“The tragedy lies in the fact that there is a collision here between two truths ….. But our justice is greater. The Arabs is culturally backward , but his instinctive patriotism is just as pure and noble as our own; it can not be bought, it can only be curbed … force majeure.” (1926)

“There is no justice, no law, and no God in heaven, only a single law which decides and supercedes all—- [Jewish] settlement [of the land].”

“We Jews have nothing in common with what is called the ‘Orient,’ thank God. To the extent that our uneducated masses have ancient spiritual traditions and laws that call the Orient, they must be weaned away from them, and this is in fact what we are doing in every decent school, what life itself is doing with great success. We are going in Palestine, first for our national convenience, [second] to sweep out thoroughly all traces of the ‘Oriental soul.’ As for the [Palestinians] Arabs in Palestine, what they do is their business; but if we can do them a favor, it is to help them liberate themselves from the Orient.’”

“I devote my life to the rebirth of the Jewish State, with a Jewish majority, on both sides of the Jordan.” (1934)

“For a long time, many Jews, including Zionists, were unwilling to understand the simple truth. They maintained that the creation of important positions in Palestine (settlements, cities, schools, etc.) is enough. According to them a national life could be freely developed even though the majority of the population were to be Arab. This is a great mistake. History proves that any national position, however strong and important cannot be safeguarded as long as the nation which built it does not constitute a majority. A minority can safeguard its cultural position only as long as it can control the local majority. Sooner or later, every country in the world is to become the national state of the predominant nation there. Thus if we desire that Eretz Yisrael should become and remain a Jewish State, we must first of all create a Jewish majority.” (1934)

“There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews of Eretz Israel. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs.” (1939)

“We Jews, thank God, have nothing to do with the East. . . . The Islamic soul must be broomed out of Eretz-Yisrael. . . . [Muslims are] yelling rabble dressed up in gaudy, savage rags.” (1939)

“The world has become accustomed to the idea of mass migrations and has become fond of them. … Hitler— as odious as he is to us—has given this idea a good name in the world.” (1940)

Chaim Weizmann

“In its initial stage, Zionism was conceived by its pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country? The owners of the country [the Ottoman Turks] must, therefore, be persuaded and conceived that this marriage is advantageous, not only for the [Jewish] people and for the country, but also for themselves.” (1914)

Note how Weizmann didn’t claim that the country was empty (see the quote below), but he denied that there was a people which deserved the right of self-determination. The selective definition of “who are a people, and who are not” was crafted to serve Zionists’ agenda for the following reasons:

[Palestinian Arabs are] “the rocks of Judea, as obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path.”

“… should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence, and should Britain encourage a Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in 20 to 30 years a million Jews out there – perhaps more; they would … form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal. [A Rothschild investment]” (1914)

“The British Cabinet is not only sympathetic toward the Palestinian aspirations of the Jews, but would like to see these aspirations realized … England…would have in the Jews the best possible friends, who would be the best national interpreters of ideas in the eastern countries and would serve as a bridge between the two civilizations. That again is not a material argument, but certainly it ought to carry great weight with any politician who likes to look 50 years ahead.” (1916)

[To his wife:] “There’s nothing more humiliating than ‘our’ Jerusalem. Anything that could be done to desecrate and defile the sacred has been done. It is impossible to imagine so much falsehood, blasphemy, greed, so many lies. It’s such an accursed city, there’s nothing there, no creature comforts. . . [It] hasn’t a single clean and comfortable apartment.” (1918)

“The poor ignorant fellah [Arabic for peasant] does not worry about politics, but when he is told repeatedly by people in whom he has confidence that his livelihood is in danger of being taken away from him by us, he becomes our mortal enemy. . . The Arab is primitive and believes what he is told.” (1918)

[Re the "national home" referred to in Lord Balfour's declaration to Lord Rothschild:] “the country [Palestine] should be Jewish in the same way that France is French and Britain is British.” (1919)

[Address to the English Zionist Federation 1919.09.19:] “By a Jewish National Home I mean the creation of such conditions that as the country is developed we can pour in a considerable number of immigrants, and finally establish such a society in Palestine that Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English or America American.”

“The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was built on air … every day and every hour of these last 10 years, when opening the newspapers, I thought: Whence will the next blow come? I trembled lest the British Government would call me and ask: ‘Tell us, what is this Zionist Organization? Where are they, your Zionists?’ … The Jews, they knew, were against us [the Zionists]; we stood alone on a little island, a tiny group of Jews with a foreign past.”

“while they [European Jews] are seeking an outlet, every door of those countries into which the Jews emigrated in the past is gradually being closed before them: America, South Africa, Canada, Mexico, each used to be a country of immigration; they are closed now.” (1930) [Ernest Montagu's prediction?]

[To Anglo-American Palestine Committee, 1942.05.25:] “Palestine alone could absorb and provide for the homeless and the stateless Jews uprooted by the war. It has canalized all the sympathy of the world for the martyrdom of the Jews that the Zionists reject all schemes to resettle these victims elsewhere — in Germany, or Poland, or in sparsely populated regions such as Madagascar.” [Hitler, in 1940, suggested Madagascar as a place where all the Jews of Europe might be sent.]

[In 1934 Weizmann tried to interest the French Mandate authorities in his settlement plans in Syria and Lebanon.

[To the Palestine-British high Commissioner, while the Peel Commission was convening, 1937:] “We shall spread in the whole country in the course of time ….. this is only an arrangement for the next 25 to 30 years.”

[To Solomon Goldman, 1939.04.28, about the possibility of acquisition of a large tract of land belonging to the Palestinian Arab Druze in the Galilee and eastern Carmel:] “The realization of this project would mean the emigration of 10,000 Arabs [to Jabal al-Druze in Syria], the acquisition of 300,000 dunums. … It would also create a significant precedent if 10,000 Arabs were to emigrate peacefully of their own volition, which no doubt would be followed by others.”

“Why not Kamchatka, Alaska, Mexico, or Texas? There are great many empty countries. Why should the Jews choose a country which has a population that does not want to receive them in a particular friendly way; a small country; a country which has been neglected and derelict for centuries? It seems unusual on the part of a practical and shrewd people like the Jews to sink their effort, their sweat, and blood, their substance, into the sands, rocks, and marches of Palestine.

“Well, I could, if I wished to be facetious, say it was not our responsibility — not the responsibility of the Jews who sit here — it was the responsibility of Moses, who acted from divine inspiration. He might have brought us to the United States, and instead of the Jordan might have had the Mississippi. It would have been an easier task. But he chose to stop here. We are an ancient people with old history, and you cannot deny your history and begin fresh.” (1947) [Apparently the Irish and Scots and Flemings and Amish and Dukhobours and Hakka can all begin afresh in "The New World" but Jews have to "go back" to the land that Weizmann thinks it would be facetious to identify with Moses (an Egyptian...)] (1947)

“Palestinians are almost out of “Eretz Yisrael” … A miraculous CLEARING of the land: the miraculous simplification of Israel’s task.” (1949)

Israel Zangwill:

“Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two souls to the square mile, and not 25% of them Jews ….. [We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us.” (1905)

“If the Lord Shaftesbury was literally inexact in describing Palestine as a country without a people, he was essentially correct, for there is no Arab people living in intimate fusion with the country, utilizing its resources and stamping it with a characteristic impress: there is at best an Arab encampment.” (1920)

“We cannot allow the Arabs to block so valuable a piece of historic reconstruction ….. And therefore we must generally persuade them to ‘trek.’ After all, they have all Arabia with its million square miles …. There is no particular reason for the Arabs to cling to these few kilometers. ‘To fold their tents and silently steal away’ is their proverbial habit: let them exemplify it now.” (1920)

“Many [Arabs] are semi-nomad, they have given nothing to Palestine and are not entitled to the rules of democracy.” (1919)

Moshe Dayan:

“Using the moral yardstick mentioned by [Moshe Sharett], I must ask: Are [we justified] in opening fire on the [Palestinian] Arabs who cross [the border] to reap the crops they planted in our territory; they, their women, and their children? Will this stand up to moral scrutiny . . .? We shoot at those from among the 200,000 hungry [Palestinian] Arabs who cross the line [to graze their flocks]—- will this stand up to moral review? Arabs cross to collect the grain that they left in the abandoned [term often used by Israelis to describe the ethnically cleansed] villages and we set mines for them and they go back without an arm or a leg. . . . [It may be that this] cannot pass review, but I know no other method of guarding the borders. then tomorrow the State of Israel will have no borders.”

“The only method that proved effective, not justified or moral but effective, when Arabs plant mines on our side [in retaliation]. If we try to search for the [particular] Arab [who planted mines], it has not value. But if we HARASS the nearby village . . . then the population there comes out against the [infiltrators] . . . and the Egyptian Government and the Transjordan Government are [driven] to prevent such incidents because their prestige is [assailed], as the Jews have opened fire, and they are unready to begin a war . . . the method of collective punishment so far has proved effective.” (1955)

[At a funeral:] “Let us not today fling accusation at the murderers. What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. We should demand his blood not from the [Palestinian] Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves. . . . Let us make our reckoning today. We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house.” (1956)

“All that is required is to find an officer, even a captain [later to be Sa'ed Haddad] would do, to win his heart or buy him with money to get him to agreed to declare himself the savior of the Maronite population. Then the Israeli army will enter Lebanon, occupy the necessary territory, create a Christian regime that will ally itself with Israel. The territory from Litani southward will be totally annexed to Israel, and everything will fall into place.” (1956)

“We want [Palestinian] emigration, we want a normal standard of living, we want to encourage emigration according to a selective program.” (1967)

“The proposed policy [of raising the level of public service in the occupied territories] may clash with our intention to encourage emigration from both [Gaza] Strip and Judea and Samaria. Anyone who has practical ideas or proposal to encourage emigration—-let him speak up. No idea or proposal is to be dismissed out of hand.” (1968)

“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 Yehushu’a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” (1969)

“Never mind that [when asked that Syrians initiated the war from the Golan Heights]. After all, I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let’s talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plough someplace where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was. I did that, and Laskov and Chara [Zvi Tsur, Rabin's predecessor as chief of staff] did that, Yitzhak did that, but it seems to me that the person who most enjoyed these games was Dado [David Elzar, OC Northern Command, 1964-69].” (1976)

“Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.”

“There is no more Palestine. Finished . . .” (1973)

[His Masada vision:] “A new State of Israel with broad frontiers, strong and solid, with the authority of the Israel Government extending from the Jordan [river] to the Suez Canal.” (1973)

Moshe Sharett (Shertok):

“[The Arabs have] extremely subtle understanding and delicate senses. There is a wall between us and them and there is tragic development in that this wall is getting taller. But, nevertheless, if this wall can be prevented from getting taller, it is sacred duty to do so, if at all possible.”

