“The Israeli-Palestinian problem becomes very acute with Gaza dominated by Hamas. With the possibility of the conflict escalating, not only in terms of Gaza but also the Hezbollah and Lebanon, with the continuing crisis in Iraq, which is very dynamic and unpredictable and which could get out of hand, and maybe even escalate and enlarge.” ProblemHandsTermPossibilityConflictCrisisIraqPalestinianContinuingUnpredictableIsraeliGazaLebanonHamasHezbollahEscalating Author:Zbigniew Brzezinski
“During a news conference, when he was standing with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President [Donald] Trump responded to a question from an Israeli reporter about the rise in anti-Semitic attacks - by boasting about his election victory.” PresidentTrumpVictoryNewsStandingElectionMinistersPrimeReportersPrime MinisterBoastConferencesIsraeliAnti Semitic Author:Amy Goodman
“My own sense is that if David Friedman chooses to live in Jerusalem, and quietly conduct diplomatic business from the now existing US consulate in the city, it will not be noticed very much. It will not be treated as a rupture with the past unless it is accompanied by other American encouragements of Israeli extremism undertaken with the clear backing of the White House.” IfsPastHouseMy OwnWhiteCitiesClearEncouragementTreatedWhite HouseIsraeliExtremismJerusalemDiplomaticRupture Author:Richard A. Falk
“Since Israel would rather re-experience Masada than renounce the core Zionist objective of establishing a Jewish state, the only one-state "solution" on the horizon of realistic possibilities is an Israeli "one state" that fulfills the messianic nationalist ideal embraced by deep Zionism, likely consisting of completing the expansionist process of recent years by incorporating all or most of the West Bank, casting Gaza adrift, consolidating control over Jerusalem, and transferring as many West Bank Palestinians as possible to Jordan.” YearsStatesProcessPossibilitySolutionsIdealsWestIsraelCoreObjectivesHorizonRealisticPalestinianCastingIsraeliJordanJerusalemRenounceZionistGazaZionismCompletingAdriftIncorporating Author:Richard A. Falk
“[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, in his rather undiplomatic way, demanded that Washington bring words and actions together into a coherent, 100 percent pro-Israeli policy. Obama, apparently still having faith in a "two-state solution," refused to do this.” WayStillsTwoStatesActionTogetherPolicySolutionsPercentMinistersPrimeHave FaithPrime MinisterIsraeliWords And Actions Author:Lawrence Davidson
“Under Trump, the US will give its blessing to Israeli imperialism and racism.” GivingTrumpBlessingRacismImperialismIsraeli Author:Lawrence Davidson
“In order to put an end to the occupation, you must make peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people. This is the real aim, this is the real task.” PeopleRealEndsOrderTasksAimOccupationPalestinianIsraeliMaking Peace Author:Uri Avnery
“Sharon's so-called two-state solution will be, let's say, twelve Palestinian enclaves, which will be called a Palestinian state. It will be connected by, perhaps, a series of bridges, tunnels, and highways, which can be cut off at any moment at the whim of the Israeli government or Israeli army.” TwoStatesMomentsGovernmentCuttingSolutionsArmySeriesConnectedBridgesTwelvePalestinianHighwaysIsraeliTunnelsWhimSharonIsraeli Army Author:Uri Avnery
“If you are a Jewish Israeli, you go to Gaza, you get the villa of your life, the villa which you did not dream of ever getting in Israel, a beautiful two-story villa with green meadows and so on, practically for nothing. Then you put up hothouses of tomatoes or flowers; you take the very Arabs from whom you grabbed this land and employ them as laborers in your hothouses. Israeli law does not apply in Gaza: There is no minimum wage, no annual vacation, no compensation for dismissal - so you get the work very, very cheap. It is a wonderful setup economically.” IfsDoeTwoStoriesDreamBeautifulLawWonderfulLandFlowerGreenIsraelVacationMinimumCompensationIsraeliMeadowsMinimum WageAnnualsTomatoesGazaLaborersSetupsVillaDismissal Author:Uri Avnery
“There are lots of grounds for hope in Israeli society. We are seeing Israelis getting fed up with war, looking for solutions. The youngest soldiers are refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories. Some are volunteering for army combat units but are refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories. We have the elite of the Israeli army, the air force pilots, some of them refusing orders which they consider illegal.” WarOrderForceSeeingAirSolutionsArmySoldierIllegalFedsTerritoryCombatPilotsElitesUnitsVolunteerIsraeliAir ForceFed UpIsraeli Army Author:Uri Avnery
