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Israel Quotes

“Time and again, in conversation with friends, some of whom have lost family members in this killing spree, there is a sense that one must be going mad: to see so plainly the destruction, the murdered children filmed and presented for the world to look upon and then to hear the leaders of virtually every western nation contend that this is not happening, that whatever is happening is good and righteous and should continue and that in fact the well-being of the Palestinian people demands this continue--it’s enough to feel like you’re losing your mind.”

“Ik vertelde dat taal me boeit, en dat ik niet wist waarom. Maar na wat er vandaag op school gebeurd is, weet ik heel zeker waarom taal zo belangrijk voor me is. We hadden les van een nieuwe leraar en moesten onszelf aan hem voorstellen. Toen het mijn beurt was, zei ik: 'Dag allemaal, ik ben Malak Habroundahman. Ik woon al vijf maanden in België. Ik heb twee broers en een zusje. Ik ben geboren in Gaza, Palestina. 'Israël, onderbrak de leraar me. 'Je bent geboren in Israël. Gaza is Israël. Palestina is geen erkende staat.' Ik werd boos. 'Palestina is mijn land! U weet niet wat Israël met mijn land doet! U weet niet waarom wij uit mijn land moesten vluchten!' Ik werd bozer en bozer en struikelde over mijn woorden. 'En van u mag ik daar niet over praten? Als mijn verhaal u niet boeit, dan ga ik gewoon slapen tijdens uw les.' De andere leerlingen reageerden nauwelijks. Ook de leerkracht zweeg. Na een tijdje zei hij: 'Zeg buiten wat je wilt, maar hier in de les telt alleen de waarheid: Gaza is Israël.' Toen was ik mijn Nederlands kwijt. Ik wilde zo veel zeggen, over dat ik mijn baba drie jaar niet gezien had, over de bombardementen, over de voortdurende angst, over dat ik me hier niet thuis voel, over hoe erg ik mijn sido mis, en Alaa ... Maar ik kon niet meer spreken. Daarom is taal zo belangrijk voor mij. Ik wil kunnen spreken, ook als ik boos ben, heel erg boos.”

“But what choice does it have? As long as Israel is perceived by its enemies to be vulnerable, many Arabs and radical Muslims will continue to make Israelis kill them... When Israeli soldiers kill Arabs by accident, they mourn—and it causes psychological damage to those soldiers, and to all of Israeli society. The wars the Arab states have instigated are bloody and cruel, and a heavy price is paid by Israel, even when it wins. And win it must, because one loss means the loss of Israel.”

“If Israel defends itself too fully from people who joyfully wish it harm—people who behead others as a negotiating tactic—the world will choke Israel economically. If they don’t defend vigorously enough, more of its citizens get killed. The world has imposed the Vietnam standard on Israel: it isn’t currently allowed to end local terrorism by winning! And so, there will be a next war”

“This is a George Floyd moment for both Israelis and Palestinians. Actually scratch that. It’s a George Floyd moment for both Americans who sympathize with Israel and Americans who sympathize with Palestinians. It’s a holy fuck moment for anyone who cares about human life. Upstairs the bathtub is filling with blood. How big would the swimming pool have to be to hold all the red salty stuff spilled the last week? Who will recline in the fresh blood bath? What swimmers will adjust their goggles and freestyle the miles of blood?”

“It is arguable whether drone attacks, launched by drone pilots against people who have no idea what's coming, are even war at all but something more grotesque; dehumanisation of those targeted because there is no real, human contact between the attacker and victim. Israel and the US instead celebrate these killings by releasing drone footage to the media.”

“The leaderships on both sides have everyone in a trap. They too are trapped. If Palestine Authority leaders repeatedly made statements strongly condemning all violence, many of those subject to checkpoint humiliations, night raids and house demolitions might switch support to Hamas. An Israeli government ending all repression might be accused of betrayal of Zionism. Two peoples, two leaderships, a four-way entrapment. I hope there are political scientists and game theorists working out escape strategies. Meanwhile some pessimism seems hard to avoid.”