“We have not come to an empty country. We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it, that governs it by the virtue of its language and savage culture ….. Recently there has been appearing in our newspapers the clarification about “the mutual misunderstanding” between us and the Arabs, about “common interests” [and] about “the possibility of unity and peace between two fraternal peoples.” ….. [But] we must not allow ourselves to be deluded by such illusive hopes ….. for if we cease to look upon our land, the Land of Israel, as ours alone and we allow a partner into our estate- all content and meaning will be lost to our enterprise.” (1914)

“The proposed Jewish state [referring to the proposed 1937 Peel Commission partition plan] territory would not be continuous; its borders would be twisted and broken; the question of defending the frontier line would pose enormous difficulties …. the frontier line would separate villages from their fields …. Moreover the [Palestinian] Arab reaction would be negative because they would lose everything and gain almost nothing ….. in contrast to us they would lose totally that part of Palestine which they consider to be an Arab country and are fighting to keep it such … They would lose the richest part of Palestine; they would lose major Arab assets, the orange plantations, the commercial and industrial centers and the most important sources of revenue for their government which would become impoverished; they would lose most of the coastal area, which would also be a loss to the hinterland Arab states….. It would mean that they would be driven back to the desert (‘Zorkim Otam’) …. A Jewish territory [state] with fewer Arab subjects would make it easy for us but it would also mean a procrustean bed for us while a plan based on expansion into larger territory would mean more [Palestinian] Arab subjects in the Jewish territory.

“For the next 10 years the possibility of transferring the Arab population would not be ‘practical’. As for the long-term future: I am prepared to see in this a vision, not a mystical way but in a realistic way, of a population exchange on a much more important scale and including larger territories. As for now, we must not forget who would have to exchange the land? those villages which live more than others on irrigation, on orange and fruit plantations, in houses built near water wells and pumping stations, on livestock and property and easy access to markets. Where would they go? What would they receive in return? … This would be such an uprooting, such a shock, the likes of which had never occurred and could drown the whole thing in rivers of blood. At this stage let us not entertain ourselves with the analogy of population transfer between Turkey and Greece; there were different conditions there. Those Arabs who would remain would revolt; would the Jewish state be able to suppress the revolt without assistance from the British Army?” (1937)

“Fear is the main factor in [Palestinian] Arab politics. . . . There is no Arab who is not harmed by Jews’ entry into Palestine.” (1936)

“First of all, almost 300,000 [Palestinian] Arabs will exist under Jewish rule. It is not so easy to carry out [population] exchange . . . . And even if they [the British] indeed would want to uproot the [Palestinian] Arab population by force, this would result in such bloodshed that the current rebellion in the country would be almost nothing in comparison. Such a thing could not be done without British forces, at least in the transition period. . . . It is a big question whether [Britain] would have the courage to carry this out.” (1937)

“We talked about the question of partition in connection with Transjordan. Wadsworth said that it was known to him that the [British] Government was very impressed by the proposal contained in the memorandum that we had submitted to the [Peel] “Royal Commission” concerning the transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the Western Eretz Yisrael [i.e. "Palestine"] to Transjordan in order to evacuate the place for new Jewish settlers. They saw this proposal as a constructive plan indeed.” (1937)

“The critical problem is a parliamentarism in the Jewish state and in the transition period to it …. it is necessary that an institution of government should be set up, and one of its functions will be to prepare the parliamentary regime. In this transition period also we will know who are the [Palestinian] Arabs who would agree to remain as citizens of the Jewish state and their number would certainly be much smaller than we think today. By the reduction of the [Palestinian] Arabs on the one hand and Jewish immigration in the transition period on the other, we will ensure an absolute Hebrew majority in a parliamentary regime.” (1938)

“The [Transfer] Committee must work quietly and without publicity but it could not work in complete mystery and without assistance from the public authorities, especially now, during the [second war] war. Therefore, contact ought to be made with the [British military] authorities in Egypt .” (1941)

“Transfer could be the crowning achievement, the final stage in the development of [our] policy, but certainly not the point of departure. By [speaking publicly and prematurely] we could mobilizing vast forces against the matter and cause it to fail, in advance.” (1947)

“When the Jewish state is established–it is very possible that the result will be transfer of [the Palestinian] Arabs.” (1947)

[To Chaim Weizmann:] “With regard to the refugees, we are determined to be adamant while the war lasts. Once the return tide starts, it will be impossible to stem it, and it will prove our undoing. As for the future, we are equally determined to explore all possibilities of getting rid, once and for all, of the huge [Palestinian] Arab minority [referring to the Palestinian Israeli citizens of Israel ] which originally threatened us. What can be achieved in this period of storm and stress [referring to the 1948 war] will be quite unattainable once conditions get stabilized. A group of people [headed by Yosef Weitz] has already started working on the study of resettlement possibilities [for the Palestinian refugees] in other lands . . . What such permanent resettlement of ‘Israeli’ Arabs in the neighboring territories will mean in terms of making land available in Israel for settlement of our own people requires no emphasis.” (1948)

[To Nahum Goldmann:] “The opportunities which the present position open up for a lasting and radical solution of the most vexing problem of the Jewish state [i.e. Palestinian Arab minority problem] are so far-reaching as to take one’s breath away. Even of if a certain backlash is unavoidable, we must make the most of the momentous chance with which history has presented us so swiftly and so unexpectedly.” (1948)

“The interests of security demand that we get rid of them. [the Arabs of Wadi'Ara" (1949)

[King Abdullah's father (al-Shareif al-Hussein) had a dream to control the "Great Syria". When this "dream" was not within reach of either him or his son, King Abdullah sought alliance with the Zionist movement to achieve his father's "dream". According to several historians, such as Avi Shlaim and Simha Flapan, the "dream" for a Hashmite controlled "Great Syria" was an obsession for both father and son. This "dream" was exploited by the Zionist leadership to drive a wedge between the neighboring Arab states. Ironically, the Arab countries whose armies entered Palestine on May 15th, 1948 did so to keep H.M. King Abdullah from controlling the Palestinian portion of Palestine, which was allotted to Palestinian Arabs based on UN GA resolution 181. During a meeting with H.M. King Abdullah at Shunah-Jordan, which took place soon after Husni al-Zaim's coup in Syria, Moshe Sharett wrote in the spring of 1949:] ”I explained [to King Abdullah] that we would like to adjust our position on the Syrian question to theirs [to establish a Hashemite Greater Syria], as, in our view, they are the decisive factor in our relations with our neighbors, and Syria is unimportant. Abdullah’s face did not conceal his satisfaction as he turned his head to his prime minister. Tawfiq Pasha said they were waiting to see how things would develop in Syria. . . . ‘The man who took power has to pass the test of the people’s trust. . . . ‘ I said: ‘Your position is cautioned your biding your time?’ and they said: ‘Yes.’ I said: ‘What is your view about Syria as a state, should she remain in the present frontiers?’ The king rose and said with great solemnity: ‘You mean the idea of Greater Syria? This one of the principles of the Arab Revolt that I have been serving all my life.” (1949) [Yigal Yadin: "Abdullah is more interested in Greater Syria than in Palestine. This is in his blood, this is his political and military outlook and he is ready to sell out all the Palestinians in this aim. We have to know how to play this card to achieve our aim. . . . We should not support the plan of Greater Syria but we should divert Abdullah toward this plan." (1949)]

[To Dr. Nahum Goldmann:] “the most spectacular event in the contemporary history of Palestine, in a way more spectacular than the creation of the Jewish state, is the wholesale evacuation of its [Palestinian] Arab population. . . . The opportunities opened up by the present reality for a lasting and radical solution of the most vexing problem of the Jewish state are so far-reaching as to take one’s breath away. The reversion of the status quo ante is unthinkable.” (1949)

[To Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vishinsky:] “There are countries—and I was referring to North Africa— from which not all Jews need to emigrate. It is not so much of quantity as of quality. Our role in Israel is a pioneering one, and we need people with certain strength of fiber. We are very anxious to bring the Jews of Morocco over and we are doing all we can to achieve this. But we cannot count on the Jews of Morocco alone to build the country, because they have not been educated for this. We don’t know what may yet happen to us, what military and political defeats we may yet have to face. So we need people who will remain steadfast in any hardship and who have a high degree of resistance. For the purpose of building up our country, I would say that the Jews of Eastern Europe are the salt of the earth. . . . ” (1950)

[Re Qibya Massacre:] “A reprisal of this magnitude . . . . has never been carried out before. I paced back and forth in my room perplexed and completely depressed, feeling helpless.” (1953)

[After Israel hijacked a civilian Syrian airliner and took the pasengers hostage: Israel must choose between] “a state of law and a state of piracy.” (1955)

[Re Moshe Dayan and Ben-Gurion:] “I saw clearly how those who saved the state so heroically and courageously in the War of Independence would be capable of bringing a catastrophe upon it if they are given the chance in normal times.” … “The lack of seriousness exhibited by the [military brass, including Ben-Gurion] . . . in its approach to the affairs of the neighboring countries and especially toward the most complicated problem of Lebanon’s internal and external situation was simply horrifying.” (1955)

“What is our vision on this earth—war to the end of all generations and life by the sword?” (1955)

“I am against preventive war because it can turn into general war, to a ring of fire all around us, rather than be restricted to war with Egypt. I am against preventive war because that which did not occur in the War of Independence may occur, namely intervention by foreign power against us. . . . I am against intervention by a foreign power against us. . . . I am against preventive war because it means measures by the UN against us. I am against preventive war because it means injury and damage at home, the destruction of settlements, and the spilling of much blood.” (1955)

“Moshe Dayan unfolded one plan after another for direct action. The first—what should be done to force open blockade of the Gulf of Eilat . A ship flying the Israeli flag should be sent, and if the Egyptians bomb it, we should bomb the Egyptian base from the air, or conquer Ras al-Naqb, or open our way south of Gaza Strip to the coast. There was a general uproar. I asked Moshe: Do you realize that this would mean war with Egypt?, he said: Of course.” (1955)

“In the thirties [during the 1st Palestinian Intifada] we restrained the emotions of revenge and we educated the public to consider revenge as an absolutely negative impulse. Now, on the contrary, we justify the system of reprisals out of pragmatic considerations . . . we eliminated the mental and moral brakes on this instinct and made it possible . . . to uphold revenge as a moral value.” (1955)

“Curious people who have become accustomed to think that one cannot sustain the morale of the army without giving it the freedom to shed blood from time to time.” (1955)

“The activists believe that the Arabs understand only the language of force. . . . The state of Israel must, from time to time, prove clearly that it is strong, and able and willing to use force, in a devastating and highly effective way. If it does not prove this, it will be swallowed up, and perhaps wiped off the face of the earth. As to peace—-this approach states— it is in any case doubtful; in any case, very remote. If peace comes, it will come only if [the Arabs] are convinced that this country cannot be beaten. . . . If [retaliatory] operations . . . . rekindle the fires of hatred, that is no cause for fear for fires will be fuelled in any event. . . .

“The other approach [is that] not even for one moment must the matter of peace vanish from our calculation. This is not only a political calculation; in the long run, this is a decisive security consideration [as well] . . . . We must restrain our responses [to Arab attacks] An there is always the question: is it really proven that retaliatory actions solve the security problem?.” (1957)

“I have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism. These are historical facts that cannot be altered. . . In the end, history will justify both the stratagems and deceit and the acts of adventurism. All I know is that I, Moshe Sharett, am not capable of them, and I am therefore unsuited to lead this country.” (1957)

David Gruen (Ben-Gurion)

[Shabtai Teveth on Ben-Gurion:] “1906… Ben-Gurion remarked only on the buildings, ruins, and scenery. He gave no thought to the Arabs, their problems, their social conditions, or their cultural life. Nor had he yet acquainted himself with the Jewish community in Palestine [which was mostly non-Zionist Orthodox Jews]. In all of Palestine there were [in 1906] 700,000 inhabitants, only 55,000 of whom were Jews, and only 550 of these were [Zionists] pioneers.”

