Zionist Leader Quotes

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In this building, on a cold Wednesday afternoon, 10 March 1948, a group of eleven men, veteran Zionist leaders together with young military Jewish officers, put the final touches to a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. That same evening, military orders were dispatched to the units on the ground to prepare for the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians from vast areas of the country.3 The orders came with a detailed description of the methods to be employed to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centres; setting fire to homes, properties and goods; expulsion; demolition; and, finally, planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled inhabitants from returning.
Ilan Pappé (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine)
No Zionist element, right or left, understood the Fascist phenomenon. From the first, they were indifferent to the struggle of the Italian people, including progressive Jews, against the blackshirts and Fascism's larger implications for European democracy. Italy's Zionists never resisted Fascism; they ended up praising it and undertook diplomatic negotiations on its behalf. The bulk of the Revisionists and a few other right-wingers became its enthusiastic adherents. The moderate bourgeois Zionist leaders --Weizmann, Sokolow and Goldmann-- were uninterested in Fascism itself. As Jewish separatists they only asked one question, the cynical classic: 'So? Is it good for the Jews?' which implies that something can be evil for the general world and yet be good for the Jews.
Lenni Brenner
More important than British motivations for issuing the Balfour Declaration is what this undertaking meant in practice for the crystal-clear aims of the Zionist movement—sovereignty and complete control of Palestine. With Britain’s unstinting support, these aims suddenly became plausible. Some leading British politicians extended backing to Zionism that went well beyond the carefully phrased text of the declaration. At a dinner at Balfour’s home in 1922, three of the most prominent British statesmen of the era—Lloyd George, Balfour, and Secretary of State for the Colonies Winston Churchill—assured Weizmann that by the term “Jewish national home” they “always meant an eventual Jewish state.” Lloyd George convinced the Zionist leader that for this reason Britain would never allow representative government in Palestine. Nor did it.25
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
Zionist movement’s leaders understood that “under no circumstances should they talk as though the Zionist program required the expulsion of the Arabs, because that would cause the Jews to lose the world’s sympathy,” but knowledgeable Palestinians were not deceived.
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
On June 3, Britain, France and Italy announced their full support for Polish, Czech and Yugoslav statehood. On the following day, encouraged to do so by the British, Dr Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader, met the Emir Feisal, the leader of the Arab Revolt, near the port of Akaba, and worked out with him what seemed to be a satisfactory Arab support for a Jewish National Home in Palestine. A senior British general noted after the meeting that both T.E. Lawrence, who helped set the meeting up, and Weizmann, ‘see the lines of Arab & Zionist policy converging in the not distant future
Martin Gilbert (The First World War: A Complete History)
Israel’s reliance on assassination as a military tool did not happen by chance, but rather stems from the revolutionary and activist roots of the Zionist movement, from the trauma of the Holocaust, and from the sense among Israel’s leaders and citizens that the country and its people are perpetually in danger of annihilation and that, as in the Holocaust, no one will come to their aid when that happens.
Ronen Bergman (Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations)
When (Berl Katznelson) heard that the British government was considering the possibility of moving the Palestinians within Palestine, he was greatly disappointed: "The transfer to 'inside of Palestine' would mean the area of Shechem. I believe that their future lies in Syria and Iraq." In those days, (Zionist) leaders like Katznelson hoped that the British would convince, or induce, the local population to leave.
Ilan Pappé (Ten Myths About Israel)
The backdrop on the stage was composed of four cloth screens—red, green, black, and white. Each screen bore a caption explaining the color’s significance. Red symbolized blood: “In the name of Arabia we will live and in the name of Arabia we will die,” the caption read. Green symbolized liberty: “Arabia will not be divided,” it said. The white screen was an homage to Prince Faisal, the leader of the Arab revolt, and the black one represented the Zionist migration.
Tom Segev (One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate)
While Chaim Weizmann had, for example, told several prominent Arabs at a dinner party in Jerusalem in March 1918 “to beware treacherous insinuations that Zionists were seeking political power,”39 most knew that such assertions were strategic and meant to cloak the Zionists’ real objectives. Indeed, the Zionist movement’s leaders understood that “under no circumstances should they talk as though the Zionist program required the expulsion of the Arabs, because that would cause the Jews to lose the world’s sympathy,” but knowledgeable Palestinians were not deceived.40
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
Herzl’s thinking and his reply to Yusuf Diya appear to have been based on the assumption that the Arabs could ultimately be bribed or fooled into ignoring what the Zionist movement actually intended for Palestine. This condescending attitude toward the intelligence, not to speak of the rights, of the Arab population of Palestine was to be serially repeated by Zionist, British, European, and American leaders in the decades that followed, down to the present day. As for the Jewish state that was ultimately created by the movement Herzl founded, as Yusuf Diya foresaw, there was to be room there for only one people, the Jewish people: others would indeed be “spirited away,” or at best tolerated.
