politicians-from-israel

"I think the first thing that shoud be done is to apply personal sanctions against some of the bad actors in the international arena; I give you and example, I don't know if you heard about Francesca Albanese - yeah, you can boo her, you can - and I think the US - and many here in the crowd from the US - US shoud apply sanctions against her. She shouldn't be allowed entering the United States of America. She comes once a month to promote hate, to go to universities, and you know she compared our prime minister Netanyahu to Hitler; and she compare your president to orrible leaders. That's unacceptable and I expect the new administration to be stronger on this issue."

"It is time to deploy a new agency in Gaza that is focused more on humanitarian efforts, and not on activism or, in some cases, terrorism. The latest polio campaign, spearheaded by UNICEF, the World Health Organization and IDF, where more than 600,000 Gazan children were vaccinated, shows that progress is possible when Israel is working with partners interested in humanitarian efforts."

"I want to congratulate my dear friend Governor Mike Huckabee. I think he will be a great ambassador to Israel. I think he visited Israel dozens of times. And I had the honor to escort him. Also, after October 7, he came, and I took him to visit the sites on Kfar Aza and Be'eri and other locations where the massacre took place."

"Shameful that a man like that, a former US president, abets propaganda and disseminates things that wound the spirit of Israel’s fighters and its citizens."

"[Israel] will topple Hamas rule in Gaza. We will eliminate its military capability. We will make sure this threat doesn't exist on our border. It will take time, and it will be lethal, powerful and forever."

"I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly."

"I make it now clear: At the end of the war, Hamas will not control Gaza, there will be no civilian Israeli control in the Gaza Strip, and Tzahal will retain full military freedom of action."

"I have released all the restraints, we have (regained) control of the area, and we are moving to a full offense. You will have the ability to change the reality here. You have seen the prices (being paid), and you will get to see the change. Hamas wanted a change in Gaza; it will change 180 degrees from what it thought. They will regret this moment, Gaza will never go back to what it was. Whoever comes to decapitate, murder women, Holocaust survivors, we will eliminate him with all our might, and without compromise."

""The first rule of war is know your enemy, and Europe and the current American government are unwilling to define this war as against Islamist terrorism. If in Belgium they continue eating chocolate and enjoying life, and continue to appear as great democrats and liberals, they won't be aware that some Muslims in their country are organising terror, they won't be able to fight them." Israeli minister: Belgians who continue to eat chocolate, enjoy life can't fight terror"

"We will increase our vigilance and readiness to thwart terror ... and will continue to take any measures necessary in facing terror groups in the area."

"The protection of our (Israeli Arab) students is a major and important demand for us due to the ongoing circumstances as they feel the loss of safety and security inside Israeli universities and school residencies."

"If someone wants to make Jerusalem or the Galilee Jewish it's the same policy. Whether an Arab or a Jew does it is irrelevant."

"This government (24th Knesset) is dependent on us (United Arab List) and on our decision. And if there is a decision that contradicts our national principles and our religion (Islam), we will not be there."

"I am satisfied with the process we started. We are inside (the Knesset). Now is the time to know how to play the game. That means improving our steps and finding solutions to problems."

"We are equal partners the whole way, part of the coalition, for the first time in the State of Israel. We are compromising to solve the Arab society's problems."

"The State of Israel was born as a Jewish state, and it will remain one."

"Today, I will have to tell my children, along with all the children of Palestinian Arab towns in the country, that the state has declared that it does not want us here. ... It has passed a law of and told us that we will always be ."

"You are weak people, only a country that isn’t normal acts this way. No apartheid law will erase the fact that in this homeland there are two nations."

"In a government that has lost all shame, that fears its own shadow, the majority tramples the minority, legislation is racist and the democratic space is under constant threat."

"This is an evil law, a black flag hovers over it."

"We have reached a level of insanity and delusion, to take a situation from the battlefield, when soldiers are under stress and explosive devices are being thrown at them and attempts are being made to infiltrate, and to take their human response and judge them from the armchairs in ?"