“This [Arab] hatred [of Jewish settlers] originates with the Arab workers in Jewish settlements. Like any worker, the Arab worker detests his taskmaster and exploiter. But because this class conflict overlaps a national difference between farmers and workers, this hatred takes a national form. Indeed, the national overwhelms the class aspect of the conflict in the minds of the Arab working masses, and inflames an intense hatred toward the Jews.” (1914)

[A Jewish laborer should earn a higher salary than an Arab because he is] “more intelligent and diligent”

[Re the future Jewish state's frontiers:] “To the north, the Litani river [S. Lebanon], to the northeast, the Wadi ‘Owja, twenty miles south of Damascus; the southern border will be mobile and pushed into Sinai at least up to Wadi al-’Arish; and to the east, the Syrian Desert, including the furthest edge of Transjordan” (1918)

“Palestine is not an empty country . . . on no account must we injure the rights of the inhabitants.” (1918)

“We do not recognize the right of the Arabs to rule the country, since Palestine is still undeveloped and awaits its builders.” (1924)

“The Arabs have no right to close the country to us. What right do they have to the Negev desert, which is uninhabited?” (1928)

“The Arabs have no right to the Jordan river, and no right to prevent the construction of a power plant. They have a right only to that which they have created and to their homes.” (1930; when Arabs constituted 85% of Palestine’s population, and owned and operated over 97% of the land)

“Everybody sees the problem in the relations between the Jews and the Arabs. But not everybody sees that there’s no solution to it. There is no solution! . . . The conflict between the interests of the Jews and the interests of the Arabs in Palestine cannot be resolved by sophisms. I don’t know any Arabs who would agree to Palestine being ours—even if we learn Arabic . . .and I have no need to learn Arabic. On the other hand, I don’t see why ‘Mustafa’ should learn Hebrew. . . . There’s a national question here. We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want the country to be theirs.” (Versailles, 1919)

“Within then the next twenty years, we must have a Jewish majority in Palestine.” (1917)

“I am unwilling to forego even one percent of Zionism for ‘peace’—yet I do not want Zionism to infringe upon even one percent of legitimate Arab rights” (1925)

“The success of the Arabs in organizing the closure of shops shows that we are dealing here with a national movement. For the Arabs, this is an important education step.” (1922)

“It’s true that the Arab national movement has no positive content. The leaders of the movement are unconcerned with betterment of the people and provision of their essential needs. They do not aid the fellah; to the contrary, the leaders suck his blood, and exploit the popular awakening for private gain. But we err if we measure the Arabs and their movement by our standards. Every people is worthy of its national movement. The obvious characteristic of a political movement is that it knows how to mobilize the masses. From this prospective there is no doubt that we are facing a political movement, and we should not underestimate it.” (1929)

“Our sense of morality forbids us to deny the right of a single [Palestinian] Arab child, even though by such denial we might attain all that we seek.” (1929)

“A Jewish majority is not Zionism’s last station, but it is a very important station on the route to Zionism’s political triumph. It will give our security and presence a sound foundation, and allow us to concentrate masses of Jews in this country and the region.” (1929)

“The debate as to whether or not an Arab national movement exists is a pointless verbal exercise; the main thing for us is that the movement attracts the masses. We do not regard it as a resurgence movement and its moral worth is dubious. But politically speaking it is a national movement . . . . The Arab must not and cannot be a Zionist. He could never wish the Jews to become a majority. This is the true antagonism between us and the Arabs. We both want to be the majority.” (1929)

“They [Palestinians] showed new power and remarkable discipline. Many of them were killed . . . this time not murderers and rioters, but political demonstrators. Despite the tremendous unrest, the order not to harm Jews was obeyed. This shows exceptional political discipline. There is no doubt that these events will leave a profound imprint on the Arab movement. This time we have seen a political movement which must evoke the respect of the world. (1930)

“England is a great power, the greatest empire. But to shatter even the largest stones on earth, it takes only a small quantity of explosive powder. Such powder packs tremendous force. If the creative force within us is capable of stopping this EVIL EMPIRE, then the explosive force will ignite, and we will topple this blood-stained imperium. . . . We will be those who take this war upon ourselves and beware thee, British Empire!” … “Prepare for a long and difficult road, if we are left with no alternatives, a road of alliance with the Arabs against these despicable powers.” (1931)

“We do not recognize any form of absolute ownership over any country. Any group of diligent persons, every industrious people, is entitled to enjoy the fruits of labor, and do with its talents as it pleases. it has no right to prevent others from doing the same, or to close the doors leading to nature’s gifts in the faces of others. The five million inhabitants of Australia have no right to close the gates of their continent–which they alone cannot fully exploit– and so exclude the masses of desperate people seeking a new place to work. This is the principle behind the right of free migration, championed by international socialism.” (1931)

“The Arab community in Palestine is an organic, inseparable part of the landscape. It is embedded in the country. The Arabs work the land, and will remain.” … “The only right by which a people can claim to possess a land indefinitely is the right conferred by willingness to work.” (1931)

“Almost every Arab [opposes Zionism] because he is an Arab, because he is a Muslim, because he dislikes foreigners, and because we are hateful to him in every way.” [The conflict had lasted thirty years, and was liable] “to continue for perhaps hundreds more.” [It was a] “real war, a war of life or death.” (1938)

“I never felt hatred of the Arabs and none of their actions ever awakened vengeful emotions in me.” … “The destruction of Jaffa, the city and the port, will happen and it will be for the best. This city, which grew fat on Jewish immigration and settlement, is asking for destruction when it swings a hatchet over the heads of its builders and benefactors. When Jaffa falls into hell I will not be among the mourners.” (1936)

“These days it is not right but might which prevails.  It is more important to have force than justice on one’s side.” (1933)

“Arab leaders see no value in the economic dimension of the country’s development, and while they will concede that our immigration has brought material blessings to Palestine, they nevertheless contend — and from the Arab point of view, they are right — that they want neither the honey nor the bee sting.”

“I see why the government feels the need to show leniency towards the Arabs . . . it is not easy to suppress a popular movement strictly by the use of force.” (1936)

[To Moshe Sharett:] “Were I an Arab, and Arab with nationalist political consciousness . . . I would rise up against an immigration liable in the future to hand the country and all of its Arab inhabitants over to Jewish rule. What Arab cannot do his math and understand what immigration at the rate of 60,000 a year means a Jewish state in all of Palestine.” (1937)

“When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend ourselves —- that is only half the truth. As regards our security and life we defend ourselves. . . . But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict, which is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves.” (1938)

“The Arabs fear of our power is intensifying, see exactly the opposite of what we see. It doesn’t matter whether or not their view is correct…. They see [Jewish] immigration on a giant scale …. they see the Jews fortify themselves economically .. They see the best lands passing into our hands. They see England identify with Zionism. ….. [Arabs are] fighting dispossession … The fear is not of losing land, but of losing the homeland of the Arab people, which others want to turn it into the homeland of the Jewish people. There is a fundamental conflict. We and they want the same thing: We both want Palestine ….. By our very presence and progress here, [we] have matured the [Arab] movement.” (1937)

“There is no conflict between Jewish and Arab nationalism because the Jewish nation is not in Palestine and the Palestinians are not a nation.” (1937)

[To the World Convention of Ihud Po'alei Tzion in Zurich, 1937:] “Having Lebanon as a neighbor ensures the Jewish state of a faithful ally from the first day of its establishment. It is not, also, unavoidable that across the northern side of the Jewish state border in southern Lebanon the first possibility of our expansion will come up through agreement, in good will, with our neighbors who need us.”

“The right which the Arabs in Palestine have is one due to the inhabitants of any country . . . because they live here, and not because they are Arabs . . . The Arab inhabitants of Palestine should enjoy all the rights of citizens and all political rights, not only as individuals, but as a national community, just like the Jews.” (1937)

“It is very possible that the Arabs of the neighboring countries will come to their aid against us. But our strength will exceed theirs. Not only because we will be better organized and equipped , but because behind us there stands a still larger force, superior in quality and quantity …. the whole younger generation”. (1937)

“We must EXPEL ARABS and take their places …. and, if we have to use force-not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places — then we have force at our disposal.” (1937)

“The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second Temples. . . We are given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imaginings. This is MORE than a state, government and sovereignty—-this is national consolidation in a free homeland.” (1937)

“In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin. . . it is important that this plan comes from the [British Peel] Commission and not from us. . . . Jewish power, which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out the transfer on a large scale. You must remember, that this system embodies an important humane and Zionist idea, to transfer parts of a people to their country and to settle empty lands. We believe that this action will also bring us closer to an agreement with the Arabs.” (1937)

“With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] …. I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.” (1937)

“With compulsory transfer we [would] have vast areas …. I support compulsory [population] transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it. But compulsory transfer could only be carried out by England …. Had its implementation been dependent merely on our proposal I would have proposed; but this would be dangerous to propose when the British government has disassociated itself from compulsory transfer. …. But this question should not be removed from the agenda because it is central question. There are two issues here : 1) sovereignty and 2) the removal of a certain number of Arabs, and we must insist on both of them.” (1938)

“I don’t regard a state in part of Palestine as the final aim of Zionism, but as a mean toward that aim.” (1938)

“The borders [of the Jewish state] will not be fixed for eternity.”  (1937)

“It is very possible that in exchange for our financial, military, organizational and scientific assistance, the Arabs will agree that we develop and build the Negev. It is also possible that they won’t agree. No people always behaves according to logic, common sense, and best interests.” … “Because we cannot stand to see large areas of unsettled land capable of absorbing thousands of Jews remain empty, or to see Jews not return to their country because the Arabs say that there is not enough room for them and us.” (1937)

The “historic aim of the Jewish state” is the “gathering of the exiles in all of Palestine.” And so “from the moment the state is established, it must calculate its actions with an eye toward this distant goal.” (1938)

“Just as I do not see the proposed Jewish state as a final solution to the problems of the Jewish people, so I do now see partition as the final solution of the Palestine question. Those who reject partition are right in their claim that this country cannot be partitioned because it constitute one unit, not only from a historical point of view but also from that of nature and economy” (1938)

“After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the [Jewish] state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of the Palestine”  (1938)

“The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan. One does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today–but the boundaries of the Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.”  (1938)

“In my opinion we must insist on the Peel Commission proposal, which sees in the transfer the only solution to this problem. And I have now to say that it is worthwhile that the Jewish people should bear GREATEST material sacrifices in order to ensure the success of transfer.” (1937)

“The compulsory transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the valleys of the projected Jewish state . . . . we have to stick to this conclusion the same way we grabbed at the Zionism itself.” (1937)

“We will not be able to countenance large uninhabited areas absorb tens of thousands of Jews remaining empty …. And if we have to use force we shall use it without hesitation — but only if we have no choice. We do not want and do not need to expel Arabs and take their places. Our whole desire is based on the assumption — which has been corroborated in the course of all our activity in the country — that there is enough room for us and the Arabs in the country and that if we have to use force – not in order to dispossess the Arabs from the Negev or Transjordan but in order to assure ourselves of the right, which is our due to settle there- then we have the force.” (1937)