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
The Islamic revolution in Iran is a positive development. At the same time, the Islamic revolution of Afghanistan, sprung exclusively from spiritual roots, dealt a heavy blow to the communist regime in the former Soviet Union. In face of that revolution, the red Soviet empire had to concede that it is incapable, in spite of its military superiority, to defeat the Mujaheddin, whose main weapons were their right and their spiritual strength. Another quite new situation appeared as a consequence of the Islamic revolution in Iran, that destroyed the Zionist rule in that country and shook its foundations in that part of the world. Khomeini's letter to Gorbachev, in which he was inviting the latter to convert to Islam, had great symbolic power! What is new again is the movement of Islamic rebirth and the continuous decay of the strength of the colonial government bodies directed from afar by Israel in many Islamic countries." "The Islamic system has remained stable in Iran even after the death of Khomeini and the change in the person of the leader and of the leadership group the only one to remain stable in the entire Islamic world. On the contrary, the demise of the Shah meant at the same time the collapse of his regime, his artificial form of government, and his army. All that went to the dust-bin of history. The same fate awaits the other regimes that prevail in the muslim world. Israel knows that very well. She tries desperately to cause the wheel of history to stand still. However, any strike against Iran or against the growing Islamic movements, will cause the anger of the muslim masses to grow, and the fire of the Islamic revolution to ignite. Nobody will be able to suppress that revolution.
Otto Ernst Remer
1937 - The Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul Hadi, told the UN Peel Commission, “There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented. Palestine is alien to us. Our land was for hundreds of years a part of Syria.” 1946 - Philip Hitti, Princeton’s Arab professor of Middle East history, told the Anglo-American committee of inquiry, “It’s common knowledge there is no such thing as Palestine in history.” In his testimony before the same committee, Professor Juhan Hazam said, “Before 1917, when Balfour made his declaration, there had never been a Palestinian question, and there was no Palestine as a political or geographical unit.” 1977. Zahir Muhsein, executive member of the PLO, said in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, “The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel.
Barry Shaw (Israel Reclaiming the Narrative: Exposing the Big Lie and its Perpetrators)
How many leaders in the Islamic world are really familiar with the ideas which underpin modernity? I have met some leaders of activist factions, and have been consistently shocked by their lack of knowledge. How many can even name the principal intellectual systems of our time? Structuralism, post-modernism, realism, analytic philosophy, critical theory, and all the rest are closed books to them. Instead they burble on about the 'International Zionist Masonic Conspiracy', or 'Baha'ism', or the 'New Crusader Invasion', or similar phantasms. If we want to understand why so many Islamic movements fail, we should perhaps begin by acknowledging that their leaders simply do not have the intellectual grasp of the modern world which is the precondition for successfully overcoming the obstacles to Islamic governance. A Muslim activist who does not understand the ideologies of modernism can hardly hope to overcome them. Islam and the New Millennium
Abdal Hakim Murad
If a one-state solution is a nonstarter, what are the prospects for a two-state solution? Put simply, they appear very bleak. Bleak primarily because the Palestinian Arabs, in the deepest fibers of their being, oppose such an outcome, demanding, as they did since the dawn of their national movement, all of Palestine as their patrimony. And I would hazard that, in the highly unlikely event that Israel and the PNA were in the coming years to sign a two-state agreement, it would in short order unravel. It would be subverted and overthrown by those forces in the Palestinian camp—probably representing Palestinian Arab majority opinion and certainly representing the historic will of the Palestinian national movement—bent on having all of Palestine. To judge from its past behavior, the PNA would be unwilling and, probably, incapable of reining in the more militant, expansionist factions—Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and so on—who would represent themselves as carrying on the patriotic, religious duty of resisting the Zionist invader. No Palestinian leader can fight them without being dubbed a “traitor” and losing his public’s support.