“Like many resisting oppression, Palestinian Gandhis are likely to be found in prisons after being repressed by Israeli soldiers or police or in the hospital after being brutally beaten or worse.” FoundPolicePrisonSoldierOppressionHospitalsPalestinianBeatenIsraeliResistingRepressedIsraeli Soldiers Author:Yousef Munayyer
“The international community...cannot simply call on Palestinians to abandon violence in the face of Israeli occupation and remain silent when the nonviolent activists are politically repressed. This only reinforces the idea that the use of force reigns supreme and that Palestinians have no choice but to accept hardships at the hands of their Israeli lords.” IdeasUseHandsFacesChoicesForceCommunityAcceptingLordViolenceSilentInternationalSupremeAbandonHardshipActivistOccupationPalestinianReignIsraeliInternational CommunityRepressedUse Of ForceIsraeli Occupation Author:Yousef Munayyer
“Sadly, the same leaders who call on Palestinians to abandon violence have been silent in the face of Israeli repression. By condemning violent Palestinian resistance while remaining silent in the face of Israeli crackdowns and political arrests, they are simply endorsing violence against civilians by one side instead of the other.” Has BeensFacesPoliticalSidesLeaderViolenceSilentViolentResistanceAbandonPalestinianCiviliansIsraeliRepressionCondemningEndorsingRemaining Silent Author:Yousef Munayyer
“The Palestinians are not going anywhere - -they have nowhere to go. The Israeli Jews also aren't going anywhere - they have nowhere to go. But we cannot become one happy family, because we are not. So, we have to divide the house into two smaller apartments and learn how to say, "good morning" in the hall every day. Eventually, perhaps we will pop in on each other for a cup of coffee. But we need this semi-detached house, a two-family unit.” NeedsTwoHouseMorningJewPopsCoffeeCupsHallsDividesPalestinianApartmentUnitsIsraeliDetachedCoffee CupHappy FamilyNowhere To GoFamily Unit Author:Amos Oz
“In some of the Israeli media, but not all, they read about very nasty things done by Israeli settlers and soldiers to Palestinian Arabs. This is a pain in the neck for many Israelis. They say: Leave us alone, what can we do about it? Or they say: Look at Syria, look at Iraq, the West Bank is paradise by comparison. I was one of the first to say, shortly after the Six-Day War, that occupation is corrupting. It corrupts the occupier and, in a different way, it corrupts the occupied.” WayFirstsLooksDifferentWarDonePainMediaSixWestSoldierIraqDifferent WaysParadiseNecksComparisonOccupationPalestinianSyriaNastyIsraeliThings DoneSettlers Author:Amos Oz
“What is likely to happen? Either an escalation of violence or an entire change in the whole Middle East theater. It may well happen, and I say this to my Palestinian friends, that the Palestinians have in a certain way missed their hour. They had their moment when the world's public opinion was behind them, and a considerable part of the Israeli public was willing to compromise with them.” WorldWayWellsMayWholeMomentsHappensCertainHoursBehindsOpinionViolenceMiddleWillingTheaterEastCompromiseMiddle EastPalestinianPublic OpinionIsraeliEscalation Author:Amos Oz
“Recently with IS and Islamist fanaticism, it has become easy for the Israeli government to simply push the Palestinian struggle for self-determination into the same ranks as these fundamentalist movements.” SelfGovernmentEasyStruggleMovementDeterminationSelf DeterminationPalestinianIsraeliFanaticismFundamentalistIslamists Author:Amos Oz
“It's possible a Palestinian state will be installed over the heads of the Palestinians. It could be part of an agreement between the Israeli government and moderate Arab states, but not one between Israel and the Palestinians.” StatesGovernmentIsraelAgreementPalestinianModeratesIsraeli Author:Amos Oz
“One of the Christian fundamentalists' goals seems to be to rebuild the Temple, which means destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which presumably means war with the Arab world - one of the goals, perhaps, in fulfilling the prophecy of Armageddon. So they strongly support Israeli power and expansionism, and help fund it and lobby for it; but they also support actions that are very harmful and objectionable to most of its population - as do Jewish fundamentalist groups, mostly rooted in the US, which, after all, is one of the most extreme religious fundamentalist societies in the world.” WorldMeanWarHelpingSeemsActionChristianGoalReligiousSupportGroupsPopulationExtremesTemplesFundAlsDestroyingRootedFulfillingProphecyIsraeliFundamentalistMosquesArmageddonArab World Author:Noam Chomsky
