Jews From Israel

"They shall build houses and inhabit them;"

"The former things will not be called to mind,"

"Who is wealthy?... Rabbi Akiva says: Anyone who has a wife whose actions are pleasant"

"They said about Rabbi Akiva that in all his days he never said (to his students that the)” time had come to arise in the study hall”. except for the eves of Passover and the eve of Yom Kippur"

"Rabbi Tarfon said: Akiva, anyone who separates from you, it is as though he has separated from life"

"Rabbi Yehuda said: This was the custom of Rabbi Akiva, when he would pray with the congregation he would shorten (his prayer) and go up, due to encumbrance on the congregation. But when he prayed by himself a person would leave (Rabbi Akiva alone) in one corner and find him in another corner. And why so much? Because of his bows and prostrations."

"All my days I have been troubled by the verse: "With all your soul", meaning: Even if God takes your soul. I said to myself: When will the opportunity be afforded me to fulfill this verse?"

"(To his 24,000 pairs of students) My (Torah knowledge) and yours are hers (his wife)"

"Nothing in the entire world is worthy but for that day on which The Song of Songs was given to Israel"

"Beloved are Israel, for they were called children of the All-present."

"Beloved is man, for he was created in the image of God."

"A fence to wisdom is silence."

"Jesting and levity lead a man to lewdness."

"'Love your fellow as yourself'- Rabbi Akiva says: This is the great principal of the Torah"

"If you start looking like vour passport photo, it's high time you went abroad."

"- Driver: "How many kids do you have ?" - Sallah: "Six." - Driver: "It says here that you have seven." - Sallah: "Seven ?" [counting] "OK, seven kids." (from Sallah Shabati)"

"They will never forgive us, that we did not accept being slain or gassed a little."

"The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz."

"If my head had been a ball, it would have been in the top corner of the net."

"I am prepared to retire (from playing) today...and coach the national team. Maybe it's time to bring in new blood, people who understand today's players, their psyche. If they ask me, I'll do it. It's an honour to coach the national team."

"Do not say, "when I have leisure I will study," for you may never have leisure."

"Do not judge your fellow man until you have come into his situation."

"במקום שאין אנשים, השתדל להיות איש."

"A boor cannot be sin-fearing, an ignoramus cannot be pious, a bashful one cannot learn, a short-tempered person cannot teach, nor does anyone who does much business grow wise."

"Do not separate yourself from the community."

"James Baker was the only leader in America who had the guts to stand up and act against Israel's malignant disease: the settlements. When he was the Secretary of State, he simply informed the Israeli government that he would deduct the sums expended on the settlements from the money Israel was getting from the US. Threatened and made good on his threat. Baker thus confronted the "pro-Israeli" lobby in the US, both the Jewish and the Christian. Such courage is rare in the United States, as it is rare in Israel."

"It seems that most religions are obsessed with sex. They assume that if a religious male sees a woman, whatever her age and looks, he is aroused and cannot think about anything else. So, logically, women must be hidden away."

"The prophecy of Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz, that the occupation would corrupt us through and through and turn us into a people of exploiters and secret-service-men, has come awfully true. Nothing has remained of the "beautiful Eretz Israel " but a cloying nostalgia, of which Naomi Shemer was a standard-bearer. A small and gallant state, progressive and (relatively) egalitarian, respected by the world, has become an occupying and looting state, hostage to delirious settlers, full of internal violence and "swinish capitalism" (a phrase coined by Shimon Peres, one of those most responsible for this situation). Throughout the world, the idea of boycotting Israel is gaining ground."

"Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for 50 generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith."

"Critics of the war plans (including myself) have pointed to the disastrous political results that must be expected: Iraq would break into three parts (Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center, Shi’ites in the south), the Middle East would be exposed to the onslaught of Iranian fanaticism, pro-Western Arab regimes would collapse. Israel would be surrounded by aggressive Islamic fundamentalism, like the Crusader kingdom with the advent of Saladin."

"It is an irony of fate (or a triumph of folly) that Hamas was created, in fact, with the help of Israel itself. Much as the Americans created the al-Qaeda of Osama bin Laden in order to fight against the Soviet army in Afghanistan, Israel supported the Islamic movement in the occupied territories as a counterweight to the PLO. The assumption was that pious Muslims would spend their time praying in the mosques and would not support the secular PLO, which was then considered the arch-enemy. But when the first intifada broke out at the end of 1987, the Islamists organized as Hamas (the Arabic initials of "Islamic Resistance Movement") and quickly became the most efficient underground fighting organization. However, the Security Service started to act against them only after a whole year of the intifada had passed."