Benny Morris (One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict)
IN AN obscure journal, an article by Professor Tzvi Lamm of the Hebrew University charges that Israel has lost touch with reality.* Lamm’s view is that although the Zionist idea in its early stages seemed more dreamlike than practical, it was soberly realistic. Its leaders knew just how much power they had—or had not—and adhered closely to their goals. They were not hypnotized and paralyzed by their own slogans. Jewish leadership, and with it Israel as a whole, later became “autistic.” Autism is defined by Lamm as “the rejection of actual reality and its replacement by a reality which is a product of wish-fulfillment.” The victory of 1967 was the principal cause of this autism. Israelis began to speak of the West Bank of the Jordan as “liberated” territory. “The capture of lands aroused … a deep, sincere, emotional response to the territories … and to the historical events that took place in them: the graves of our patriarchs and matriarchs, paths along which the prophets once trod, hills for which the kings fought. But feelings cut off from present reality do not serve as a faithful guideline to a confused policy. This break with reality did not necessarily blind men to the fact that the territories were populated by Arabs, but it kept them from understanding that our settlement and taking possession of the territories would turn our existence as a state into a powerful pressure that would unite the Arab world and aggravate our insecure situation in a way previously unknown in our history.
Saul Bellow (To Jerusalem and Back)
Last year, I did a comprehensive study of T. E. Lawrence—Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence played a pivotal role in the development of the modern Arab world. He was both pro-Arab and a Zionist. Unlike today, during this time period, this was not a contradiction. I read the entirety of Lawrence’s tome, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, as well as his personal letters. Colonel Lawrence had a comprehensive and personal relation with the emerging Arab political leaders during World War I. He also encountered the Persians (the Iranians of today). He made an interesting and important observation regarding their unique view of Islam. Lawrence observed that the “Shia Mohammedans from Pershia . . . were surly and fanatical, refusing to eat or drink with infidels; holding the Sunni as bad as Christians; following only their own priests and notables.” Each of these three leaders provides valuable insight into the intrigue that is the Middle East today, because the lessons they learned from their leadership in their eras can instruct us on the challenges we face in our own time. A new alliance has developed in the last few years that has created what I call an unholy alliance. History often repeats itself. We no longer have the luxury of simply letting history unfold. We must change the course of events, rewriting the history if needed, to preserve our constitutional republic. In this volume, I discuss and analyze the history and suggest a path of engagement to end what is the latest in a history-spanning line of attempts to export Sharia law and radical jihad around the world. We will win. We must win. We have no option.
Jay Sekulow (Unholy Alliance: The Agenda Iran, Russia, and Jihadists Share for Conquering the World)
With the false claim that the Germans murdered six million Jews, mostly in gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland during WWII, since the end of WWII, the world has been saturated with films, documentaries and books on the Holocaust. Anyone worldwide who dares to investigate the Jewish Holocaust claims, is branded an Anti-Semite and Holocaust Denier. In our democratic world, a person who is accused of a crime is deemed innocent until irrefutable evidence proves them guilty. What has happened to democracy in Germany, Poland, France and Switzerland where people accused of Holocaust Denial are not allowed to provide any evidence that would prove that they are not guilty? In the Middle Ages, people accused of being witches, were also allowed no defence and were burned at the stake. As burning at the stake and crucifiction is not allowed in today's world, the best that the Jewish leaders and holocaust promoters can achieve is incarceration where no one can hear claims backed by years of very thorough research. The Jewish success in blocking my book "The Answer Justice", their failed attempts to stop the book "Chutzpah" written by Norman Finkelstein whose mother and father were held in German concentration camps, the incarceration of revisionists Ernst Zundel and Germar Rudolf in Germany and David Irving in Austria: these are all desperate attempts to end what they call Holocaust Denial. The English historian David Irving was refused entry to Australia in 2003 at the behest of the Jewish community (representing only 0.4% of the Australian population) thus denying the right of the other 99.6% to hear what David Irving has to say. Proof of Jewish power was the blocking of the public viewing of David Irving's film. The Jewish owners of the building locked the film presentation out which resulted in the headline in the "Australian" newspaper of: " Outrage at Jewish bid to stop the film by David Irving called "The Search For Truth in History" . Sir Zelman Cowan who was Governor General of Australia and a man much reverred in the Jewish community, has stated in the Jewish Chronicle (London) that "The way to deal with people who claim the holocaust never happened, is to produce irrefutable evidence that it did happen". I agree 100% with Sir Zelman Cowan. I am quite certain that he and other Zionist Jewish (Ashkenazim) world leaders are aware that a United Nations or International forensic examination of the alleged gas chamber at No. 2 Crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, would irrefutably prove the truth to the world that xyclon B cyanide has never been used as alleged by world Jewry to kill Jews. In 1979 Professor W.D. Rubenstein stated: "If the Holocaust can be shown to be a Zionist myth, the strongest of all weapons in Israels's propaganda armory collapses. The Falsification of history by Zionist Jews in claiming the murder of six million Jews by Germany, constitutes the GREATEST ORGANISED CRIME that the world has known.