“[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state–we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel.” (1938)

“This is only a stage in the realization of Zionism and it should prepare the ground for our expansion throughout the whole country through Jewish-Arab agreement …. the state, however, must enforce order and security and it will do this not by mobilizing and preaching ’sermons on the mount’ but by the machine-guns, which we will need.” (1938)

“No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land Of Israel. [A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning ….. Our possession is important not only for itself … through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state …. will serve as a very potent lever in our historical effort to redeem the whole country.” (1937)

“Jewish suffering is also a political factor, and whoever says that Hitler diminished our strength, is not telling the truth.” (1937)

“Had partition been carried out, the history of our people would have been different and six million Jews in Europe would not have been killed—most of them would be in Israel” (1948)

“If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz-Yisrael, I would choose the latter—-because we are faced not only with the accounting of these [Jewish] children but also with the historical accounting of the Jewish People.” (1938)

“The catastrophe of European Jewry is not, in a direct manner, my business. . . . The destruction of the European Jewry is the death-knell of Zionism.” (1942)

[To Auni Abdul Hadi:] “Our ultimate goal is the independence of the Jewish people in Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan, not as a minority but as a community of several million. In my opinion, it is possible to create over a period of forty years, if Transjordan was included, a community of four million Jews in addition to an Arab community of two million.” (1948)

[Ben Gurion believed that the Zionist interests would be best served if the Palestinian Arabs were represented by al-Hajj Amin's men:] “It will be much easier for us to counter their claim. We can say that they stand for terrorism and represent only small part of the Arab population. A broad delegation [to London] including ‘moderates’ [such Nashashibi's Istiqlal party] will display the Arab public’s general resistance to the Jews.” (1939)

“…our demand [is] not as a Jewish state in Palestine but Palestine as a Jewish state” (1942)

“Zionism is a TRANSFER of the Jews. Regarding the TRANSFER of the Arabs this is much easier than any other TRANSFER. There are Arab states in the vicinity . . . . and it is clear that if the Arabs are removed [to these states] this will improve their condition and not the contrary.” (1944)

“We have to examine, first, if this transfer is practical, and secondly, if it is necessary. It is impossible to imagine general evacuation without compulsion, and brutal compulsion, There are of course sections of the non-Jewish population of the Land of Israel which will not resist transfer under adequate conditions to certain neighboring countries, such as the Druze, a number of Bedouin tribes in the Jordan Valley and the south, the Circassians and perhaps even the Metwalis [the Sh'ite of the Galilee]. But it would be very difficult to bring about resettlement of other sections of the [Palestinian] Arab populations such as the fellahin and the urban populations in neighboring Arab countries by transferring them voluntarily, whatever economic inducements are offered to them.”

“The possibility of large-scale transfer of a population by force was demonstrated, when the Greeks and the Turks were transferred [after WW I]. In the present war [referring to WW II] the idea of transferring a population is gaining more sympathy as a practical and the most secure means of solving the dangerous and painful problem of national minorities. The war has already brought the resettlement of many people eastern and southern Europe, and in the plans for the postwar settlements the idea of a large-scale population transfer in central, eastern, and southern Europe increasingly occupies a respectable place.”

“The aim of the Arab attacks on Zionism is not robbery, terror, or stopping the growth of the Zionist enterprise, but the total destruction of the Yishuv [Palestinian Jewish community prior to May 1948]. It is not political adversaries who will stand before us, but the pupils and teachers of Hitler, who claim there is only one way to solve the Jewish question, one way only — total annihilation.” (1947)

“Arabs are fleeing from Jaffa and Haifa. Bedouin are fleeing from the Sharon. Most are seeking [to join up] with members of their family. Villagers are returning to their villages. Leaders are also in flight, most of them are taking their families to Nablus, Nazareth. The Bedouins are moving to Arab areas. According to our ‘friends’ [advisors], every response to our dealing a hard blow at the [Palestinian] Arabs with many casualties is a blessing. This will increase the Arabs’ fear and external help for the Arabs will be ineffective. To what extent will stopping transportation cramp the Arabs? The fellahin [peasants] won’t suffer, but city dwellers will. The country dwellers don’t want to join the disturbances, unless dragged in by force. A vigorous response will strengthen the refusal of the peasants to participate in the battle. Josh Palmon [an advisor to Ben-Gurion on Arab affairs] thinks that Haifa and Jaffa will be evacuated [by the Palestinians] because of hunger. There was almost famine in Jaffa during the disturbances of 1936-1939.” (1947)

“the important difference with [1st Intifada of] 1937 is the increased vulnerability of the [Palestinian] urban economy. Haifa and Jaffa are at our mercy. We canstarve them out. Motorized transport, which has also become an important factor in their life, is to a large extent at our mercy.”  (1947)

“The strategic objective [of the Jewish forces] was to destroy the urban communities, which were the most organized and politically conscious sections of the Palestinian people. This was not done by house-to-house fighting inside the cities and towns, but by the conquest and destruction of the rural areas surrounding most of the towns. This technique led to the collapse and surrender of Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias, Safed, Acre, Beit-Shan, Lydda, Ramleh, Majdal, and Beersheba. Deprived of transportation, food, and raw materials, the urban communities underwent a process of disintegration, chaos, and hunger, which forced them to surrender.” (1947)

“we adopt the system of aggressive defense; with every Arab attack we must respond with a decisive blow: the destruction of the place or the expulsion of the residents along with the seizure of the place.” (1947)

“In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority …. There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%.“ (1947)

“The wisdom of Israel is now the wisdom of war, nothing else.” (1948)

“The war will GIVE us the land. The concept of ‘ours’ and ‘not ours’ are ONLY CONCEPTS for peacetime, and during war they lose all their meaning.” (1948)

[Ben-Gurion asked Yosef Weitz in early February 1948 whether the Jewish National Fund (JNF) was ready to buy "from him" land at 25 Palestinian Pounds per dunam. Weitz replied: "if the land is Arab [owned] and we will receive the deed of property and possession – then we will buy. Then he [ i.e., Ben-Gurion] laughed and said: DEED of property – no possession-yes.” The next day, Weitz and Granovsky lunched with Ben-Gurion. who restated his: “plan . . . Our army will conquer the Negev, will take the land into its hands and will sell it to the JNF at 20-25 Palestinian pounds per dunam. And there is a source . . . of millions [of pounds]. Granovsky responded jokingly that we are NOT LIVING in the Middle Ages and the army does not steal land. After the war the bedouins [of the Negev] will return to their place—if they leave at all– and will get [back] their land.” A week later, Ben-Gurion suggested to Weitz that he divest himself of: “conventional notions . . . In the Negev we will not buy land. We will conquer it. You are forgetting that we are at war.” (Benny Morris, p. 170) Not only did Ben-Gurion envision war as an instrument to change the demographics picture in favor of the Jewish minority, he also envisioned war as a tool to dispossess Palestinians and raise “millions” of pounds in capital.]

“From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema [East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood]. . . there are no [Palestinian] Arab. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, it has not been Jewish as it is now. In many [Palestinian] Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single [Palestinian] Arab. I do not assume that this will change. . . . What had happened in Jerusalem. . . . is likely to happen in many parts of the country. . . in the six, eight, or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country.” (1948)

“They, the decisive majority of them [Palestinians], do not want to fight us.” (1948)

“We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area, even if only in an artificial way, in a military way. . . . I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of Arab population.” (1948)

[Micheal Bar-Zohar: "The appeals to the Arabs [of Haifa] to stay, Golda’s mission, and other similar gestures were the result of political considerations, but they did not reflect [Ben-Gurion's] basic stand. In internal discussions, in instructions to his people, the ‘old man’ demonstrated a clear stand: it was better that the smallest possible number of Arabs remain with in the [Jewish] state.” (1948)]

“Haifa [is like] a dead city, a corpse city … a horrifying and fantastic sight. … What happened in Haifa can happen in other part of the country if we will hold out … it may be that in the next six or eight months of the campaign, there will be great changes in the country, and not all to our detriment. Certainly, there will be great changes in the composition of the population of the country.” (1948)

[Yitzhak Rabin, 1948: "After attacking Lydda [later called Lod] and then Ramla, …. What would they do with the 50,000 civilians living in the two cities ….. Not even Ben-Gurion could offer a solution …. and during the discussion at operation headquarters, he [Ben-Gurion] remained silent, as was his habit in such situations. Clearly, we could not leave [Lydda's] hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endangered the supply route [to the troops who were] advancing eastward.
Ben-Gurion would repeat the question: What is to be done with the population?, waving his hand in a gesture which said: Drive them out! [garesh otem in Hebrew]. ‘Driving out’ is a term with a harsh ring, …. Psychologically, this was on of the most difficult actions we undertook.”]

“Great Suffering was inflicted upon the men taking part in the eviction action. [They] included youth-movement graduates who had been inculcated with values such as international brotherhood and humaneness. The eviction action went beyond the concepts they were used to. There were some fellows who refused to take part. . . Prolonged propaganda activities were required after the action . . . to explain why we were obliged to undertake such a harsh and cruel action.” (1979)

“I do not accept the version [i.e. policy] that [we] should encourage their return. . . I believe we should prevent their return . . . We must settle Jaffa, Jaffa will become a Jewish city. . . . The return of [Palestinian] Arabs to Jaffa [would be] not just foolish.” If the [Palestinian] Arabs were allowed to return, to Jaffa and elsewhere, ” and the war is renewed, our chances of ending the war as we wish to end it will be reduced. . . . Meanwhile, we must prevent at all costs their return,” he said, and, leaving no doubt in the ministers’ minds about his views on the ultimate fate of the [Palestinian] refugees, he added: “I will be for them not returning after the war.” (1948)

“The Arabs of the land of Israel have only one function left to them — to run away.” (1948)

“Bethlehem, and Hebron, where there are about a hundred thousand Arabs. I assume that most of the Arabs of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron would flee, like the Arabs of Lydda, Jaffa, Tiberias, and Safad, and we will control the whole breadth of the country up to the Jordan.” (1948)

“It is not impossible . . . that we will be able to conquer the way to the Negev, Eilat, and the Dead Sea, and to secure the Negev for ourselves; also to broaden the corridor to Jerusalem, from north to south; to liberate the rest of Jerusalem and to take the Old City; to seize all of central and western Galilee and to expand the borders of the state in all directions.” (1948)

“The Arab people have been beaten by us. Will they forget it quickly? Seven hundred thousand people beat 30 million. Will they forget this offense? It can be assumed that they have a sense of honor. We will make peace efforts, but two sides are necessary for peace. Is there any security that they will not want to take revenge? Let us recognize the truth: we won not because we performed wonders, but because the Arab army is rotten. Must this rottenness persist forever? The situation in the world beckons towards revenge: there are two blocs; there is fear of world war. This tempts anyone with grievance. We will always require a superior defensive capability.” (1948)

“Egypt is the only state among the Arab countries that constitutes a real state and is forging a people inside it. It is a big state. If we could arrive at the conclusion of peace with—it would be a tremendous conquest for us. . . . But in general we need not regret too much that the Arabs refuse to make peace with us.” (1949)