“There is no doubt that this fusion of terrorist and Muslim feeds virulent forms of Islamophobia, which is also encouraged by such incidents as the Westgate Mall massacre in Nairobi and the Anglican Church bombing in Pakistan. 9/11 greatly intensified this tendency toward fusion, but it had also been nurtured by Israeli propaganda that portrayed their Palestinian and Arab adversaries as "terrorists." In fact, the US government approach after 9/11 was modeled in many of its features on Israeli tactics developed during the long occupation of Palestine.” LongFactsGovernmentFormChurchDoubtApproachTerroristTendenciesFeaturesPropagandaNo DoubtOccupationPalestinianPakistanPalestineTacticsIncidentsIsraeliAdversariesBombingMallsFusionMassacresIslamophobiaNairobi Author:Richard A. Falk
“Israel produces and stores chemical weapons. So therefore the US will prevent the Chemical Weapons Convention from being imposed on the Middle East. But it's necessary to evade this by misrepresenting the convention, and I think maybe 100 percent of the media, or close to it, go along. But that's a critical issue. Actually, Syria's chemical weapons were developed largely as a deterrent to Israeli nuclear weapons. Also, not mentioned.” ThinkingIssuesMiddleMediaProduceWeaponsPercentIsraelCriticalEastStoresNuclearChemicalsConventionsMiddle EastNuclear WeaponsSyriaIsraeliDeterrentChemical Weapons Author:Noam Chomsky
“I'm happy that now we reveal something about the true Israel, because, you know, now it's Purim, when all the Jews putting mask. And once, we used to have a liberal mask. The most famous mask now in Israel is the mask of a soldier who murdered in cold blood a wounded prisoner of war. Those are the mask that most of the Israeli kids now are using. So, now, when the mask and the true is the same, maybe it's time for Democrats here to stop supporting Israel, if they care about Jews.” IfsKnowsWarCareKidsUsedBloodColdDemocratSoldierJewIsraelMaskPrisonerWoundedIsraeliPrisoner Of War Author:Udi Aloni
“In the Goldstone Report, Israeli perpetrators of possible crimes against humanity were made subject to prosecution and punishment, although the geopolitical leverage of the United States within the UN prevents implementation. At the same time, several African leaders are being prosecuted for their crimes against humanity and participation in genocide: a double standard of sorts, given the impunity accorded to the West and Israel.” MadeStatesHumanityGivenUnitedLeaderUnited StatesSubjectsCrimeStandardsWestIsraelPunishmentReportsGenocideParticipationIsraeliDouble StandardImpunityImplementationPerpetratorsProsecutionCrimes Against HumanityGeopolitical Author:Richard A. Falk
“Unsettled Middle East, in these times where the people are trying to find their way towards democracy, could be interesting for many reasons - for weapons to be sold, for new geostrategic interests to be protected, and something that we are not talking about, which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The people who are lost in the whole discussion here are the Palestinians. We have demonstrations in Palestine in West Bank. Nobody is covering this. It's as if they don't exist anymore. And this is, in fact, central. And Israel is silent.” PeopleIfsWayTryingReasonWholeFactsLostInterestInterestingTalkingDemocracyMiddleConflictWeaponsSilentWestIsraelEastDiscussionMiddle EastProtectedPalestinianPalestineIsraeliDemonstrationCoveringNot TalkingIsraeli Palestinian Conflict Author:Tariq Ramadan
“If a baby is born in Gaza and is not registered with the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, that baby does not exist, it does not count. I get very annoyed when my Palestinian friends complain, 'Why didn't they give me a permit, I am not a terrorist,' because it is not about the person, it is about a policy that people can't articulate because there is no discourse to explain the political intention behind it.” PeopleIfsGivingPersonsDoePoliticalBornBehindsPolicyBabyGive MeIntentionComplainingTerroristPermitPalestinianMinistryDiscourseInteriorsIsraeliAnnoyedGaza Author:Amira Hass
“I have privileges even in comparison to a Palestinian Israeli because Palestinian Israelis who live permanently in Ramallah risk their status, not as citizens but as residents. They might lose their social rights if they move to Ramallah. But I won't, so I live with privileges. That notion is very difficult for me as a child who was raised in a left-wing family, a family of people who suffered discrimination as Jews abroad. The notion that I am so privileged is disgusting. But this is what it means to live in a white society. You are white, so you are privileged.” PeopleIfsMeanChildrenMightMovingLeftSocialDifficultLosesWhiteRightsRiskCitizensWingsRaisedNotionPrivilegeJewDiscriminationComparisonDisgustingPalestinianPrivilegedIsraeliLeft WingResidents Author:Amira Hass