Alexander McClelland
With the decline of the United States as the world’s leader, I find it important to look around our globe for intelligent people who have the depth of understanding that could perhaps chart a way to the future. One such person is Bernard-Henri Lévy a French philosopher who was born in Béni Saf, French Algeria on November 5, 1948. . The Boston Globe has said that he is "perhaps the most prominent intellectual in France today." Although his published work and political activism has fueled controversies, he invokes thought provoking insight into today’s controversial world and national views. As a young man and Zionist he was a war correspondent for “Combat” newspaper for the French Underground. Following the war Bernard attended Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris and in 1968; he graduated with a degree in philosophy from the famous École Normale Supérieure. This was followed by him traveling to India where he joined the International Brigade to aid Bangladeshi freedom fighters. Returning to Paris, Bernard founded the ‘New Philosophers School.’ At that time he wrote books bringing to light the dark side of French history. Although some of his books were criticized for their journalistic character and unbalanced approach to French history, but most respected French academics took a serious look at his position that Marxism was inherently corrupt. Some of his musings include the predicament of the Kurds and the Shame of Aleppo, referring to the plight of the children in Aleppo during the bloody Syrian civil war. Not everyone agrees with Bernard, as pointed out by an article “Why Does Everyone Hate Bernard-Henri Lévy?” However he is credited with nearly single handedly toppling Muammar Gaddafi. His reward was that in 2008 he was targeted for assassination by a Belgium-based Islamist militant group. Looking like a rock star and ladies man, with his signature dark suits and unbuttoned white shirt, he said that “democracies are not run by the truth,” and notes that the American president is not the author of the anti-intellectual movement it, but rather its product. He added that the anti-intellectualism movement that has swept the United States and Europe in the last 12 months has been a long time coming. The responsibility to support verified information and not publicize fake news as equal has been ignored. He said that the president may be the heart of the anti-intellectual movement, but social media is the mechanism! Not everyone agrees with Bernard; however his views require our attention. If we are to preserve our democracy we have to look at the big picture and let go of some of our partisan thinking. We can still save our democracy, but only if we become patriots instead of partisans!
Hank Bracker
The tensions over access to the Western Wall galvanized the communal hostilities generated during the first decade of the mandate. In effect, they ended any real chance of Arab–Jewish peace in Palestine. Britain struggled to deal with the fallout. The Shaw commission, sent out to report on the 1929 disturbances, criticized Hajj Amin al-Husayni’s lack of restraint but acquitted him of incitement. More significantly, the commission warned against continued Jewish immigration and land purchase, arguing that the further dispossession of Arab farmers could only lead to more disturbances. In October 1930 the British issued the Passfield White Paper, stressing the need to deal more forthrightly with Arab concerns. It called for restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchase and drew attention to the conspicuous absence of a representative legislative council. Zionist leaders were furious. In London, they voiced strong criticism of the White Paper and succeeded the following year in persuading the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, to write a personal letter to Weizmann in which key elements of the 1930 White Paper were revoked.
Martin Bunton (The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction)
A rare moment of Israeli political honesty came in October 2021 when far-right Israeli parliamentarian Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionist Party and ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in the Knesset to the Arab members, “You’re only here by mistake, because [founding prime minister David] Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job, didn’t throw you out in ’48.” It was an acknowledgment that ethnic cleansing took place in 1948, albeit delivered by one of the most racist and homophobic Israeli politicians.
Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
It was there that I understood what long-time leader at the Jewish National Fund and lifelong Zionist Yosef Weitz said long ago in his diary (popularized in the 2021 film Blue Box): “The Arabs will never forgive us for what we have done to them.
Shaul Magid (The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance)
can have a state tomorrow if they behave like the Zionist leaders – saying a pragmatic yes to what they can get, even if it is far less than they feel is justly deserved.
Einat Wilf (Winning the War of Words: Essays on Zionism and Israel)
Karimi prepared his own response, which would be released to Reuters, “I disavow any knowledge of an Iranian nuclear missile destroying an Iraqi city or any missiles being launched from Iran. As leader of the country that’s been accused of nuking a fellow Muslim’s city, I feel that the Iraqis are making it up so that they can drag their American masters into another conflict. The Great Satan will do anything to keep Iranians under their boot heel, while the Zionists occupy land of our ancestors. I condemn the condemnation of Iran, we will not tolerate such baseless accusations that we tried to destroy another country. I invite the United Nations to cool down the situation, by asking them to hold a summit so we can discuss this most regrettable action by some rogue actor. All I want is peace.” then he had the wire service send it out across the world, causing some leaders worldwide to privately heap scorn on what Karimi said in his press release.