"Today I view Sharon and Kahane and the Gush Emunim not simply as examples of the weaknesses of our yidishe mentshlekhkayt, Jewish humanness, but as a political evil. Some of my friends challenge this view as extreme. But I believe it. Kahane and Sharon are not concerned with Jewish values, Jewish security, Jewish survival. I don't believe that their policies are motivated by Jewish fears of annihilation. There are, I know, many Israeli Jews whose refusal to accept a Palestinian state is rooted in real fears, some of which I share. And because of this, I see their position differently, even though I strongly disagree with it. However, Kahane and his kind express blatant racism, chauvinism, a hunger for military power, a greed for territory, an insistence on religious and cultural supremacy. These can be easily analyzed as originating in feelings of inadequacy and insecurity and even fears of annihilation. Yet they are manifested in such hatred of Palestinians, such callous indifference to non-Jews and non-Jewish culture that I do not consider these "psychological roots" of fascism legitimate concerns. And so I continue viewing Kahane and his politics as an evil that impinges on my Jewishness because they actively try to redefine and reshape it through the actions and policies of the Jewish State. Everything Jewish in me resists their efforts."

"Farrakhan is one person, one black person. Why is it that no black person seems to be rabid about Meir Kahane? Farrakhan is rejected by a lot of black people who wouldn't go near that man. It's not an equal standard-one black person is all black people."

"Every Arab is a proud Arab, a good nationalist. And because of this, he is opposed to the existence of the state of Israel."

"I say the Arabs must leave Israel, precisely because I believe if the Arabs stay, they'll become the 'good Arabs' as I understand the term."

"The question is as follows: if the Arabs settle among us and make enough children to become a majority, will Israel continue to be a Jewish state? Do we have to accept that the Arab majority will decide? Obviously, nobody in Israel can accept this. Because to accept this would amount to being anti-Zionist!"

"The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with explosives and firebombs and stones are part of the same people who when they had all the territories they now demand be given to them for their state -attempted to drive the Jewish state into the sea."

"Western democracy has to be ruled out. For me that’s cut and dried: there’s no question of setting up democracy in Israel, because democracy means equal rights for all, irrespective of racial or religious origins. Therefore democracy and Zionism cannot go together. And Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed this state to be a Jewish state, is a totally schizophrenic document. You just can’t, on the one hand, want a Jewish state and at the same time give non-Jews the right to become a majority."

"I prefer a powerful and proud Jewish State that is hated by the entire world than an Auschwitz that is loved by one and all."

"There is no greater anti-Semite than the Jewish one, and none hates the Jewish people more than the Jewish traitor and apostate."

"I will not demand that the Jewish Agency allocate a sum of 300,000 or 100,000 pounds sterling to help European Jewry. And I think that whoever demands such things is performing an anti-Zionist act."

"I think it is necessary to state here – Zionism is above everything."

"Indeed, there were Jews, like Yitzhak Gruenbaum, the Polish Zionist leader, who sincerely hoped for a united front of German and Jewish minorities [in Central and Eastern Europe]. Yet far from uniting in their common adversity, insecure Germans turned against even more insecure Jews."

"I think my appointment is the example and answer for those who accuse Israel of being an apartheid state. It shows minorities have equal rights and we are part of the government, the state and the parliament."

"[the pact with Yasir Arafat had caused the deaths of sixteen hundred Israelis in terror attacks] It’s on your hands! You should be ashamed! You gave them guns and they shot at us!"

"...The ultimate test of this agreement will be a test of blood... If it becomes clear that they [the Palestinians] cannot overcome terror, this will be temporary accord and... we will have no choice but to abrogate it... And if there is no choice, the IDF will return to the places it is about to leave in the upcoming months."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"[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."

"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."

"Whoever votes for Lieberman gives strength to Israel."

"The Gaza sniper deserves a decoration, and the photographer a demerit."