Revolutionaries

"Duncan: I'm sure we've got everything under control."

"We cannot forget that Colonel Nasser has repeatedly boasted of his intention to create an Arab empire from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf. The French Prime Minister, M. Mollet, the other day quoted a speech of Colonel Nasser's and rightly said that it could remind us only of one thing—of the speeches of Hitler before the war."

"What Nasser showed, then—along with Tito, Nehru, and Zhou Enlai—was that being a Cold War superpower did not always ensure that one got one's way. There were limits to how much either Moscow or Washington could order smaller powers around, because they could always defect to the other side, or at least threaten to do so. The very compulsiveness with which the Soviet Union and the United States sought to bring such states within their orbits wound up giving those states the means of escape. Autonomy, in what might have seemed to be inhospitable circumstances, was becoming attainable. Tails were beginning to wag dogs."

"When I met Nasser, he said to me, "I see myself when I was young in you. You are the future for the Arab revolution." This meant very, very much to me."

"By 1956, only four years after toppling the corrupt and ineffective King Farouk, Egypt’s second president and virtual dictator, the thirty-six-year-old Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, had become a major figure in international affairs. A champion of pan-Arabism, he aimed to build up Egypt and liberate the Middle East from the last vestiges of European colonialism. He had won Britain’s agreement to withdraw its eighty thousand troops from the Suez Canal Zone, played a starring role at the Bandung Conference, and defied the West with a spectacular arms deal with communist Czechoslovakia in 1955 and the establishment of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1956. By 1956 Nasser’s feats had aroused his opponents. Israeli leaders, worried over their neighbor’s acquisition of sophisticated Eastern-bloc weapons, the escalating border violence, and the hostile propaganda emanating from Cairo radio, contemplated a preemptive strike. They found a kindred spirit in France, where the Guy Mollet government was obsessed with Nasser’s support of the Algerian revolution. And Britain’s prime minister, Anthony Eden, furious over Nasser’s attempts to undermine British interests in Iraq and Jordan, viewed the Egyptian leader as an “Arab Mussolini” intent on using Soviet aid to dominate the Middle East and to threaten Western Europe’s oil supplies."

"My father taught me that you have to stand by your principles. He was president of the bar association and was preaching civil liberties and human rights during some of the most repressive years of the Nasser era. He was the focus of a lot of pressure and intimidation, but he stood by his principles. And I think that's a lesson I remember from him — that you stand up for what you believe in."

"There is now doubt in our minds that Nasser, whether he likes it or not, is now effectively in Russian hands, just as Mussolini was in Hitler's. It would be as ineffective to show weakness to Nasser now in order to placate him as it was to show weakness to Mussolini."

"Our quarrel is not with Egypt, still less with the Arab world. It is with Colonel Nasser. He has shown that he is not a man who can be trusted to keep an agreement. Now he has torn up all his country's promises to the Suez Canal Company and has even gone back on his own statements."

"Nasser's a thug. He needs to be taught a lesson."

"In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him. This was a war of self-defence in the noblest sense of the term. The government of national unity then established decided unanimously: We will take the initiative and attack the enemy, drive him back, and thus assure the security of Israel and the future of the nation."

"Lyndon's gone and dragged Nasser away from the fireplace and onto the balcony again. Once you get him out there, it's a helluva job to get him back to the fireplace again."

"I believe that we now have a duty to remove the aggressor from our land and to regain the Arab territory occupied by the Israelis. We can then engage in a clandestine struggle to liberate the land of Palestine, to liberate Haifa and Jaffa."

"We must fight our way to victory on a sea of blood and a horizon of fire."

"We have to go along a road covered with blood. We have no other alternative. For us it is a matter of life or death, a matter of living or existing. We have to be ready to face the challenges that await us."

"We knew that by closing the Gulf of Aqaba it might mean war with Israel. [If war comes] it will be total and the objective will be to destroy Israel."

"If anyone thinks we have become tired, let me say that we are a struggling nation, a fighting nation, a patient nation."

"No person, not even the most simple one, takes seriously the lie of the six million Jews that were murdered [in the Holocaust]."