“In his opinion, time will cure all, and all will be forgotten.” (1949)

“Abba Eban [Israeli Foreign Ministry official] came. He sees no point in chasing after peace. The armistice agreement is sufficient for us. If we chase after peace the Arabs will demand a price: either territory, return of refugees, or both. It’s best to wait a few years.” (1949)

“Before the founding of the state, on the eve of its creation, our main interests was self-defense. To a large extent, the creation of the state was an act of self-defense. . . . Many think that we’re still at the same stage. But now the issue at hand is conquest, not self-defense. As for setting the borders— it’s an open-ended matter. In the Bible as well as in our history, there all kinds of definitions of the country’s borders, so there’s no real limit. A border is absolute. If it’s a desert— it could just as well be the other side. If it’s sea, it could also be across the sea. The world has always been this way. Only the terms have changed. If they should find a way of reaching other stars, well then, perhaps the whole earth will no longer suffice.” (1949)

“Riley [the UN official] spoke to Rozen [Israeli Foreign Ministry official]. [Husnei] Zaim [Syria's president] wants to develop Syria and accept 300,000 [Palestinian] refugees. Riley asks if we would agree to sign an armistice agreement now, on the basis of the existing situation. Rozen replied that our answer was negative.” (1949)

“The only thing that surprise me, and surprised me bitterly, was the discovery of such moral failings among us [Jews], which I had never suspected. I mean the mass robbery in which all parts of [the Jewish] population participated.” (1949)

[1948, the Military Governor of Jerusalem, Dov Yosef, wrote Ben-Gurion describing the "looting" of Palestinian properties: "The looting is spreading once again. ...I cannot verify all the reports which reach me, but I get the distinct impression that the commanders are not over-eager to catch and punish the thieves. ...I receive complaints every day. By way of example, I enclose a copy of a letter I received from the manager of the Notre Dame de France (a monastery). Behavior like this in a monastery can cause quite serious harm to us. I've done my best to put a stop to the thefts there, which are all done by soldiers, since civilians are not permitted to enter the place. But as you can see from this letter, these acts are continuing. I am powerless."]

[The Jews of Europe are] “the leading candidates for citizenship in the State of Israel. Hitler, more than he hurt the Jewish people, whom he knew and detested, hurt the Jewish State, whose coming he did not foresee. He destroyed the substance, the main and essential building force of the [Jewish] state. The state arose and did not find the nation which had waited for it.” In the absence of the European Jews, the state of Israel had to bring in Jews from Arab countries. Ben Gurion compared them with the Africans who were brought in as slaves to America.

“Even the immigrant of North Africa, who looks like a savage, who has never read a book in his life, not even a religious one, and doesn’t even know how to say his prayers, either wittingly or unwittingly has behind him a spiritual heritage of thousands of years. . . .” (1949)

“They tell me that there are thieves among them [Polish Jews]. I am a Polish Jew, and I doubt if there is any Jewish community which has more thieves among them. I am doubtful if there is any Jewish community which has more thieves in it than the Polish ones.” A few years later Ben-Gurion wrote to Justice Moshe Estzioni: “An Ashkenazi gangster, thief, pimp, or murderer will not gain the sympathy of the Ashkenazi community (if there is such a thing), nor will he expect it. But in such a primitive community as the Moroccans’ — such a thing is possible. . . . ” (1949)

“This tribe [Yemenite Jews] is in some ways more easily absorbed, both culturally and economically, than any other. It is hardworking, it is not attracted by city life, it has — or at least, the male part has — a good grounding in Hebrew and the Jewish heritage. Yet in other ways it may be the most problematic of all. It is two thousands years behind us [European cultured Jews], perhaps even more. It lacks the most basic primary concepts of civilization (as distinct from culture). Its attitude toward women and children is primitive. Its physical condition poor. Its bodily strength is depleted and it does not have the minimal notions of hygiene. For thousands of years it lived in one of the most benighted and impoverished lands, under a rule even more backward than an ordinary feudal and theocratic regime. The passage from there to Israel has been profound human revolution, not a superficial, political one. All it human values need to changed from the ground.” (1949)

“[Nasser must be taught a lesson, thundered, either] to carry out his duties or to be toppled. It is definitely possible to topple him, and it is even a mitzvah [a sacred obligation] to do so. Who is he anyway, this Nasser-Shmasser.” (1954)

“This is a unique opportunity that two not so small powers [UK and France] will try to topple Nasser, and we shall not stand alone against him while he becomes stronger and conquers all the Arab countries. . . . and maybe the whole situation in the Middle East will change according to my plan.” (1955)

“I told him [French PM, Guy Mollet] about the discovery of oil in the southern and western Sinai, and that it would be good to TEAR this peninsula from Egypt because it did not belong to her; rather it was the English who stole it from the Turks when they believed that Egypt was in their pocket. I suggested laying down a pipeline from Sinai to Haifa to REFINE THE OIL, and Mollet [French PM] showed interest in the suggestion.” (1955)

[In a cable sent to the 7th brigade following the occupation of Sharm al-Sheikh in Sinai, Ben-Gurion wrote on October 29 1956:] “Yotvata, or Tiran, which until fourteen hundred years ago was part of the independent Jewish state, we will revert to being part of the third kingdom of Israel.” In his speech to the Israeli Knesset on November 7, 1956 he hinted that Israel planned to annex the entire Sinai peninsula as well as the Straits of Tiran (the southeastern tip of the Sinai peninsula on the Asian side)”

[Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldman before he died:

"I don't understand your optimism.," Ben-Gurion declared. "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipes us out".

I was stunned by this pessimism, but he went on:

"I will be seventy years old soon. Well, Nahum, if you asked me whether I shall die and be buried in a Jewish state I would tell you Yes; in ten years, fifteen years, I believe there will still be a Jewish state. But ask me whether my son Amos, who will be fifty at the end of this year, has a chance of dying and being buried in a Jewish state, and I would answer: fifty-fifty."

"But how can you sleep with that prospect in mind," I broke in, "and be Prime Minister of Israel too?"

Who says I sleep? he answered simply. (The Jewish Paradox by Nahum Goldman, p. 99)]

Menachem Begin

“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.” (1947)

“The Jewish people have unchallengeable, eternal, historic right to the Land of Israel, the inheritance of their forefathers,” and pledged to build rural and urban exclusive Jewish colonies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

“Israel will not transfer Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza District to any foreign sovereign authority, [because] of the historic right of our nation to this land, [and] the needs of our national security, which demand a capability to defend our State and the lives of our citizens.”

“The hour of decision has arrived. You know what I have done, and what all of us have done. to prevent war and bereavement. But our fate is that in the Land of Israel there is no escape from fighting in the spirit of self-sacrifice. Believe me, the alternative to fighting is Treblinka, and we have resolved that there would be no Treblinkas. This is the moment in which courageous choice has to be made. The criminal terrorists and the world must know that the Jewish people have a right to self-defense, just like any other people.” (1982)

Theodore Herzl

“We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly.” (1895)

[On 7 July 1902, while meeting the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration in London, Herzl was asked why Russian Jews could not be settled in uninhabited lands other than Palestine, such as Argentina, he replied:] “Argentina has a very good soil and the conditions for agricultural labour are much better than in Palestine, but in Palestine they work with enthusiasm and they succeed.”

“We can be the vanguard of culture against barbarianism.”

“The antisemites WILL BECOME our most loyal friends, the antisemites nations will become our allies.”

Validimir Dubnow, 1882:

“The ultimate goal . . . is, in time, to take over the Land of Israel and to restore to the Jews the political independence they have been deprived of for these two thousand years. . . . The Jews will yet arise and, arms in hand (if need be), declare that they are the masters of their ancient homeland.”

Ben-Yehuda and Yehiel Michal Pines, 1882:

“There are now only five hundred [thousand] Arabs, who are not very strong, and from whom we shall easily take away the country if only we do it through stratagems [and] without drawing upon us their hostility before we become a the strong and populous ones.”

Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (Israel’s second president), 1914:

“It should have been the case that the Jewish bourgeoisie would be chauvinistic and would demand only Jewish labor. We, the socialists, tending toward internationalism, should have demanded that workers be employed without regard to national and religious differences. In reality, we see exactly the opposite.”

Meir Disengoff, 1909:

“How can Jews, who demand emancipation in Russia, rob the rights of, and act selfishly toward, other workers upon coming to Eretz Yisrael.”

Azmi Bey, Freemason governor of Jerusalem (who would go on to direct he genocide of Armenians), 1911:

“We are not xenophobes; we welcome all strangers. We are not anti-Semites; we value the economic superiority of the Jews. But no nation, no government could open its arms to groups. . . . aiming to take Palestine from us.”

Sir Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India and the only Jewish member of the British Cabinet, 1917:

“Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom … I have always understood that those who indulged in this creed were largely animated by the restrictions upon and refusal of liberty to Jews in Russia. But at the very time when these Jews have been acknowledged as Jewish Russians and given all liberties, it seems to be inconceivable that Zionism should be officially recognized by the British Government, and that Mr. Balfour should be authorized to say that Palestine was to be reconstituted as the ‘national home of the Jewish people’. I do not know what this involves, but I assume that it means that Mohammedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews, and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mohammedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine … When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens, and you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country …

“I deny that Palestine is today associated with the Jews or properly to be regarded as a fit place for them to live in. The Ten Commandments were delivered to the Jews on Sinai. It is quite true that Palestine plays a large part in Jewish history, but so it does in modern Mohammedan history, and, after the time of the Jews, surely it plays a larger part than any other country in Christian history …

“… When the Jew has a national home, surely it follows that the impetus to deprive us of the rights of British citizenship must be enormously increased. Palestine will become the world’s ghetto. Why should the Russian give the Jew equal rights? His national home is Palestine”.

Lord Sydenham to Lord Balfour:

“… the harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country – Arab all around in the hinterland – may never be remedied … what we have done is, by concessions, not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, to start a running sore in the East, and no one can tell how far that sore will extend.”

Edward Mandell House, US President Wilson’s aid, 1917:

“It is all bad and I told Balfour so. They are making [the Middle East] a breeding place for future war.”

A publication issued by the Zionist Organization, 1919:

“Democracy in American too commonly means MAJORITY RULE without regard to diversities of types or stages of civilization or differences of quality. Democracy in that sense has been called the melting pot in which that quantitatively lesser is assimilated into quantitatively greater. This doubtless is natural in America, and works on the whole very well. But if American idea were applied as an American administration might apply it to Palestine, what would happen? The numerical majority in Palestine today is [Palestinian] Arab, not Jewish. Qualitatively, it is a simple fact that the Jews are now predominant in Palestine, and given proper conditions they will be predominant quantitatively also in a generation or two. But if the crude arithmetical conception of democracy were to be applied now, or at some early stage in the future to Palestinian conditions, the majority that would rule would be the Arab majority, and the task of establishing and developing a great Jewish Palestine would be infinitely more difficult.”

Musa Kathim al-Husseini, Jerusalem’s mayor, to the British governor of Palestine, Storrs, a petition from more than 100 Palestinian notables, 1919:

“We have noticed yesterday a large crowed of Jews carrying banners and over-running the streets shouting words which hurt the feeling and wound the soul. They [Zionist Jews] pretend with OPEN VOICE that Palestine, which is the Holy Land of our fathers and the graveyard of our ancestors, which has been inhabited by the Arabs for long ages, who loved it and died in defending it, is NOW a national home for them.”