“literally. They suffer little international wrath for their crimes against civilians—civilians oftentimes in their midst to lend a helping hand. Israel does not enjoy the same luxury. Most of the free press in the Middle East operates out of Jerusalem. This makes sense since Israel is the only democracy in the region. Only in Israel can the press freely operate. It is easier and much safer for a journalist to question Israel than to challenge any other entity in the region.”

“One must hesitate when calling these protests pro-Palestinian because in that labelling, we lose their truth. They are protests against senseless killings, they are a rejection of regimes that support occupation and a cry for an end to war as a pathway to peace. These protests are pro-humanity in its true sense of the word, an all-encompassing humanity that is not cherry-picked by the powers that be. They are protests against hypocrisy and for a right to life.”

“I left Martina alone with Nico in that club, trusting her, although I'm still not sure today how she got there. Adam and I drove back to Urgell in an odd silence. I wanted to slap him so badly, but he had a point. Adam knew how to defuse tense situations by instinct, out of fear of getting caught in a lie or cheat and getting slapped. We had to maintain a good relationship with Nico because he would bring tourists from his grow shop on Ample Street to our club, Adam said. At the same time, I noticed that Nico had too many friends around town in too many coffeeshops for us to meddle with him in any way, so I had to bow to him being the local; however, it never really happened. I was just respectful to Nico as I was to anyone. Although I didn't tell Adam, I thought he knew that Nico had too many connections for us to try to take over his store in an underhanded way. Adam had apparently been trying to do this not only recently, as if he wanted to buy Nico's grow shop by the time we opened the coffeeshop near it. At least, that was my thought, or what Adam attempted to make me believe. I knew that Adam would eventually have problems with Nico, or by trusting Nico, and I didn't want to have anything to do with it. I have thought to myself, “Okay, boss buddy, The Prince of Israel, let's see how you're going to burn yourself again with Nico Preson. Let's see how much money you're going to lose this time around trusting this Spaniard or Mallorcan crook again.”

“We had to maintain a good relationship with Nico because he would bring tourists from his grow shop on Ample Street to our club, Adam said. At the same time, I noticed that Nico had too many friends around town in too many coffeeshops for us to meddle with him in any way, so I had to bow to him being the local; however, it never really happened. I was just respectful to Nico as I was to anyone. Although I didn't tell Adam, I thought he knew that Nico had too many connections for us to try to take away from his store in an underhanded way. Adam had apparently been trying to do this not only recently, as if he wanted to buy Nico's grow shop by the time we opened the coffeeshop near it. At least, that was my thought, or what Adam attempted to make me believe. I knew that Adam would eventually have problems with Nico, or by trusting Nico, and I didn't want to have anything to do with it. I have thought to myself, “Okay, boss buddy, The Prince of Israel, let's see how you're going to burn yourself again with Nico Preson. Let's see how much money you're going to lose this time around trusting this Spaniard or Mallorcan crook again.”

“Damu, mto wa maisha unaotiririsha maji yake mwilini kwa kusukumwa na pampu za moyo na kuchujwa na fizi za mapafu, inaundwa na seli na maji yaitwayo utegili au maji ya damu, ambayo kazi yake ni kusafirisha oksijeni na virutubisho katika kila sehemu ya mwili, ndani yake kuna roho. Mungu alitoa kafara ya damu kwa ajili ya Adamu na Hawa katika Bustani ya Edeni. Ibrahimu alitoa kafara ya damu kwa ajili ya Israeli ijapokuwa mapenzi ya Mungu kwa Israeli yalikwisha baada ya kusulubiwa kwa Yesu Kristo. Wana wa Israeli walitoa kafara za damu kwa ajili ya wokovu wa watoto wao wa kwanza na watoto wa kwanza wa wanyama wao nchini Misri. Mungu alitoa kafara ya damu ya Yesu Kristo nchini Israeli kwa ajili ya wanadamu wote duniani. Damu ya mwanakondoo ina nguvu kuliko maombi, imetiwa wakfu na Mwenyezi Mungu na ina uhusiano mkubwa na ulimwengu wa roho. Ukifunikwa na damu ya mwanakondoo Shetani hatakuona. Shetani asipokuona, utafanikiwa.”