"If the Jews win this battle, then the Arabs had better go bury their faces in the mud!"

"Our path to Palestine will not be covered with a red carpet or with yellow sand. Our path to Palestine will be covered with blood… In order that we may liberate Palestine, the Arab nation must unite, the Arab armies must unite, and a unified plan of action must be established"

"What was taken by force can only be retrieved by force."

"We are awaiting aggression by Israel and any supporters of Israel. We will make it a decisive battle and get rid of Israel once and for all… This is the dream of every Arab."

"You are from Britain. Would you accept to give Manchester to some other people? And if you are American, I ask the same way, do you accept to give California to some other people? Or would you accept the 'status quo' of occupying Manchester by some other people, by the Chinese for instance? And then reach agreement after expelling the people of Manchester from their homes, depriving them of their property, of everything? This is the question of Palestine."

"The holy march on which the Arab nation insists, will carry us forward from one victory to another ... the flag of freedom which flies over Baghdad today will fly over Amman and Riyadh. Yes, the flag of freedom which flies over Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad today will fly over the rest of the Middle East."

"My countrymen, my blood spills for you and for Egypt. I will live for your sake and die for the sake of your freedom and honor. Let them kill me; it does not concern me so long as I have instilled pride, honor, and freedom in you. If Gamal Abdel Nasser should die, each of you shall be Gamal Abdel Nasser ... Gamal Abdel Nasser is of you and from you and he is willing to sacrifice his life for the nation."

"Let them kill Nasser! What is Nasser but one among many? I am alive, and even if I die, all of you are Gamal Abdul Nasser!"

"Now with our concentrations in Sinai, the chances of war are fifty-fifty. But if we close the Strait, war will be a one hundred percent certainty."

"If the refugees return to Israel – Israel will cease to exist."

"The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure and pleasure my business."

"The filibuster isn't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. Instead, it came into being by happenstance: In 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr urged the Senate to eliminate the "motion to proceed"-a standard parliamentary provision that allows a simple majority of any legislature to end debate on a piece of business and call for a vote. (Burr, who seems never to have developed the habit of thinking things through, reportedly considered the rule a waste of time.)"

"On that subject I am coy."

"Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained."

"There is a maxim, 'Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.' It is a maxim for sluggards. A better reading of it is, 'Never do today what you can as well do tomorrow,' because something may occur to make you regret your premature action."

"Emma Goldman and Sasha worked together harmoniously. When guests and reporters came to the house, or even friends of friends, Sasha would welcome them in a warm, friendly manner. He filled the house with a joyful spirit and his discussions were marked with authoritative facts and information...Everyone who knew or talked about Emma and Sasha could not speak of one without mentioning the other. Although they lived their own separate lives, they were inseparable emotionally and spiritually. Neither of them ever wrote a major article or a book without consulting the other. They knew and shared every event in their lives; there were no secrets between them. Their friendship and companionship were the finest. Those of us who were privileged to know them will never forget them...A great part of Emma’s life was lost to her with Sasha’s death."

"His name will live as long as there are and will continue to be rebels who struggle for genuine, true liberty."

"The acute physical pain of his prostate gland, his economic difficulties, his precarious status as a political refugee, all combined to cause our warm, genial comrade, who had always been so full of life, to end his sufferings and commit suicide."

"“No audience is too small for me to talk to,” Sasha used to say."

"Life was difficult for everyone in Germany after World War I and particularly so for the political refugees. Many of us felt that we had to leave Germany. A number of us went to France, including Sasha and Emma."