Cliff Ball (Times of Trial: Christian End Times Thriller (The End Times Saga Book 3))
As with Nazism, the conspiracy theory needed Jews. The Iranian interior minister said that Zionists had ‘direct involvement’ in publishing the book. The Iranian president said that ‘Zionist-controlled news agencies’ had made Rushdie famous. In Syria, the Ba’athist dictatorship said that the novel was part of a plot to distract the world’s attention from Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. In Pakistan, religious leaders talked of an ‘American Jewish conspiracy’. Across the planet, the drums shuddered to the same beat: ‘It’s the Jews, it’s the Jews, it’s the Jews.’ The demonstrations against Rushdie were not confined to the poor world. The faithful marched in Bradford and London as well as Tehran and Lahore. They inspired a fear in the West that went almost unnoticed during the elation the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe produced.
Nick Cohen (You Can't Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom)
Even David Ben-Gurion wrote during the 1936–39 Arab uprising against the British that Arabs have legitimate anger against the Zionists. “The country is theirs because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down.
Noam Chomsky (Conversations with Terrorists: Middle East Leaders on Politics, Violence, and Empire)
With the coming of the war the situation regarding the Jews altered drastically. It is not widely known that world Jewry declared itself to be a belligerent party in the Second World War, and there was therefore ample basis under international law for the Germans to intern the Jewish population as a hostile force. On September 5, 1939 Chaim Weizmann, the principal Zionist leader, had declared war against Germany on behalf of the world’s Jews, stating that "the Jews stand by Great Britain and will fight on the side of the democracies... The Jewish Agency is ready to enter into immediate arrangements for utilising Jewish man-power, technical ability, resources etc." (Jewish Chronicle, September 8, 1939, pp. 7, 29). DETENTION OF ENEMY ALIENS All Jews had thus been declared agents willing to prosecute a war against the German Reich and, as a
Richard Harwood (Did Six Million Really Die?: The Truth At Last)
Faisal and Lawrence had come from London, where, on January 3, 1919, Faisal signed an agreement with the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann on the principle of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Janet Wallach (Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia)
David Ben-Gurion well understood these contradictory perspectives. As he told his colleagues, against the backdrop of the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939: "We must see the situation for what it is. On the security front, we are those attacked and who are on the defensive. But in the political field we are the attackers and the Arabs are those defending themselves. They are living in the country and own the land, the village. We live in the Diaspora and want only to immigrate [to Palestine] and gain possession of [lirkosh] the land from them." Years later, after the establishment of Israel, he expatiated on the Arab perspective in a conversation with the Zionist leader Nahum Goldmann: "I don't understand your optimism.... Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?
Benny Morris (1948: The First Arab-Israeli War)
the world and said, “Look, we want you to come to Palestine, but you had better understand that there is another legitimate nation there, the Palestinians, who claim it as theirs and will fight you to the death,” many Jews might never have come. So the Zionists had to believe, as the saying at the time went, that they were “a people without a land” coming to “a land without a people.” Arafat wasn’t the only political leader in the area who understood that at times the optimal way to achieve things—sometimes the only way—is by ignoring the facts and living instead by myths. Myths are precisely what give people the faith to undertake projects which rational calculation or common sense would reject.
Thomas L. Friedman (From Beirut to Jerusalem)
Don't Despair - Victory Is Near *** O' God, show me the way So that I could tell Those who pray to one God, Those who follow their prophet Those who recite their Holy Book But neither people nor leaders In their lives Act on that as its context Kashmiris breathe In the tyranny of democratic beasts Palestinians live In the occupation of Zionists And cruel occupiers For decades and decades Alas, the Muslim world And United Nations Stayed: Dumb, Deaf, and Blind Except for issuing words of condemnation On the unjust, oppressive rapes, And killing practices and deeds The Muslim States and rulers And the Armed Forces are unique and brave, Only for murdering their people And damaging unity and resources To stay in power Such rulers destroyed Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iran Spending trillions of wealth The Muslim States fought wars In the interests of those who preach  Justice, equality, honesty, harmony,  And peace, never learn themselves.  How they can apply justice  For Palestinians and Kashmiris? Otherwise, peace was a destiny And the destination of the Muslim State And entire humanity In such a scenario as Kashmir,  And Palestine will be bearing cruelty Unjust, oppression, and bloodshed We belong to Allah And to Him, we shall return Oh, Palestine, oh, Kashmir Do not despair Victory is near.