“They're Killing Us (Poem) ________ May my feet land on the safe ends of Your robes, For human land drinks human blood and feasts on its remains. May my hands be held by Your hands, For human hands were loving me yesterday but are murdering me today. May my eyes be filled with sanity, for this generation is piercing me with its inhumanity. May I dwell in Your heaven, as I no longer feel safe on this earth even. My feet are stumbling on many dead bodies. My hands are replete with burns and bruises from the spears of those who You lovingly created in Your image just as I was crested. My eyes are filled with images of my people killed. My body is garmented in agony, trauma, confusion, and fume. Where can I take refuge from these dirty souls who seek my blood? To whom should I run to brood these now broken soles, and eyes filled with floods? Lead me to where it’s safest. Lead me to where it’s kindest.”

“Being articulate is no guarantee of intelligence,” Zoe said. “I’m not doubting the value of education. I’m doubting its reach. Highly educated politicians still do stupid things. Anthony Weiner was educated; Mugabi was educated; Assad was educated; Mussolini was educated. For all their education, look at them.”

“And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews. And not just a great number, but a great proportion. The proportion was especially high in the secret police and 'security' departments, where no doubt revenge played its own part, as did the ideological attachment to Communism that was so strong among internationally minded Jews at that period: Jews like David Szmulevski. There were reasonably strong indigenous Communist forces in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, but in Hungary and Poland the Communists were a small minority and knew it, were dependent on the Red Army and aware of the fact, and were disproportionately Jewish and widely detested for that reason. Many of the penal labor camps constructed by the Nazis were later used as holding pens for German deportees by the Communists, and some of those who ran these grim places were Jewish. Nobody from Israel or the diaspora who goes to the East of Europe on a family-history fishing-trip should be unaware of the chance that they will find out both much less and much more than the package-tour had promised them. It's easy to say, with Albert Camus, 'neither victims nor executioners.' But real history is more pitiless even than you had been told it was.”

“Komandoo Nicolas Kahima Kankiriho ('Kahima the Warrior') alizaliwa katika Wilaya ya Bushenyi, Ankole, kusini-magharibi mwa Uganda, Julai 24, 1954, mtoto wa tano kuzaliwa, katika familia ya watoto sita ya Nicodemas Kankiriho; mzee wa heshima wa Wabaima, aliyekuwa akisifika sana kwa uchungaji (wa mifugo) na msisitizo mkali wa ukiristo kwa watoto wake wote; hasa Kahima na Yebare, binti yake wa pekee, aliyekuwa wa mwisho kuzaliwa. Kahima (futi 6 inchi 3 aliyekuwa akiongea Kinyankole, Kiswahili, Kiingereza na Kihispania kwa ufasaha), baada ya kutoka Uganda – kwa mafunzo ya mwanzo ya ukomandoo ya Kiisraeli – alikwenda Urusi na Korea ya Kaskazini ambako aliongeza ujuzi hadi kiwango cha juu kabisa; kabla ya kwenda Amerika ya Kusini, kama askari wa msituni wa vyama vya kisiasa visivyo rasmi vya magorila wa Kolombia. Akiwa Kolombia, Kahima alikutana na Eduardo Chapa de Christopher (kiongozi wa zamani wa Kateli ya Diablos de Amazonas, Mashetani wa Amazoni, iliyokuwa ikivilinda vyama vya kisiasa vya magorila vya Americas) ambaye alimwajiri kama mlinzi binafsi na baadaye kama mlinzi binafsi wa Carlos Pulecio Alcántara – kiongozi wa kwanza wa Kateli ya Kolonia Santita. Alcántara alipouwawa, Kahima alihamia kwa Panthera Tigrisi – Kiongozi Mkuu wa Kolonia Santita.”

