Elias Davidsson writes...
 
 
ED> The following are quotations from Zionist leaders. They appear in
ED> numerous scholarly works dealing with the Palestine question. I urge those
ED> who have access to original sources, to verify the authenticity of the
ED> source and post here their finding, adhering to the truth whatever it be.

   It is your responsibility for posting quotes in context.  Your
   phony 'research center' is the source of the most unscholarly,
   out-of-context, agenda-ridden, and sophmoric propaganda that I
   have ever seen.  Don't believe me, folks?  Let's take a little
   stroll through a few of Elias Davidsson's contributions to our 
   understanding of the middle east.
 
ED> Quotations from Zionist leaders

ED> 1. "There was no such thing as Palestinians"
ED> (Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, London Sunday 
ED> Times, 15 June 1969)

    And what do suggest that she meant by this?  Do you think she
    meant that the Palestinians don't exist?  Or does it actually
    mean that the people who self-identify as 'Palestinians,' did
    not appear to be a distinct ethnic group in the eyes of Golda
    Meir?  


ED> 2. "There is, however, a difficulty from which the Zionist 
ED> dares not avert his eyes, though he rarely likes to face it. 
ED> Palestine proper has already its inhabitants."
ED> (Israel Zangwill, The Voice of Jerusalem, London 1920, 
ED> p.88)

    When this was written, seventy three years ago, the people of
    the region were not all Jews.  They are not all Jews now.  No
    Jew but the most rabid bigot has ever called for an Israel to
    be ONLY for Jews.  That was true then.  It is true now.  


ED> "[The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs."
ED> (Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel in a speech to 
ED> the Knesset,
ED> quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, 'Begin and the "Beasts", New 
ED> Statesman, 25 June 1982)

    Since you inserted the words 'The Palestinians are' we cannot
    know what Begin was talking about.  
    
    For someone who wants to embellish his own importance with an 
    absurd pseudo-organizational name like the 'Center for Policy
    Research,' you are not a very honest person. 


ED> "Both the process of expropriation [of the Palestinians] 
ED> and the removal of the poor must be carried out 
ED> discreetly and circumspectly".
ED> (Dr. Theodor Herzl, The Complete Diaries, Herzl Press, 
ED> 1960, I., p.88)

    Herzl died eighty nine years ago.  Are you suggesting that he
    has stated what is Israel's policy today?  Have you ever seen
    Israel even entertain a policy to exclude non-Jews, let alone  
    actually try to remove non-Jews from Israel?  If you actually 
    believe that this quote has anything to do with Israel's non-
    Jewish citizenry today, you are an idiot.  But if you realize
    that Israel has no intention of removing non-Jewish Israelis,
    then you are nothing but a common liar.  This one time I will 
    give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you are stupid. 

 
ED> "We shall try to spirit the penniless population [the 
ED> Palestinians] across the border by procuring employment 
ED> for it in the transit countries, while denying it any 
ED> employment in our own country"
ED> (Theodor Herzl, The Complete Diaries, Herzl Press, 1960, 
ED> I, p.88)

    Once again you quote a man gone for almost a century.  You do
    so within the context of modern day Israel.  
    
    Thomas Jefferson owned slaves.  How does this fact define the
    United States today?


ED> "[Jews] must expel Arabs and take their place" 
ED> (David Ben Gurion, 1937, quoted in Shabtai Teveth, Ben 
ED> Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 
ED> 1985, p. 89)

    Did he say 'Jews,' or did you add this?
 
    This was also a statement from ten years before Israel became
    a state.  It has no bearing on Israel.  
    

ED> "We must do everything to ensure they [the 
ED> Palestinian refugees] never do return"
ED> (David Ben Gurion, in his diary, 19 July 1948, quoted in 
ED> Michael Bar Zohar, Ben Gurion: The Armed Prophet, 
ED> Prentice-Hall, 1967, p.157)

    YOU added the words 'the Palestinian refugees.'  And by doing
    so, you are misleading people into believing that Ben Gurion,
    who was expressing his hope that people who fled their lands,
    at the encouragement of people such as KING ABDULLAH, and the  
    MUFTI OF JERUSALEM, was gloating over people abandoning their
    homes.  What he was refering to were the Arabs with whom Jews
    were at war.  

ED> "The country was mostly an empty desert, with only 
ED> a few islands of Arab settlement"
ED> (Shimon Peres, Minister of Defense, quoted in David's 
ED> Sling: The Arming of Israel, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 
ED> 1970, p.249)

    At the time of the rebirth of Israel this was certainly true,
    especially when compared to what Israel has accomplished in a
    few short decades.


ED> "All this story about the danger of extermination [of 
ED> Jews] has been blown up....to justify the annexation of 
ED> new Arab territories"
ED> (Mordechai Bentov, Israeli Cabinet Minister, Al 
ED> Hamishmar, 14 April 1972)

    Since Israel has not annexed even one millimeter of territory 
    in more twenty six years, this quote is irrelevant. 


