Last weeks speech of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which he said that Israel should be "wiped off the map", and that "anyone who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury," has been portrayed by the Jewish State as “murderous threats” in an attempt to draw an international resentment against the Islamic republic.
Although Nejad’s words reflected the true stance of Tehran towards Israel, he didn’t mean to issue a direct threat. His words weren’t meant to imply that Iran is considering attacking Israel as his speech was wrongly interpreted by the Jewish State, the United States, and European countries.
Recent Iranian leaders avoided such strong and direct rhetoric, partly because the goal of eliminating Israel has been disavowed by the Palestinian leadership and partly because Iran sought to improve relations with the West, according to the Washington Post .
The world should quickly wake up from the trauma created by the Iranian leader’s words and look back at similar and may be more shocking statements made by Israeli and Jewish leaders in the past, reflecting the amount of injustice inflicted upon Palestinians and the Arabs in general.
Below are extracts from old Israeli leaders’ speeches, compiled by Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights’s website, reflecting the true sentiments towards the Arabs and confessions to the biased policy of the Israeli government and it’s true agenda:
– "We must expel Arabs and take their places."- David Ben Gurion, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.
-"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.
– "There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"- Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121-122.
– "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 Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." – David Ben Gurion quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.
– "Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country." – David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s "Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.
– "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist."- Golda Meir, statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.
– "How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." – Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.
– "Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen." – Golda Meir, 1961, in a speech to the Knesset, reported in Ner, October 1961.
– "This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy." – Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971
– "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, what is to be done with the Palestinian population?’ Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said ’Drive them out!" – Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.
– "[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat." – Yitzhak Rabin (a "Prince of Peace" by Clinton’s standards), quoted in David Shipler in the New York Times, 04/04/1983 citing Meir Cohen’s remarks to the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee on March 16.
– "[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."- Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the ’Beasts,"’ New Statesman, June 25, 1982.
– "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." – Menachem Begin, following UN vote to partition Palestine.
– "The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan for future generations, for the mass aliya (=Jewish immigration), and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country." – Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declares at a Tel Aviv memorial service for former Likud leaders, November 1990. Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service.
– "The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It’s that simple." – Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 02/21/1997.
– "(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls." – Israeli Prime Minister (at the time) Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
-"Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories." – Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.
"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more"…. – Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time – August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000.
"If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force…." – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak quoted by the Associated Press, November 16, 2000.
Asked by Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Haaretz newspaper, what he would have done if he had been born a Palestinian, Ehud Barak’s response was "I would have joined a terrorist organization."
– "It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of Tsomet militants, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
– "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours…Everything we don’t grab will go to them." – Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.
– "Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial." – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online.
"There is something surprising in the fact that you see the Palestinian threat as an existential threat.
"The characteristics of that threat are invisible, like cancer. When you are attacked externally, you see the attack, you are wounded. Cancer, on the other hand, is something internal. Therefore, I find it more disturbing, because here the diagnosis is critical. If the diagnosis is wrong and people say it’s not cancer but a headache, then the response is irrelevant. But I maintain that it is cancer. My professional diagnosis is that there is a phenomenon here that constitutes an existential threat."
Does that mean that what you are doing now, as chief of staff, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, is applying chemotherapy?
"There are all kinds of solutions to cancerous manifestations. Some will say it is necessary to amputate organs. But at the moment, I am applying chemotherapy, yes."
Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Moshe Ya’alon, Ha’aretz 27 August 2002