“Eine Ideologie kann man nicht mit Bomben bekämpfen. Ein Großteil des Hasses gegen Israel – bei dem Teil der palästinensischen Bevölkerung, der die Geisel und Toten bejubelte, die durch die Straßen Gazas paradiert wurden, und Süßigkeiten verteilte – ist über Jahrzehnte indoktriniert und kann nicht wie ein Licht ausgeknipst werden. Keine Armee der Welt kann Jahrzehnte des Misstrauens und des Hasses allein durch Kämpfen besiegen. Erst recht keine, deren Soldaten von Verletzung, Rache, Wut oder existenzieller Angst angetrieben sind. Erst recht nicht, wenn die Menschen, die irgendwann als friedliche Nachbarn neben uns leben sollen, alles verlieren, was den Wunsch nach Frieden antreiben könnte.”

“Wafuasi wa Yesu Kristo watapata taabu kubwa ambayo haijawahi kutokea. Yeyote atakayempinga Mpinga Kristo, yeyote atakayepinga utawala wa Mpinga Kristo, atakiona cha mtema kuni. Watu wengi watauwawa kwa sababu ya ufuasi wao kwa Masihi. Wale watakaokuwa na talanta ya kuhubiri watauwawa kinyama, hadharani, ili liwe fundisho kwa wafuasi wengine wa Yesu Kristo. Miongoni mwa wale watakaokuwa wanahubiri injili ya kweli ya ufalme wa Mungu bila woga wa aina yoyote ile, atakuwemo Eliya na Enock. Eliya na Enock Mungu aliwachukua bila kuonja mauti, kama akiba, kwa sababu ya kipindi hicho cha Taabu ya Yakobo. Eliya na Enock wataibuka ghafla jijini Yerusalemu na kuanza kuhubiri injili ya kumpinga Mpinga Kristo. Kwa vile hawataogopa chochote, wala hawatamwogopa yeyote, serikali ya Israeli itawakamata na kuwatesa lakini hawatanyamaza.”

“For both Christians and Jews, therefore, the colonization of Palestine was seen as an act of return and redemption. The coincidence of the two impulses produced a powerful alliance that turned the anti-Semitic and millenarian idea of transferring the Jews from Europe to Palestine into a real project of settlement at the expense of the native people of Palestine.”

“The translation of these European notions of racial superiority into the Israeli context became evident as soon as the interviewer asked him about the government’s plans for the remaining Palestinian leaders. Interviewer and interviewee giggled as they agreed that the policy should involve the assassination or expulsion of the entire current leadership, that is all the members of the Palestinian Authority—about 40,000 people.”

“The crime committed by the leadership of the Zionist movement, which became the government of Israel, was that of ethnic cleansing. This is not mere rhetoric but an indictment with far-reaching political, legal, and moral implications. The definition of the crime was clarified in the aftermath of the 1990s civil war in the Balkans: ethnic cleansing is any action by one ethnic group meant to drive out another ethnic group with the purpose of transforming a mixed ethnic region into a pure one.”

“The most reasonable compensation for the particular case of the Palestinian refugees was stated clearly already in December 1948 by the UN General Assembly in its Resolution 194: the unconditional return of the refugees and their families to their homeland (an homes where possible). Without some such restitution, the state of Israel will continue to exist as a hostile enclave at the heart of the Arab world, the last reminder of a colonialist past that complicates Israel's relationship not only with the Palestinians, but with the Arab world as a whole.”

“It was clear to the government that denying citizenship on the one hand, and not allowing independence on the other, condemned the inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to life without basic civil and human rights...The demographic fear that haunted Ben-Gurion -- a greater Israel with no Jewish majority -- was cynically resolved by incarcerating the population of the occupied territories in a non-citizenship prison.”

“Today more than 90 percent of land is owned by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Landowners are not allowed to engage in transactions with non-Jewish citizens and public land is prioritized for the use of national projects, which means that new Jewish settlements are being built while there are hardly any new Palestinian settlements. Thus, the biggest Palestinian city, Nazareth, despite the tripling of its population since 1948, has not expanded one square kilometer, whereas the development town built above it, Upper Nazareth, has tripled in size, on land expropriated from Palestinian landowners.”

“Isrrael participated in that conference [the Lausanne meeting of April 1949] only because it was a precondition for its acceptance as a full member of the UN, who also demanded that Israel sign a protocol, called the May Protocol, committing itself to the terms of Resolution 194, which included an unconditional call for the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes or to be given compensation. A day after it was signed in May 1949, Israel was admitted to the UN and immediately retracted its commitment to the protocol.”