"I have often wondered how different Zionism might have been if Herzl had not been a Viennese journalist but a shopkeeper in a Damascus bazaar. Would Zionism have realized that Palestine was a part of a big area inhabited by Arabs? Might some solution have been found at the very beginning to the problem of co-existence with the people who considered Palestine their own homeland ? But these are, of course idle thoughts. Herzl could not have been anything but a European Jew, because his whole idea was a response to a specific challenge posed by European conditions."

"[Henry] Kissinger has always been a paradox for me. I was profoundly impressed by his book about European politics in the first half of the last century. One of his main theses was that peace agreements are valueless if a major party to the conflict is left out and sees in the agreement a threat to its basic interests. If ever this rule were true – as it surely is – this is the case with the Palestinians in the Middle East conflict. It is also true for the Soviet Union. Yet once he became the political genius of the Nixon and Ford administrations, Kissinger behaved as if he had never read his own book – the classic example of power blinding the intellectual. He tried to make peace of some kind without the Palestinians, treating the rulers of the various Arab countries as so many Metternichs and Castlereaghs, trying to push the Soviets out of the Middle East altogether. I strongly suspected him of obstructing any real move towards peace, favoring the salami approach of little pieces of peace, so as to keep everybody screaming for American support and dependent on American protection. This was the famous step-by-step approach."

"Sartawi and I are sitting in a small restaurant on the Boulevard St. Germain. After the main course, he excuses himself. 'I have to go to the bathroom. Keep an eye on my briefcase.' His attaché case – the kind Israelis call James Bond cases – stands under the table. After a few minutes he comes back, takes his seat and bursts out laughing. 'If I told anyone of my friends that I left a briefcase full of PLO secrets in the care of a Zionist, they wouldn't believe me', he says. 'If I tell anyone of my friends that a PLO terrorist put an attaché case under my table and went away, and I remained there, they'd think that I was crazy', I reply. We laugh and order a dessert."

"By that time it was already clear that the next prime minister was going to be Golda Meir, a woman whom I frankly detested – a mutual sentiment, I might add. I knew her as an opinionated, obstinate person, primitive in her outlook, rigid in her attitudes, with a genius for reaching and exploiting the deepest fears and prejudices of the Jewish masses. I was certain that with her as prime minister, all peace efforts would come to a total standstill."

"The only people who have an official confirmation that they are sane are those who have been released from psychiatric hospitals."

"America controls the world, we control America. Never before have Jews exerted such an immense influence on the center of world power."

"Now Antiochus was not satisfied either with his unexpected taking the city (Jerusalem), or with its pillage, or with the great slaughter he had made there; but being overcome with his violent passions, and remembering what he had suffered during the siege, he compelled the Jews to dissolve the laws of their country, and to keep their infants uncircumcised, and to sacrifice swine's flesh upon the altar; against which they all opposed themselves, and the most approved among them were put to death."

"And when the book of Daniel was showed him [Alexander the Great] wherein Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that he himself was the person intended."

"Josephus failed to organize a strong stand against the Romans. The Jewish forces suffered setback after setback. Finally, Josephus and his men were forced to retreat to the fortress of Jotapata. After a siege of two months, Jotapata fell. The forty men who were left in the fortress killed themselves before the Romans entered it. Of all the brave fighters of Jotapata, only Josephus and his armor-bearer survived, and they were taken prisoners by the Romans. They had not joined the others who preferred death to dishonor."

"Titus had a strange companion in those days: Josephus, the descendant of the Maccabees. From the enemy camp, Josephus now called Josephus Flavius, after the family of Vespasian and Titus, watched the defeat of his people."

"Its literary merits must be left to the judgment of its readers; as to its truth, I should not hesitate to make the confident assertion that from the first word to the last I have aimed at nothing else."

"[Josephus] was a Jew who was commissioned by Rome in the late first century after the Jewish-Roman War to write a history of the Jewish people. Consequently, Josephus found himself in his various works trying to (1) appeal to gentiles who were interested in the Judean system—law, history, and culture, and (2) defend surviving Jews against widespread postwar animosity. And he had to accomplish all this under the auspices of Rome. These at least are the general conclusions of prominent Josephus scholars Steve Mason and Tessa Rajak."

"Antipater, now undisputed heir, had called down on his head the utter loathing of the nation, for everyone knew that all the slanders directed against his brothers had originated with him."

"I protest openly that I do not go over to the Romans as a deserter of the Jews, but as a minister from thee."

"Their exercises are unbloody battles, and their battles bloody exercises."

"People can choose between the sweet lie or the bitter truth. I say the bitter truth, but many people don't want to hear it."

"We won’t be moving people, we will be moving the borders. It’s not a transfer."

"Whoever votes for Lieberman gives strength to Israel."

"The vision I would like to see here is the entrenching of the Jewish and the Zionist state. I very much favor democracy, but when there is a contradiction between democratic and Jewish values, the Jewish and Zionist values are more important."