Lord Balfour, 1919:

“Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder important then the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit the ancient land.”

Winston Churchill, 1919:

“There are the Jews, whom we are PLEDGED to introduce into Palestine, and who take it for GRANTED the the local [Palestinian] population will be CLEARED out to suit their convenience.”

Winston Churchill, 1921:

“It is manifestly right that the scattered Jews should have a national center and a national home and be reunited and where else but in Palestine with which for 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated? We think it will be good for the world, good for the British Empire, but also good for the Arabs who dwell in Palestine. . . . They shall share in the benefits and progress of Zionism.”

Winston Churchill, to Kathim al-Huseini, 1921:

“[The Jews would not] take any man’s lands. They CANNOT dispossess any man of his RIGHTS or his PROPERTY. . . . There is room for all.”

Winston Churchill, 1941 (contradicting the 1939 White Paper):

“I may say at once that if Britain and the United States emerged victorious from the war, the creation of a GREAT JEWISH STATE in Palestine inhabited by MILLIONS OF JEWS will be one of the LEADING FEATURES of the peace conference discussions.”

Mapai leader David Hacohen, 1936:

“I remember being one of the first of our comrades [of the Ahdut Ha'avodah] to got to London after the first World War. … There I became a socialist. … [In Palestine] I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism, to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my trade union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to the housewives that they not buy at [Palestinian] Arab stores, to prevent [Palestinian] Arab workers from getting jobs there. …. To pour kerosene on the [Palestinian] Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash the Arab eggs they had bought; to praise to the skies the Keneen Kayemet [Jewish National Fund] that sent Hankin to Beirut to buy land from absentee effendi [landlords] and to throw the fellahin [peasants] off the land– to buy dozens of dunums– from an Arab is permitted, but to sell, God forbid, one Jewish dunam to an Arab is prohibited.”

Lord Moyne (assassinated in 1944 by the Jewish Stern Gang in Cairo), to the House of Lords, 1942:

“[European Jews are] not only ALIEN in culture but also in blood. Immigration on this scale [3 million] would be DISASTROUS MISTAKE and indeed an impractical dream. The Arabs who have lived and buried their dead for fifty generations in Palestine, WILL NOT WILLINGLY surrender their land and self-government to the Jews.”

Winston Churchill, 1944:

“Some form of partition is the ONLY solution.”

Winston Churchill, 1944:

“OBVIOUSLY we shall not proceed with ANY FORM of partition which Jews to do not support.”

Winston Churchill, to  Chaim Weizmann, 1944:

“[If the Jews could] get the WHOLE of Palestine, it would be a good thing, but if it came to choice between the [1939] White Paper and partition, then they should take partition.” Churchill also told Weizmann that “he too was for the inclusion of the Negev” in the future Jewish State.

Shlomo Lavi, one of the influential leaders of the Mapai party, 1948:

“the … transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs out of the country in my eyes is one of the MOST JUST, MORAL and CORRECT that can be done. I have thought of this for many years.”

A discussion between MAPAI secretariat, 1948:

Eliyahu Camreli, MK: “I’m NOT WILLING to accept a single [Palestinian] Arab, and not only an Arab but any gentile. I want the State of Israel to be ENTIRELY JEWISH, the descendents of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. . . .”

Yehiel Duvdenvany, MK: “If there was any way of solving the problem way of transfer of the remaining 170,000 [Palestinian] Arabs we would do so. . . .”

David Hakohen, MK: “We didn’t plan the departure of the [Palestinian] Arabs. It was a miracle. . . .”

Z. Onn: “The landscape is MORE BEAUTIFUL—-I enjoy it, especially, when traveling between Haifa and Tel Aviv, and there is not a single [Palestinian] Arab to be seen.”

US ambassador in Damascus to Washington about Israel’s rejections of the proposal sent by Husni al-Za’im (Syria’s president) to conclude a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel. 1949:

“Unless Israel can be BROUGHT to understand that it CANNOT have all of its cake (partition boundaries) and gravy as well (area captured in violation of truce, Jerusalem and resettlement of [Palestinian] Arab refugees elsewhere) it may find that it has WON Pal[estine] war but LOST peace. It should be evident that Israel’s continued insistence upon her pound of flesh and more is DRIVING Arab states (and perhaps surely) to gird their lions (politically and economically if not yet militarily) for LONG range struggle.”

Golda Myrson [later changed to Meir], 1948:

“It is dreadful thing to see the dead city. I found next to the port [Arab] children, women, the old, waiting for a way to leave. I entered the houses, there were houses where coffee and pitot were left on the table, I COULD NOT AVOID [thinking] that this, INDEED, had been the picture in many Jewish towns [i.e. in Europe, during the World War II].

King Abdullah, 1951:

“I could justify a peace by pointing to concessions made by the Jews. But without any concessions from them, I am a DEFEATED before I even start.”

Golda Meir, 1969:

“It is not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them, they did not exist.”

Arthur Ruppin

“Land is the most necessary thing for establishing roots in Palestine. Since there are hardly any more arable unsettled lands. . . . we are bound in each case. . . to remove the peasants who cultivate the land.” (1913)

“[Palestinian dispossession is inevitable because] land is the vital condition for our settlement in Palestine. But since there is hardly any land which is worth cultivating that is not already being cultivated, it is found that whatever we purchase land and settle it, by necessity its present cultivators are turned away.” (1930)

“I do not believe in the TRANSFER of an individual. I believe in the TRANSFER of entire villages.”

Aharon Cizling (Zisling):

“I’ve received a letter on the subject [of war crimes]. I must say that I have known what things have been like for some time and I have raised the issue several times already here. However after reading this letter I couldn’t sleep last night. I felt the things that were going on were hurting my soul, the soul of my family and all of us here. I could not imagine where we came from and to where are we going. . . . I often disagree when the term Nazi was applied to the British. I wouldn’t like to use the term, even though the British committed Nazi crimes. But now Jews too have behaved like Nazis and my entire being has been shaken. . . . Obviously we have to conceal these actions from the public, and I agree that we should not even reveal that we’re investigating them. But they must be investigated. . . .”

“We still do not properly appreciate what kind of enemy we are now nurturing outside the borders of our state. Our enemies, the Arab states, are mere nothing compared with those hundreds of thousands of [Palestinian] Arabs who will be moved by hatred and hopelessness and infinite hostility to wage war on us, regardless of any agreement we might be reached. . . . “

“[Destruction of a site during battle] is one thing. But [if a site is destroyed] a month later, in cold blood, out of political calculation . . . that is another thing altogether . . . This course [of destroying villages] will not reduce the number of [Palestinian] Arabs who will return to the Land of Israel. It will [only] increase the number of [our] enemies.” (1948)

“We are embarking on a course that will most greatly endanger any hope of peaceful alliance with forces who could be our allies in the Middle East …. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs who will be evicted from Palestine, even if they are to blame, and left hanging in the midair, will grow to hate us. If you do things in the heat of the war, in the midst of the battle, it’s one thing. But if after a month, you do it in cold blood, for political reason, in public, that is something altogether different. And I’m speaking now not only of moral considerations but also of political considerations.” (1948)

“I have to say that this phrase [regarding the treatment of Ramla's inhabitants] is a subtle order to EXPEL the Arabs from Ramla. If I’d receive such an order this is how I would interpret it. An order given during the conquest which states that the door is open and that all Arabs may leave, regardless of age, and sex, or they may stay, however, the army will not be responsible for providing food. When such things are said during actual conquest, at the moment of conquest, and after all that has already happened in Jaffa and other places. . . . I would interpret it as a warning: save yourself while you can get out.” (1948)

“It’s been said that, there were cases of rape in Ramla. I can forgive rape, but I will not forgive other acts which seem to me much worse. When they enter a town and forcibly remove rings from the fingers and jewelry from someone’s neck, that’s a very grave matter. … Many are guilty of it.” (1948)

[To Ben-Gurion:] “Again and again in our meetings we discuss the issue of the abandoned property. Everyone expresses shock, bitterness and shame, but we have yet to find a solution. … Up to now we have dealt with individual looters, both soldiers and civilians. Now, however, there are more and more reports about acts which, judging by their nature and extent, could only have been carried out by (government) order. I ask…on what basis was the order given (I hear it has been held back to dismantle all the water pumps in the Arab orange groves). … If there is any foundation to the reports which have reached me, the responsibility rests with a government agency….Meanwhile, private plundering still goes on, too.” (1948)

To Ben-Gurion, 1948:

Cizling: “As I travel about I hear rumors about the destruction of property and I should like to know who gave the order to do this. … I was in Beit Shean and was told by people I trust that the any commander had received an order to destroy the place. … These are facts about villages which I have seen destroyed. In the Hefer Valley I saw Arab villages which had been abandoned by their inhabitants and were not destroyed during the campaign. Now they are in ruins and whoever did it should be called upon to explain. …”

Ben-Gurion: “When you say Beit Shean, that is a particular place. But when you mention generally ‘ruined villages’ — I can’t send people to look for ruined villages.”

Cizling: “Who destroyed the village of Cherkass in the Hefer Valley? At an earlier meeting I mentioned Moussa Goldenberg who reported an order to DESTROY 40 villages and named you, as the source of that order. I stated then that I did not believe it was really done in your name. I am not speaking now about the political aspect, but about things which seem to be happening by themselves, without control. Even if I agreed with a certain act — I wouldn’t accept it being done by itself.”

Yosef Weitz

To the Transfer Committee on November 15, 1937:

“…the transfer of [Palestinian] Arab population from the area of the Jewish state does not serve only one aim–to diminish the Arab population. It also serves a second, no less important, aim which is to advocate land presently held and cultivated by the Arabs and thus to release it for Jewish inhabitants.”

Diary, December 20, 1940:

“it must be clear that there is no room in the country for both [Arab and Jewish] peoples . . . If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us . . . The only solution [after the end of WW II] is a Land of Israel, at least a western land of Israel [i.e. Palestine since Transjordan is the eastern portion], without Arabs. There is no room here for compromises . . . There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, to transfer all of them, save perhaps for Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one [Bedouin] tribe. The transfer must be directed at Iraq, Syria, and even Transjordan. For this goal funds will be found . . . An only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb millions of our brothers and the Jewish problem will cease to exist. There is no other solution.” [A Final Solution]

Diary, March 18, 1941, while visiting Jewish colonies in the Jordan Valley:

“Once again I come face to face with the land settlement difficulties that emanate from the existence of two people in close proximity . . . . We have clashing interests with the Arabs everywhere, and these interests will go and clash increasingly. . . . and once again the answer from inside me is heard: only population transfer and evacuating this country so it would become exclusively for us [Jews] is the solution. This idea does not leave me in these days and I find comfort in it in the face of enormous difficulties in the way of land-buying and settlement.”

Diary, visit to Mishmar Ha’emek (15 miles south of Haifa) a few day later:

“I am increasingly consumed by despair. The Zionist idea is the answer to the Jewish question in the Land of Israel; only in the land of Israel, but not that the Arabs should remain a majority. The complete evacuation of the country from its other inhabitants and handing it over to the Jewish people is the answer.”