ED> "Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can 
ED> disqualify terrorism as a means of combat"
ED> (Yitzhak Shamir, Hehazit, Summer 1943 [Journal of the 
ED> LEHI, the Stern Gang], translated from the Israeli daily 
ED> Al-Hamishmar, 24 December 1987

    Again, you are quoting a man who was fighting for what he had
    been promised from a time as ancient as biblical, to the time
    of the Balfour Declaration, just a few short years back.  And
    what was thought of and described as terrorism by Jews didn't
    include slaughtering Olympic athletes, brutally murdering the 
    innocent, attacking school buses, and murdering another human 
    being for the sole reason that he or she is an Arab.
 
 
ED> "The domination of Jewish agriculture by Arab 
ED> workers is a cancer in our body"
ED> (A. Uzan, Israeli Minister of Agriculture, Ha'aretz, 13 
ED> December 1974)

    There were serious concerns about a work force that consisted 
    of people from OUTSIDE Israel.  It is a wise to be concerned.
    A work force consisting of foreigners is not a good situation
    for a country.


ED> "There can be only one national home in Palestine, 
ED> and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership 
ED> between Jews and Arabs"
ED> (Montague David Eder, President of the Zionist 
ED> Federation of Great Britain, 1931,
ED> in Doreen Ingrams, comp., Palestine Papers 1917-1922, 
ED> Seeds of Conflict, George Braziller, 1973, p. 135)

    This also has no meaning for a country formed seventeen years
    after this statement was made.  Obviously times change.  This
    is NOT what Israel is about today.  I believe the peace talks
    make this quote irrelevant.


ED> "There is not a single Jewish village in this country 
ED> that has not been built on the site of an Arab village"
ED> (Moshe Dayan, Ha'aretz, 4 April 1969...)

    This is completely false.


ED> "Some people talk of expelling 700,000 to 800,000 
ED> Arabs in the event of a new war, and instruments have 
ED> been prepared"
ED> (Aharon Yariv, former chief of Israeli military 
ED> intelligence, 1980, Inquiry, 8 December 1980)

    Expelled from where?  Israel?  The occupied territories?  New
    Jersey?  Is there any way we can read this and get an idea as
    to what on earth he was talking about.  Obviously not.

 
ED> "We should there [in Palestine] form a portion of the 
ED> rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization 
ED> as opposed to barbarism."
ED> (Dr. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, London, 1896, p. 
ED> 29)

    Interesting notion.  Considering that this was written nearly
    a century ago, it is quite visionary.


ED> "I deeply believe in launching preventive war 
ED> against the Arab States without further hesitation. By 
ED> doing so we will achieve two targets: firstly, the 
ED> annihilation of Arab power; and secondly, the expansion 
ED> of our territory"
ED> (Menachem Begin, in a speech to the Knesset, 12 October 
ED> 1955)

    This was said nearly forty years ago.  Begin is dead.  And it
    should be obvious to anybody that if Israel was expansionist,
    it would have ANNEXED the occupied territories right after it
    captured them.  Israel would not be negotiating to get rid of
    them.


ED> "During the last 100 years our people have been in a 
ED> process of building up the country and the nation, of 
ED> expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional 
ED> settlements in order to expand the borders here. Let no 
ED> Jew say that the process has ended. Let no Jew say that 
ED> we are near the end of the road."
ED> (Moshe Dayan, Ma'ariv, 7 July 1968)

    He's dead, too.  And since Israel has not annexed ANY land at 
    all since 1967, you are once again wasting bandwidth with all
    of these misleading quotes.  They are so out of sync with the
    reality of Israel, that you do nothing but make yourself look
    like a fanatic desperate to sway people, by misleading them.


ED> "Let us not today fling accusations at the [Palestinian 
ED> Arab] murderers. Who are we that we should argue 
ED> against their hatred ? For eight years now they sit in 
ED> their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their very eyes, 
ED> we turn into our homestead the land and the villages in 
ED> which they and their forefathers have lived. We are a 
ED> generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and 
ED> the cannon we cannot plant a tree and build a home. Let 
ED> us not shrink back when we see the hatred fermenting 
ED> and filling the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs, 
ED> who sit all around us. Let us not avert our gaze, so that 
ED> our hand shall not slip. This is the fate of our generation, 
ED> the choice of our life - to be prepared and armed, strong 
ED> and tough - or otherwise, the sword will slip from our 
ED> first, and our life will be snuffed out."
ED> (Moshe Dayan, eulogy of Roy Rutenberg at Kibbutz Nahal 
ED> Oz, 1956, quoted in Uri Avneri, Israel without Zionists, 
Collier Books, Macmillan, New York, 1971, p.154)

    Interesting quote.  It's true that we should never lose sight
    of the plight of these people.  We should also recognize that
    this quote preceded the disgusting wave of Arab terrorism and
    violence directed at innocent people, that began in 1972 with 
    the massacre of the Israeli athletes in Munich, and continues 
    to this day.