Ehsan Sehgal
Unbeknown to them, secret negotiations had already been taking place, as early as 1947, before the British Mandate in Palestine ended. These were between King Abdullah and the Zionist leaders, who were united in their goal of preventing the birth of a Palestinian state under their common enemy, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian head of the Arab Higher Committee, which was established on April 25, 1936, and outlawed by the British Mandatory administration in September 1937 after the assassination of a British official. The British government was continuing with its determined efforts to deprive the Palestinians of their country, exploring the possibility that the Arab parts of Palestine, which it believed would be unviable as an Arab Palestine on their own, could be fused with the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, established in 1946. At a secret meeting in London in February 1948, Ernest Bevin, the UK foreign secretary, gave King Abdullah the green light to snatch part of Palestine provided that the king’s forces stayed out of those areas allotted by the UN partition plan to the Jews.
Raja Shehadeh (We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir)
Jews continued moving into Palestine and their Zionist dream began looking more like a possibility than ever before. On November 29, 1947, amid much controversy, the United Nations announced the “partition” of Palestine into two states, one for Jews and the other for Arabs already living in the country. Truman had lobbied quietly for this partition, despite opposition from the Arab states, the British, and his own State Department. He wrote later of his belief that partition “could open the way to peaceful collaboration between the Arabs and the Jews.” Six months later, the British formally withdrew, and the partition went into effect in May 1948. Jews around the world rejoiced, but Arab leaders were understandably enraged and threatened war. Despite his support for partition and sympathy for the plight of Jews, Truman was cautious about offering public support for Zionism. Given the growing tension in the region, he thought it was in America’s best interest for their president to be seen as an honest broker in the conflict.
Joe Scarborough (Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization)
Theodor Herzl was the leader the Zionists so desperately needed. Under Herzl the Zionist movement exploded onto the world scene as a force to be reckoned with. With his articulate manner, elegant dress, and regal demeanor, Herzl cut an impressive figure, charismatic and radiant. He was also tireless, working relentlessly to achieve his dream. He met with the grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire as early as 1896. Upon his return from Constantinople and arrival at the rail station in Sofia, Bulgaria, a mob of several hundred jubilant Jews engulfed the Viennese messiah. For surely he was the man who would finally deliver them a state of their own! They carried him off the train to a synagogue, where people insisted on kissing his hand.
Eric Gartman (Return to Zion: The History of Modern Israel)
The Marxist Mapam leader Simha Flapan,7 not an academic scholar, was the first historian to challenge the myths surrounding the 1948 war.8 Most of his theses were confirmed and elaborated upon by the other three historians. The New Historians disclosed how the Zionist leadership nominally accepted the UN Partition Plan but covertly agreed with King Abdullah to divide the area designed for a Palestinian state between Transjordan and Israel. Motivated to prevent the founding of a Palestinian state, Britain and the US supported the extension of the state of Israel into areas that were granted to the Palestinians; furthermore, they encouraged the rule of the Hashemites over the rest of the West Bank.
Tikva Honig-Parnass (The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine)
In 1947, in the wake of World War II and in the shadow of the Holocaust’s unspeakable crimes, the United Nations approved a partition plan to establish two sovereign states, one Jewish, the other Arab, with Jerusalem—a city considered holy by Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike—to be governed by an international body. Zionist leaders embraced the plan, but Arab Palestinians, as well as surrounding Arab nations that were also just emerging from colonial rule, strenuously objected. As Britain withdrew, the two sides quickly fell into war. And with Jewish militias claiming victory in 1948, the State of Israel was officially born.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
Meanwhile King ‘Abdullah of Transjordan had his own ambitions to dominate as much as possible of Palestine, having done his best to come to terms with both the Zionists and his British backers over his plans for the country. As Avi Shlaim reports in Collusion Across the Jordan, his account of this era, extensive clandestine contact took place between King ‘Abdullah and Jewish Agency leaders (later Israeli prime ministers) Moshe Sharett and Golda Meir.30 As the United Nations moved toward partition of Palestine, the king repeatedly met with them secretly in the hope of reaching an accord in which Jordan would incorporate the part of Palestine to be designated for its Arab majority. The king confidently gave them his assurances that the Palestinians would come around and assent to his rule.* Thus ‘Abdullah, unlike Iraq’s Nuri, had no use for any form of independent Palestinian leadership or for a body like the Arab Office that would serve as their diplomatic arm.
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
He knew of the debates and the views of the different Zionist leaders and tendencies, including Herzl’s explicit call for a state for the Jews, with the “sovereign right” to control immigration.
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
Islamic institutions, leaders, and movements, far from being invariably anticolonial, radical, anti-Western, or anti-Zionist (which of course they often were), were also at various times over the past century seen as useful allies by the Western powers, by Israel, and by conservative Arab regimes aligned with the West.