Diary, Jun 26, 1941, on a journey near al-Qubab in central Palestine:

“Throughout the journey my reflections were focused on that plan, about which I have been thinking for year; the plan…of evacuating the country for us [Jews]. I know that difficulties…but only through population transfer will redemption come…. There is no room for us with our neighbours…development is a very slow process…. They [Arabs] are too many and too much rooted [in the country] . . . . the only way is to cut and eradicate them from the roots. I feel that this is the truth. . . . I am beginning to understand the essence of the MIRACLE which should happen with the arrival of the Messiah; MIRACLE does not happen in evolution, but all of a sudden, in one moment. … I can see the enormous difficulties but this should not deflect us from our aim; on the contrary, we must double our efforts to overcome the difficulties and find a listening ear, first in America, then in Britain and then in the neighboring countries. There the money will make it. People and money will be transferred there. We will set up an apparatus from the Yishuv manned by distinguished experts and these will supervise the [Palestinian] Arab transfer and resettlement and a second apparatus will receive the [Jewish] redeemers and plant them in the land. . . . I pondered these measures all the way from Tel Aviv and also while visiting near Ramat Hasharon and K’afr Azar. This is the aim, the redemption, and the dream.”

Diary, on meeting Menachem Ussishkin, June 22, 1941:

“The land of Israel is not small at all, if only the Arabs will be removed, and if its frontiers would be enlarged a little; to the north all the way to Litani [River in Lebanon], and to the east including the Golan Heights…while the Arabs be transferred to northern Syria and Iraq. … From now on we must work out a secret plan based on the removal of the Arabs from here [and] to include it into American political circles. … Today we have no other alternative. … We will not live here with Arabs.”

Diary, Summer, 1941, touring central Palestine:

“LARGE villages crowded in population and surrounded by cultivated land growing olives, grapes, figs, sesame, and maize fields . . . . Would we be able to maintain scattered settlements among these existing [Arab] villages that will always be larger than ours? And is there any possibility of buying their [land]?. . . . . and once again I hear that voice inside me called: evacuate this country.”

Diary, one day after the vote on the UN GA partition plan resolution, November 1947:

“The creation of the Hebrew State in part of the country is the beginning of complete redemption. … How should we solve the question of the Arabs who constitute half of the state population? … I have been working day and night in these days on the calculation of the land in the Hebrew state … Indeed we still need to redeem much until most of the cultivated land will be our property.” [1947, the collective ownership of the Jewish National Fund (one-half of all Zionist and Jewish land ownership) amounted to 3.5% of Palestine.] “Without taking action to TRANSFER population, we will not be able to solve our question by [land] buying. … “[Most of the land is] not Jewish-owned or even in the category of the state domain whose ownership could be automatically assumed by a successor government. Thus, of 13,500,000 dunums (6,000,000 of which were desert and 7,500,000 dunums of cultivable land) in the Jewish state according to the Partition plan, ONLY 1,500,000 dunums were Jewish owned.”

January 13, 1948 Weitz to Haifa Jewish National Fund, on eethnic cleansing of the lands of Wadi Qabbani:

“I gave instructions not to miss the opportunities in the turbulent hour.”

Diary, January 1948, about the inhabitants of Daliyat al-Rawha’ south ofHaifa:

“Isn’t now the time to be rid of them? Why continue to keep in our midst these thorn at a time when they pose a danger to us? Our people are weighing up a solution.”

Diary February 20, 1948, about bedouins crossing Baysan valley to Transjordan:

“It is possible that now is the time to implement our original plan: transfer them there.”

About the inhabitants of Qumya and al-Tira in the Baysan valley:

“They must be forced to leave their villages until peace comes.”

Requesting meeting with Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv, April 4 1948:

[To discuss the] “question of evacuating/clearing out the Arabs. … [ten days after, we] must direct our war towards the removal of as many Arabs as possible from boundaries of out state. The guarding of their property after their removal is a secondary question. … [S]ubmit a proposal for removal [of Arabs] from localities based on my considerations.”

Diary, April 18, 1948:

“I made a summery of a list of the Arab villages which in my opinion must be cleared out in order to complete Jewish regions. I also made a summery of the places that have land disputes and must be settled by military means.”

Diary, April 21, 1948:

“Our army is steadily conquering Arab villages and their inhabitants afraid and fleeing like mice. You have no idea what happened in the Arab villages. It is enough that during the night several shells will whistle over them and they flee for their lives. Villages are steadily emptying, and if we continue on this course –and we shall certainly do so as our strength increases– then villages will empty of their inhabitants.”

Diary, April 24, 1948, regarding the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages near Haifa:

“I was happy to hear from him [a Haganah officer] that this line was being adopted by the commander . . . to frighten the Arabs so long as flight-induced fear was upon them.”

Diary, April 28, 1948:

“Khayriyah and Saqiyah [two Palestinian Arab villages in the coastal plain] have also been cleared out. My plan is getting implemented.”

Diary, May 4, 1948:

“The Beit Shean [Beisan] Valley is the gate for our state in the Galilee … I told them [Beisan Valley Jewish representatives] that its clearing [of Arabs] is the need of the hour.”

Diary, August 1948:

“If the policy want is that they should not be allowed to return, [then] there is no need to cultivate land beyond what is needed for our existence. It is possible that Jews would be settled in some abandoned villages and that there are [Arab] villages that should be destroyed so that they do not attract their refugees to return. What can be bought  should be bought [but] first we must set policy: Arabs who abandoned [their homes, farms, businesses] should not [be allowed to] return.”

Diary, late November 1948:

[Two of my officials at the Jewish National Fund complained that] “the army continues to destroy villages in the Galilee, which we are interested in [for the settlement of Jewish immigrants."

Diary, December 1948, during a visit to al-Zeeb (14 km north of Acre):

"[The village had been] completely leveled and I now wonder if it was good that it was destroyed and would it not have been a greater revenge had we now settled Jews in the village houses. . . [The empty houses are] good for settlement of [our Jewish] brothers who wondered for generation upon generation, refugees. . . steeped in suffering and sorrow, as they, at last, find a roof over their heads. This was [the reason for] our war.”

To Ben-Gurion, 1949:

[Arab refugees] “must be harassed continually.”

To Yaakov Zrubavel, head of the Middle East Department of the Jewish Agency, 1949:

“You know that we do not have a common language with them [Oriental Jews]. Our culture level is not theirs. Their way of life is medieval. … While I was talking to Yosef Shprintsak, he expressed anxiety about preserving our cultural standards given the massive immigration from the Orient. There are indeed grounds for anxiety, but what’s the use? Can we stop it?” [Zrubavel: "Perhaps these are not the Jews we would like to see coming here, but we can hardly tell them not to come."]

Diary, 1949:

“[During the British Mandate period, the JNF had purchased land] crumb by crumb. But now a great change has taken place before our eyes. The spirit of Israel, in a giant thrust, has burst through the obstacles, and has conquered the keys to the land, and the road to fulfillment has been freed from its bonds and its guardians-enemies [Arabs]. Now, only now, the hour has come for planning considered [regional] plans . . . The abandoned lands will never return to their absentee [Arab] owners.”

Diary, 1949:

“Every day our men encounter familiar faces, people who had been absent, and now they are walking about freely, step by step, returning to their villages. I fear that while you are discussing the issue in Laussanne and in other places, the problem is (unfortunately) solving itself—the refugees are coming back! And our government has taken no action to stop infiltration. There seems to be no authority, either military or civilian. We’ve loosened the rope, and the Arab, with his sly cunning, senses it and knows how to take advantage of it.”

“The ring of embittered [Palestinian] Arabs surrounding us with hatred and vengeance on all sides will not be loosened for many years to come, and we will act as a barrier to a genuine peace between us and our neighbors.”

[1949, Weitz proposed an extensive project of getting Christian Arabs to emigrate to Argentina. Nothing came out of his proposal since the Israeli government was unable to make up its mind.]

When the first Israeli Knesset convened in 1949, two elected Palestinian Arab-Israelis to the Knesset were present wearing their tradition headdress. Weitz wrote in his diary:

“It chilled the heart and angered the soul. … I do not want there to be many of them.”

Menachem Ussishkin

“[Land is acquired] by force — that is, by conquest in war, or in other words, by ROBBING land form its owner; … by expropriation via government authority; or by purchase. [The Zionist movement was limited to the third choice] until at some point we become rulers.” (1904)

“We must continually raise the demand that our land be returned to our possession…. If there are other inhabitants there, they must be transferred to some other place. We must take over the land. We have a great and NOBLER ideal than preserving several hundred thousands of Arabs fellahin [peasants].” (Jerusalem, 1930)

“What we can demand today is that all Transjordan be included in the Land of Israel…on condition that Transjordan would be either be made available for Jewish colonization or for the resettlement of those Arabs, whose lands we would purchase. Against this, the most conscientious person could not argue. … For the Arabs of the Galilee, Transjordan is a province … for the resettlement of Palestine’s Arabs. … Now the [Palestinian] Arabs DO NOT WANT want us because we want to be the rulers. I will fight for this. I will make sure that we will be the landlords of this land…because this country belongs to us not to them…” (1936)

“We cannot start the Jewish state with … half the population being Arab . … Such a state cannot survive even half an hour. And about transferring sixty thousand Arab families he said: “It is most moral … I am ready to come an defend … it before the Almighty.” (1937)

“We cannot begin the Jewish state with a population of which the Arabs living on their lands constitute almost half and where the Jews exist on the land in very small numbers and they are all crowded in Tel Aviv and its vicinity … and the worst is not only the Arabs here constitute 50 percent or 45 percent but 75 percent of the land is in the hands of the Arabs. Such a state cannot survive even for half an hour … The question is not whether they will be majority or a minority in Parliament. You know that even a small minority could disrupt the whole order of parliamentary life….. therefore I would say to the [Peel] Commission and the government that we would not accept reduced Land of Israel without you giving us the land, on the one hand, and removing the largest number of Arabs — particularly the peasants — on the other before we come forward to take the reins of government in our lands even provisionally.” (1939)

[Zionist historian Louis Lipsky on Manachem Ussishkin: "There are many obstinate Zionists in the early days but none had his arrogance. He was rude and despotic, paternal and sentimental." Ussishkin stated that the frontiers of the Land of Israel stretched from the "GREAT SEA" [the Mediterranean] to the Euphrates. These wider frontiers were clearly “drawn on the wall map of my Jewish National Fund Office.”]

Moshe Smilansky

“Either the Land of Israel of Israel belongs in the national sense to those Arabs who settled there in recent years [i.e. the past two millenia], and then we have no place there and we must say explicitly: The land of our fathers is lost to us. [Or] if the land of Israel belongs to us, the the Jewish people, then our national interests come before all else. . . . it is not possible for one country to serve as the homeland of two peoples.” (In Hapoel Hatzair, Spring edition of 1908:)

“Owing to the many…urban Christians, there developed among the Arabs base values which are not common other primitive people … to lie, to cheat, to harbor grave suspicions and to tell tales…. and a hidden hatred for the Jews. These Semites- they are anti-Semites.” (1914)

“The urge to grab has seized everyone, Individuals, groups and communities, men, women and children, all fell on the spoils. Doors, windows, lintels, bricks, roof-tiles, floor-tiles, junk and machine parts.” (1948)

Ahad Ha’Am

1891:

“We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed … But in truth that is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains…are not cultivated.”