“Luckily I was not born in Eastern Europe, because I might have been born into the communist establishment and I'm glad I was not. But in Israel, communists were dissidents. So you grow up in an environment which is very critical of Israeli policies.” Has BeensMightGrowsBornGrowing UpEnvironmentPolicyEuropeIsraelCriticalGladCommunistEstablishmentEasternMight Have BeenIsraeliEastern EuropeDissidents Author:Amira Hass
“What Hamas and the Palestinian people are doing is legitimate resistance against the Israeli occupation. Our resistance is confined to the territories inside Palestine and only targets the Israeli occupation. We are not blood-mongering killers who kill innocent people around the world.” PeopleWorldInnocentPalestinianPalestineIsraeliHamas Author:Khaled Mashal
“Our political document shows that we are prepared in the context of a national consensus to accept a state on the lines of the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as the capital and fulfilling the right of return for refugees. That does not mean that this document recognizes the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation. Nor does it mean that we will cede any part of the Palestinian territories.” MeanPoliticalAcceptingPalestinianFulfillingRefugeeConsensusIsraeli Author:Khaled Mashal
“Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas have recognized Israel's right to exist. The Israeli government has never recognized our right to a sovereign state and self-determination.” IsraeliArafat Author:Khaled Mashal
“This is not violence, this is legitimate resistance. This is our people's right to resist Israeli occupation.” ViolenceIsraeli Author:Khaled Mashal
“We target the Israeli occupation, not civilians. We are defending ourselves with the simple military means that we have at our disposal. We are keen to develop and to get accurate, sophisticated weaponry in order to precisely target Israeli military installations.” MeanSimpleMilitarySophisticatedIsraeli Author:Khaled Mashal
“The Israeli army had the most sophisticated weaponry and they used it against residential towers, schools and hospitals.” SchoolArmySophisticatedIsraeli Author:Khaled Mashal
“There are some who support us and others who are on the other side. They bow to pressure from the international community. But there is no reason for any of them to be against our Palestinian concerns. We don't interfere in any of the domestic policies of other countries. We are a national movement and we are concentrating on our conflict and the battle against the Israeli occupation.” CountryReasonCommunitySupportPolicyBattleConflictConcernPalestinianInterfereIsraeli Author:Khaled Mashal
“The best way to constrain Iran's potential movement towards nuclear capability is to have peace in the Middle East, peace between the Israeli and the Palestinians. To end the official war that still exists between Israel and Syria, Israel and Lebanon.” WarCapabilityPalestinianSyriaIsraeli Author:Reza Aslan
“The dissolution of a family, global crisis creates the massive fracture, not only in the Middle East but between America and Israel, between Europe and Israel, between American Jews and Israeli Jews. The distances seem to be widening wherever you look.” CrisisDistanceJewIsraeli Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
“Each time a Palestinian or an Israeli dies, it is terrible. But they have the right to have a funeral, to be buried, to have a place in the memory of the survivors. And then you have these other places - Darfur, Rwanda, even Colombia - where the dead have no faces and literally cannot be counted. Theirs are minuscule lives moving toward imperceptible deaths. For me, it is the essence of tragedy.” MovingMemoriesTerribleTragedySurvivorFuneralPalestinianIsraeliRwanda Author:Bernard-Henri Levy
“State terrorism - and yet the Israeli invasion Goldstone investigated is still commonly referred to as the Gaza War.” WarTerrorismIsraeliGaza Author:Norman Finkelstein
“As one Israeli said, "It's a big mistake for Israel to say it 'won' the war, when there was no war. There were no battles...no military enemy in the field."” WarMistakeEnemyMilitaryBattleIsraeliBig Mistake Author:Norman Finkelstein
“Each time I have the urge in me to make a statement or send a message or to issue a manifesto, I don't bother to write a novel. I write an article and publish it in a popular newspaper, or I make a television appearance. I would not waste five years of my life in order to send to the Israeli readers a simple message such as, "Let us change a policy or stop the settlements," Or, "Let us strive for peace." This is not what it is about.” WritingSimpleNovelPolicyStriveAppearanceBotherPublishIsraeliSettlement Author:Amos Oz