“The reality of the current colonization of vast parts of the West Bank by Israel renders any two-states solution an improbable vision...The two-states solution, as noted earlier, is an Israeli invention that was meant to square a circle...The two-states solution, indirectly one should say, is based on the assumption that Israel and Judaism are the same. Thus, Israel insists that what it does, it does in the name of Judaism and when its actions are rejected by people around the world the criticism is not only directed toward Israel but also toward Judaism.”

“That's the thing about war: it's never enough to disable the buildings, to blow holes into their middles; instead, they're hit over and over again, as if to pound them to dust, to disintegrate them, to remove them from the earth, to deny that families ever lived in them. But people did live there. And they needed to return, even though there was nothing left to return to except forbidding piles of broken concrete and cable wires sticking out of the heaps like markers of malevolence.”

“Mpelelezi wa Tume ya Dunia kutoka Jerusalem, Israeli, Kanali Daniel 'Yehuda Ben-Asher' Ebenezer, Daniel Yehuda, alikuwa komandoo wa kitengo cha mauti na utekaji nyara cha Shirika la Kijasusi la Mossad la Israeli (Kidon) kabla ya kujiunga na Kikosi Maalumu cha Kikomandoo cha Tume ya Dunia (EAC) huko Oslo, kwa makubaliano maalumu kati ya Baraza la Usalama la Umoja wa Mataifa (UNSC) na Shirika la Kijasusi la Mossad la Israeli.”

“Kwa vile taifa la Israeli lilipoteza haki yake ya upendeleo, Mungu aliahidi kuliharibu kama alivyoyaharibu mataifa ya Waamori na Wamisri. Watu wa Israeli walishafika mbali sana kiasi cha Mungu kutokutegemea tena toba kutoka kwao. Kuna muda wa fursa na kuna muda ambao fursa haipo tena. Nafasi ya Israeli ya kutubu ilishafikia mwisho. Kama alivyokuwa amepigana vita vyao kwa ajili yao katika siku za nyuma sasa Mungu alipigana nao. Pamoja na ujasiri na utaalamu wao wote wasingependelewa tena. Mambo ambayo mwanzo yaliipa Israeli nguvu katika vita yaliwageukia.”

“Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a foil against Fatah and the PLO. This I had known since seeing the burning out of leftist Palestinians by Muslim mobs in Gaza as early as 1981. Yet once again, it seemed Edward could only condemn Islamism if it could somehow be blamed on either Israel or the United States or the West, and not as a thing in itself. He sometimes employed the same sort of knight's move when discussing other Arabist movements, excoriating Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, for example, mainly because it had once enjoyed the support of the CIA. But when Saddam was really being attacked, as in the case of his use of chemical weapons on noncombatants at Halabja, Edward gave second-hand currency to the falsified story that it had 'really' been the Iranians who had done it. If that didn't work, well, hadn't the United States sold Saddam the weaponry in the first place? Finally, and always—and this question wasn't automatically discredited by being a change of subject—what about Israel's unwanted and ugly rule over more and more millions of non-Jews? I evolved a test for this mentality, which I applied to more people than Edward. What would, or did, the relevant person say when the United States intervened to stop the massacres and dispossessions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? Here were two majority-Muslim territories and populations being vilely mistreated by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. There was no oil in the region. The state interests of Israel were not involved (indeed, Ariel Sharon publicly opposed the return of the Kosovar refugees to their homes on the grounds that it set an alarming—I want to say 'unsettling'—precedent). The usual national-security 'hawks,' like Henry Kissinger, were also strongly opposed to the mission. One evening at Edward's apartment, with the other guest being the mercurial, courageous Azmi Bishara, then one of the more distinguished Arab members of the Israeli parliament, I was finally able to leave the arguing to someone else. Bishara [...] was quite shocked that Edward would not lend public support to Clinton for finally doing the right thing in the Balkans. Why was he being so stubborn? I had begun by then—belatedly you may say—to guess. Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance believed that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not by definition be a moral or ethical action.”