“If a time comes when our people in Palestine develop so that, in small or great measure, they push out the native inhabitants, these will not give up their place easily.”

“[The Zionist pioneers believe that] the only language the Arabs understand is that of force… [They] behave towards the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly upon their boundaries, beat them shamefully without reason and even brag about it, and nobody stands to check this contemptible and dangerous tendency.”

“[The Jewish settlers] treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamelessly for no sufficient reason, and even take pride in doing so. The Jews were slaves in the land of their Exile, and suddenly they found themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that ONLY exists in a land like Turkey. This sudden change has produced in their hearts an inclination towards repressive tyranny, as always happens when slave rules.”

“We are used to thinking of the Arabs as primitive men of the desert, as a donkey-like nation that neither sees nor understands what is going around it. But this is a GREAT ERROR. The Arab, like all sons of Sham, has sharp and crafty mind . . . Should time come when life of our people in Palestine imposes to a smaller or greater extent on the natives, they WILL NOT easily step aside.”

“Yet what do our brethren do in Palestine? Just the very opposite! Serfs they were in the lands of the Diaspora [actually they weren't serfs] and suddenly they find themselves in unrestricted freedom and this change has awakened in them an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause and even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination …”

“Apart from the political danger [of denying employment to Arabs], I can’t put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable of behaving in such a way to humans of another people, and unwittingly the thought comes to my mind: if it is so now, what will be our relation to the others if in truth we shall achieve at the end of times power in Eretz Yisrael? And if this be the Messiah: I do not wish to see his coming.”

1914:

“‘[The Zionists] wax angry towards those who remind them that there is still another people in Eretz Yisrael that has been living there and does not intend at all to leave its place. In a future when this ILLUSION will have been torn from their hearts and they will look with open eyes upon the reality as it is, they will certainly understand how important this question is and how great our duty to work for its solution.”

1920s:

“Better to die in the Exile than to die here and be buried in the land of fathers, if that land is considered the ‘homeland’ of the Arabs and we are strangers in it.”

Yigal Allon (Paicovitch)

On the affect of psychological warfare on the Arabs in the Galilee panhandle during the 1948 war:

“The echo of the fall of Arab Safad carried far . . . The confidence of thousands of Arabs of the Hula [Valley] was shaken . . . We had ONLY five days left . . . until 15 May [1948]. We regarded it as imperative to CLEANSE [of Arabs] the interior of the Galilee and create JEWISH territorial continuity in the whole of the Upper Galilee. The protracted battles reduced our forces, and we faced major tasks in blocking [prospective Syrian and Lebanese] invasion routes. We, therefore, looked for a means that would not oblige us to use force to DRIVE OUT tens of thousands of hostile [Palestinian] Arabs left in the Galilee and who, in the event of an invasion, could strike at us from behind. We tried to utilize a stratagem that exploited the [Arab] defeat in Safad and in area cleared by [Operation] Broom – a stratagem that WORKED WONDERFULLY.

“I gathered the Jewish mukhtars [Kibbutz chiefs], who had ties with the different [local] Arab villages, and I asked them to WHISPER in the ears of several [Palestinian] Arabs that a giant Jewish reinforcement had reached the Galilee and were about to CLEAN OUT the villages of Hula, [and] to advise them as friends, to FLEE while they could. And rumour spread throughout Hula that the time had come to flee. The flight encompassed tens of thousands. The stratagem FULLY achieved its objective . . . and we were able to deploy ourselves in face of the [prospective] invaders along the borders, with out fear for our rear.”

“We looked for means which would not obligate us to use force in order to get tens of thousands of sulky Arabs who remained in Galilee to flee.”

A Palmach (the Israeli strike force) report, written by Yigal Allon soon after Operation Dani in the first half of July 1948, stated that the expulsion of theLydda and Ramle Palestinian inhabitants, beside relieving Tel Aviv of a potential, long-term threat, had:

“clogged the routes of the advance of the [Transjordan Arab] Legion and had foisted upon the Arab economy the problem of “maintaining another 45,000 souls . . . Moreover, the phenomenon of the flight of tens of thousands will no doubt cause demoralsation in every Arab area [the refugees] reach . . . This victory will yet have great effect on other sectors.”

[A Mapam party co-leader, Meir Ya'ari, criticized Allon's use of tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees to achieve a military strategic goals: "Many of us are LOSING their [human] image . . How easily they speak of how it is possible and permissible to take women, children, and old men and to fill the road with them because such is the imperative of strategy. And this we say, the members of Hashomer Hatzair, who remember who used this means against our people during the Second World] war. . . . I am appalled.”]

During the course of the 1948 war, Yigal Allon submitted a detailed plan to Ben-Gurion for the military conquest of the West Bank, arguing that the Jordan River would provide the best strategic border. He believed that a substantial part of the Palestinian population would flee east because of the military operations, he stated:

“Our offensive has to leave the way open for the army and the refugees to retreat. We shall easily find the reason or, to be more accurate, the pretexts, to justify our offensive, as we did up to now.”

1967:

“In…a new war, we must avoid the HISTORIC MISTAKE of the War of Independence [the 1948 war]. . . and MUST NOT cease fighting until we achieve total victory, the territorial fulfillment of the Land Of Israel.”

Nahman Syrkin

“The Jewish Question and the Socialist Jewish State”, 1898:

“Palestine thinly populated, in which the Jews constituted today 10 percent of the population, must be evacuated for the Jews.”

Yitzhak Epstein

Author of Their Life and Customs (1933) and The Population of Transjordan(1934).

In 1905, during the Zionist Congress convention in Switzerland:

“Among the difficult questions connected to the idea of the renaissance of our people on its soil there is one which is equal to all others: the question of our relations with the Arabs. . . . We have FORGOTTEN one small matter: There is in our beloved land an entire nation, which has occupied it for hundreds of years and has never thought to leave it. …

“We are making a GREAT psychological error with regard to a great, assertive, and jealous people. While we feel a deep love for the land of our forefathers, we forgot that the nation who lives in it today has a sensitive heart and loving soul. The Arab, like every man, is tied to his native land with strong bonds.”

Shmuel Zuchovitzky

1938:

“I think that whenever you discuss it or submit a memo on the question of the transfer, you must make it ABSOLUTELY clear that this transfer is one of the conditions on which we are establishing our state and that the Mandatory Government should carry this out.”

“I am convinced that it would be impossible to carry out transfer without compulsion. I do not see in this any immoral measure. I want to help the Jews to come to the Jewish state and to HELP the Arabs to cross to the Arab state. I know that these things are not easy and involve a lot of difficulties … And also expropriation must be carried out. And we must suggest now that we are prepared to carry out expropriation. In Lita and Latvia there was also expropriation. Latvia finished the whole thing in two years and now everything is all right.”

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[ndla : la suite promise à mon billet précédent interviendra d'ici quelques jours en raison d'une surcharge d'activités]

Arthur Kœstler est une personnalité tout à fait hors du commun, à tous points de vue. Sa vie très controversée, de son vivant et par delà sa mort (volontaire) en a fait un homme tout autant admiré que détesté. Ce que personne n’a jamais nié en revanche, c’est son intelligence pénétrante et ses talents d’auteur. De son expérience dans le parti communiste allemand entre 1926 et 1938, qui lui fait découvrir l’URSS et comprendre la nature totalitaire du régime soviétique 20 ans avant tout le monde, il tire un livre, le Zéro et l’Infini, qui démonte les mécanismes de la déviance stalinienne ; les intellectuels français dans la foulée de Beauvoir et Sartre ne le lui pardonneront jamais. Avoir raison trop tôt ne vaut pas mieux que d’avoir tort. Sur bien des plans, le Zéro et l’infini ressemble à 1984 d’Orwell. Mais il est implanté dans un décor très – trop – réel pour atteindre l’universel. C’est cependant un livre aussi essentiel que l’Archipel du Goulag de Soljenitsyne.

Mais loin des tribulations, des frasques et des ombres planant sur l’auteur, c’est vers l’univers calme et paisible des immensités spatiales que je souhaite vous entraîner à sa suite. Car dans le capharnaüm de sa vie, Kœstler n’a jamais perdu de vue ses deux passions initiales pour la science et la vulgarisation journalistique. Ces deux talents conjugués ont produit un livre, Les Somnanbules, publié en version française chez Calmann-Lévy en 1960 (réédité depuis, y compris en poche).

L’ancien élève (médiocre) de terminale C que je suis aurait aimé, qu’au lieu de l’abreuver des lois de Kepler sous une forme mathématique incompréhensible, son estimable et néanmoins peu pédagogue professeur de sciences physiques de l’époque lui ait fait lire d’abord cet ouvrage. Le lycée y aurait gagné en sérénité, la science y aurait peut-être acquis un nouveau disciple (j’en doute tout de même), et la face du monde aurait pu en être changée (on peut rêver un peu). Car ce livre, c’est au travers de quatre destins d’exception, le passage d’une conception cosmologique divine de l’univers au cosmos scientifique moderne dominé par les lois de la gravitation. Copernic, Brahé, Kepler, Galilée. Quatre individus vastement différents, mais tous pétris de sacré, quatre trajectoires pour concillier le réel et le divin. Et quatre échecs retentissants, à leurs yeux de somnanbules. Ils ne peuvent pas admettre qu’ils sont en terre intellectuelle vierge, et qu’ils sont les quatre premiers à fouler de nouveau le continent des sciences exactes. Cet espace un temps occupé par les antiques, a été oublié depuis des lustres. Après eux, Newton n’aura plus qu’à se baisser pour parachever l’ouvrage, et son épitaphe leur rend d’ailleurs hommage : « Si j’ai pu voir plus loin que les autres hommes, c’est que je me suis hissé sur des épaules de géants ».

On y découvre un petit chanoine Polonais tenaillé par une intuition qu’il ne peut pas prouver, un noble scandinave obsessionnel et borné, un universitaire et homme d’affaires Italien imbu de lui-même et qui se perd par arrogance. On y découvre surtout le très allemand et très protestant Kepler, injustement sous-estimé par l’histoire, un pur génie qui s’applique à lui-même des techniques de psychothérapie que Freud découvrira 400 ans plus tard, un esprit tortueux mais qui ne perd jamais son but de vue, un homme impulsif, agité et instable mais terriblement attachant. Kepler, avec qui Kœstler entretient manifestement une grande affinité, c’est un peu le Lancelot de la geste Arthurienne : il frôle de si près la découverte de la gravitation universelle (qu’il voit dans un rêve qu’il rapporte ensuite par écrit, premier récit de science-fiction au monde), qu’on voudrait la lui attribuer ; mais l’élu, ce sera Newton, qui lui n’est pas affecté par ce doute incapacitant, lui donnant comme à Galaad la pureté d’âme requise pour saisir ce Graal scientifique.

Un roman de la science et de l’univers, un voyage dans l’esprit de la Renaissance, une plongée dans la politique complexe de l’Europe, aux confins du moyen-âge et de la modernité. Ce livre, c’est tout cela et plus encore.