“Sometimes, recently Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed a clash between wrong and wrong. It is not as simple as fascism was. Every decent man had to be against fascism, period. It is not as simple as apartheid or colonialism or racism or misogyny. It is not simple because the Palestinians have no other land. They are absolutely right about this. The Israeli Jews also have no other land and they are absolutely right about this. It is a tragedy of two peoples claiming the same very small country, about the size of New Jersey.” MenCountrySometimesSimpleConflictRacismTragedyJewDecentFascismPalestinianMisogynyIsraeliClashApartheid Author:Amos Oz
“Black Box is not a statement about injustice committed against Sephardi Oriental Jews or about the extremism of religious Jews or the lack of imagination of the old Israeli elites. It's a human story, in my view, first and foremost about a mystical communion between enemies. This is the inner story of the novel. This is my business as a novelist. It is not about positions and ideas.” BlackImaginationReligiousEnemyNovelInjusticeCommittedJewCommunionMysticalIsraeliExtremism Author:Amos Oz
“The revival of Hebrew, as a spoken language, is a fascinating story, which I'm afraid I cannot squeeze into a few sentences. But, let me give you a clue. Think about Elizabethan English, where the entire English language behaved pretty much like molten lava, like a volcano in mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew has some things in common with Elizabethan English. It is being reshaped and it's expanding very rapidly in various directions. This is not to say that every one of us Israeli writers is a William Shakespeare, but there is a certain similarity to Elizabethan English.” ThinkingGivingLanguageCommonModernLet MeVariousClueEnglish LanguageRevivalIsraeliSimilarityHebrew Author:Amos Oz
“The dreams and the visions of the Israeli founding fathers, these were very very ambitious dreams. They were world reformers. They wanted to create a new and improved kind of humanity, or at least, a new and improved Jewish society, a new and improved Jewish individual human being here. The whole Zionist project was based on a whole spectrum of different and even conflicting dreams and visions.” WorldKindDifferentDreamHumanityFatherIndividualVisionAmbitiousIsraeliZionist Author:Amos Oz
“When I introduced my economic plan for the first time, people had mixed views because it's the largest cut in the history of Israeli budgets. We have a big deficit caused by the fact that the former government took upon itself too many obligations.” PeopleCuttingEconomicFirst TimeObligationIsraeli Author:Yair Lapid
“I felt that we had become a society ruled by sectors, by interest groups: Whoever's connected to the Israeli government gets more.” InterestIsraeli Author:Yair Lapid
“I think we give Jimmy Carter too much credit to think he knew what was going to happen when he used the word "apartheid." It's provocative, but it was like a nuclear bomb in Israel. And yet that word is used all the time in the Israeli press. There's a double standard there. He probably picked it up in Israel, as it's commonly discussed. I'd be a little surprised if he understood how it was going to be used against him. He doesn't have a highly developed emotional detector. As a politician, that was a weakness.” ThinkingGivingEmotionalPoliticianWeaknessIsraeliJimmyProvocativeApartheidDouble StandardNuclear Bomb Author:Lawrence Wright
“I remember my days as a graduate student at Stanford, within any leading university, a very active Israeli support, for Israel, Jews fighting for the cause of Israel. Now you find Israelis, former Israelis, and Arabs, and Jews, fighting for the Palestinian cause. We are somehow losing the moral high ground, and I keep telling our people it's great to deal with propaganda, to activate many ways, to deploy PR firms all around the world.” PeopleWorldRememberFightingMoralSupportStudentsLosingJewFirmPropagandaGraduatesPalestinianIsraeli Author:Ehud Barak
“The U.S. position on Jerusalem was not the reason why there hasn't been progress towards peace. The reason is that both the Israeli government and the Palestinian leadership are divided. And there is an enormous gap between Israelis and Palestinians. To say that this decision is only recognizing reality, that Jerusalem is the actual capital of Israel - well, that's true. But it's a selective recognition of reality.” ReasonRealityDecisionProgressRecognitionPalestinianIsraeli Author:Richard N. Haass
“If the president Donald Trump had connected the Jerusalem question to some other positions, linking it to Israeli and Palestinian behavior or putting the Jerusalem statement in a larger context of U.S. policy, it could have potentially advanced the peace process. But I don't see how singling it out might help.” HelpingPresidentPolicyBehaviorPalestinianIsraeli Author:Richard N. Haass