"Alexander Berkman, “Sasha” to his friends, was a rebel from early childhood. He protested against injustice wherever he saw it...After Berkman was released from prison he continued to devote his life to the revolutionary cause, a convinced anarchist. He worked with all his energies and dedication for the movement, for freedom, and wound up a political refugee in the various countries where he was permitted to live. He was one of the finest, most generous people I ever knew. Although he had very few material possessions, he was always ready to give everything away to others and had to be reminded not to deny himself his urgent personal needs. Berkman made every possible effort to understand and help people...He radiated warmth and comfort, like the rays of the sun...I first met Berkman in New York City in the late Fall, 1919, at the home of Stella Ballantine, Emma Goldman’s niece. We discussed the Russian Revolution and the need to expose the atrocities of the Bolsheviks against the anarchists, socialists and all who dared to criticize their new dictatorial regime in Moscow...Sasha argued that the Bolsheviks should be given a chance, that it was too early to start an organized opposition because the revolution was surrounded by enemies...Our second meeting with Sasha and Emma took place in Berlin four years later, November, 1923, where they had been living for two years, since January, 1922. They had left Soviet Russia greatly disillusioned with the Bolshevik regime. Sasha and Emma were each writing about their experiences in Russia. In addition, Sasha was active organizing help for the anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists and other political Opponents held in prison by the Bolsheviks. He appealed for funds, issued a bulletin in English, translated the letters from men and women prisoners in Russia. He assembled and translated all the material that was published in the book, Letters From Russian Prisons."

"Berkman and Goldman personified anarchism to Americans who read accounts of their speeches in the press or followed the news of their trials. The police persecution that they faced, the fear that they aroused, the relief with which the nation greeted their deportation-all testify to the sense of power and fierce determination that the two conveyed. And yet, during the first and second decades of the twentieth century, when the anarchists' notoriety was at a peak, their influence among American radicals was actually on the wane. Socialism, not anarchism, had become the dominant radical ideology."

"While Goldman took the anarchist message to middle-class audiences, Berkman retained his faith in the revolutionary potential of the working class."

"Goldman's chief collaborator in her work as publicist, publisher, and agitator was Alexander Berkman."

"In the United States Communist-anarchism appealed mostly to working-class immigrants or their children, who felt cheated by false promises of the American dream. Although some declassé intellectuals and American craftworkers joined the communists, the majority of the movement was composed of Eastern European Jews who worked in the sweatshops of New York's garment district, of Italian factory workers, and other immigrants with few skills and little hope of advancement. The two most important figures among them were Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Originally followers of Johann Most, they emerged from his shadow in the early nineties to become the foremost advocates of revolutionary anarchism."

"it is impossible to know the number of individuals whose political awakening-as with Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, long-time revolutionary stalwarts of the next generation came from the Haymarket Affair."

"Emma Goldman, fearless champion of human rights, in Madison Square Garden. Short-sleeved, her fists clenched, she vehemently opposes our entry into the world holocaust, and is threatened with arrest. "I defy the police, when the lives of millions are at stake!"... Alexander Berkman also speaks: "The men of this great land will never let themselves be led by the nose into an imperialist war!""

"Later, she [my mother] met Alexander Berkman, who was a great influence on her life and on my own."

"My visit with Edward Carpenter lasted the greater part of an afternoon in his modest cottage at Guildford. [...] I attempted to tell him how much his books had meant to me-Towards Democracy, Angel Wings, Walt Whitman. He stopped me, gently putting his hand over mine. Instead I should rather tell him about Alexander Berkman, he said. He had read his Prison Memoirs, "a profound study of man's inhumanity and prison psychology, and of his own martyrdom, portrayed with extraordinary simplicity.""

"Shortly after my return to Kiev from Odessa I became involved in a situation which was to provide one of the most serious shocks to my Bolshevik illusions-the Pirro incident which Alexander Berkman later described at some length in his book, The Bolshevik Myth."

"They were always busy, always thinking of America and their friends there, and longing for wider activity."

"Neither his experiences in Russia nor the bitterness of his émigré life ever shook his great courage or his boundless devotion to his ideal. Perhaps it was the impossibility of serving as he had wished to, and was fitted to serve, the country which had symbolized his hopes that was the indirect cause of his voluntary and untimely end. His death was as brave as his life had been."

"Terrorism is tempting with its tremendous possibilities. It offers a mechanical solution, as it were, in hopeless situations. … the principles of terrorism unavoidably rebound to the fatal injury of liberty and revolution. Absolute power corrupts and defeats its partisans no less than its opponents. A people that knows not liberty becomes accustomed to dictatorship: fighting despotism and counter-revolution, terrorism itself becomes their efficient school. Once on the road of terrorism, the State necessarily becomes estranged from the people."