Rashid Khalidi (The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood)
FIRST BEGAN TO realize this in Palestine, in 1922, when I observed the equivocal role of the British administration with regard to the conflict between the Arabs and the Zionists; and it became fully obvious to me early in 1923, when after months of wandering all over Palestine I came to Egypt, which at that time was in almost continual upheaval against the British 'protectorate'. Bombs were often being thrown at public places frequented by British soldiers, to be answered by various repressive measures - martial law, political arrests, deportations of leaders, prohibitions of newspapers. But none of these measures, however severe, could deaden the people's desire for freedom
Muhammad Asad (The Road To Mecca)
Either the Zionist leader meant to deceive him by concealing the true aims of the Zionist movement, or Herzl simply did not see Yusuf Diya and the Arabs of Palestine as worthy of being taken seriously.
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
This condescending attitude toward the intelligence, not to speak of the rights, of the Arab population of Palestine was to be serially repeated by Zionist, British, European, and American leaders in the decades that followed, down to the present day.
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
army, that’s all.” He couldn’t wait to leave. After the Holocaust, when fascism became synonymous with anti-Semitism and mass murder, the term “Zionist fascisti” would become an almost unimaginable slur. But in 1929, to label Zionists (or segments of Zionism) as fascist was inflammatory but not uncommon. The right-wing Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky had indeed been influenced by European fascist movements, modeling his own paramilitary force on Mussolini’s blackshirts. Jabotinsky’s Jewish opponents in the Zionist Labour movement regularly called him a fascist. When John and Jimmy invoked fascism, they meant that Zionism was expansionist, aggressive, nationalistic, and racially exclusive, all characteristics of the kind of fascism they had seen firsthand in Italy, Romania, and Hungary.
Deborah Cohen (Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War)
A newly-released series of video documentaries — The Labour Files — based on material leaked from Britain’s Labour Party revealed how the right-wing within the party mortified the former party leader, the far-left Jeremy Corbyn, costing him his position. The documentary uncovers Israel’s role in orchestrating the departure of Corbyn who had been a vocal proponent of Palestinian rights. Evidence reveals that the Israel Lobby within the Labour Party — supported by other pro-Israel camps in Britain — campaigned against the left-wing Corbyn, accusing him of antisemitism. The right-wing party establishment manipulated these allegations to its own political advantage, which eventually led to the election of the pro-Israel Keir Starmer as party leader in 2020. While the future course of Labour’s left wing is uncertain, one thing is for sure — Israel is an apartheid regime. The Zionist lobby has been using hybrid warfare techniques to procure worldwide legitimacy for Israel’s illegal actions in Palestine. As the Labour Files reveal, Israel has waged a war of fabricating narratives and counter-narratives. In this sort of warfare with limitless bounds, the only positive that can be drawn is that everyone is a soldier. At a time when great powers have given in to the deceptive Israel lobby and no Muslim state is in any position to challenge Israeli advances in Palestine using conventional methods, we need to focus on building our capacity to effectively counter the Zionist narrative. With the right-wing ex-Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, set to return after elections next month, the plight of Palestinians will only exacerbate. It is high time we stopped blatantly labelling one another as ‘Yahoodi Agents’ and started educating ourselves. The least we can do for Palestinians is continue exposing the pro-Israel elements engaged in the widespread dissemination of Zionist propaganda.
Shawez Ahmad
To explain how we got to this seemingly intractable place, a little history is required—never a simple proposition in a part of the world where rivaling versions of the past are a dense thicket. The 1930s saw a series of Arab revolts against the influx of Jewish migrants to Palestine, which was then under British control. This wave of Jewish immigration was regarded by many Palestinians as a colonial imposition, a perception that was further cemented when British troops and local police put down the Arab uprising with tremendous force, fueling further resentment. When Palestine was partitioned in 1947, a move with overwhelming Arab opposition, and Israel declared statehood the next year, the first Arab-Israeli war was locked in. These were the years that Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe: roughly 750,000 Palestinians were expelled, hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed, and thousands were killed, with many of the horrifying truths about these atrocities finally escaping Israel’s own Shadow Lands in recent years. Of course Palestinians would resist such ethnic cleaning with violence of their own. Yet rather than seeing Arab resistance for what it was—a nationalist, anti-colonial battle over land and self-determination (with some anti-Semitic elements, to be sure)—many influential Zionist leaders portrayed the entire Palestinian cause as nothing but more irrational Jew-hatred, a seamless continuation of the very same anti-Semitism that had resulted in the Holocaust, and that therefore needed to be crushed with the kind of militarized force that Jews had not been able to marshal in Nazi-controlled Europe. Within this imaginary, the Palestinian, as the Jew’s new eternal enemy, was treated as so illegitimate, so irrational, so other, that Israelis believed themselves to be justified in reenacting many of the forms of violence, dehumanizing propaganda, and forced displacement that had targeted and uprooted the Jewish people throughout Europe for centuries, a process that continues to this day with ongoing home demolitions, Israeli settlement expansions, targeted assassinations, settler rampages through Palestinian communities, openly discriminatory laws, and walled ghettos into which Palestinians are corralled.
Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
In 1982 Abbas matriculated in the doctoral program at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. The title of his dissertation was The Connection Between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement, 1933–1945. In 1984 he published his thesis as a book in Arabic under the title The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism. In both works, Abbas wrote that the Holocaust was a joint initiative of the Nazis and the Zionist movement. He alleged that the European Jews who were killed were actually the victims of the Jews from pre-state Israel who were in cahoots with the Germans.5 In his words, “A partnership was established between Hitler’s Nazis and the leadership of the Zionist movement.… [The Zionists gave] permission to every racist in the world, led by Hitler and the Nazis, to treat Jews as they wish, so long as it guarantees immigration to Palestine.” Abbas wrote that the Zionists wanted as many Jews as possible to be killed. “Having more victims,” he wrote, “meant greater rights and stronger privilege to join the negotiation table for dividing the spoils of war once it was over. However, since Zionism was not a fighting partner—suffering victims in a battle—it had no escape but to offer up human beings, under any name, to raise the number of victims, which they could then boast of at the moment of accounting.” Abbas denied that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. This too was a Zionist plot. “The truth is that no one can either confirm or deny
Caroline B. Glick (The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East)
The term Christian Zionist can be found as early as 1896, when the Jewish Zionist leader Theodor Herzl referred to William Hechler, the Anglican chaplain to the British Embassy in Vienna, as a “Christian Zionist” and the following year Herzl again used that term to describe Jean-Henri Dunant, a Swiss banker and founder of the Red Cross, and an observer at the First Zionist Conference.
Donald M. Lewis (A Short History of Christian Zionism: From the Reformation to the Twenty-First Century)
In August 1933 Zionist leaders gathered at the Eighteenth World Zionist Congress in Prague.
Eric Gartman (Return to Zion: The History of Modern Israel)
The conflict between Arabs and Jews had been an open sore on the region for almost a century, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British, who were then occupying Palestine, committed to create a “national home for the Jewish people” in a region overwhelmingly populated by Arabs. Over the next twenty or so years, Zionist leaders mobilized a surge of Jewish migration to Palestine and organized highly trained armed forces to defend their settlements. In 1947, in the wake of World War II and in the shadow of the Holocaust’s unspeakable crimes, the United Nations approved a partition plan to establish two sovereign states, one Jewish, the other Arab, with Jerusalem—a city considered holy by Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike—to be governed by an international body. Zionist leaders embraced the plan, but Arab Palestinians, as well as surrounding Arab nations that were also just emerging from colonial rule, strenuously objected. As Britain withdrew, the two sides quickly fell into war. And with Jewish militias claiming victory in 1948, the State of Israel was officially born.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
Why is it, then, that in an 1899 essay Herzl would claim, “What made me a Zionist was the Dreyfus trial”?29 Why did he write in the same essay that the trial had inspired him to write The New Ghetto? After all, Herzl finished the play more than a month before the trial. To
Derek Jonathan Penslar (Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader (Jewish Lives))
In the diary entries for 1895 and early 1896, Herzl uses the word “Zionist” to describe others, not himself. Similarly, the word “Zionist” appears only three times in The Jewish State, and each time it is used in a critical way. When Herzl first experienced a Jewish awakening, he had never heard of “Zionism,” a word coined around 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum, a Viennese Jew of Galician (Austrian-Polish) origin.
Derek Jonathan Penslar (Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader (Jewish Lives))
Russian Zionists, for the most part, were not Orthodox, and most had had a formal secular education, but one cannot compare even the most secularized among them with Herzl, who was so non-observant that he did not have his son Hans circumcised. When the chief rabbi of Vienna came to visit Herzl at his home in December of 1895, Herzl was decorating the children’s Christmas tree.
Derek Jonathan Penslar (Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader (Jewish Lives))
Churchill’s article ended with a reference to his undiminished fear of Jewish Bolshevism, but on a positive, enthusiastic note: ‘So long as the Zionist leaders keep their ranks vigilantly purged of the vicious type of Russian subversive they will have it in their power to revive the life and fame of their native land. They are entitled to a full and fair chance. All the great victorious Powers are committed in their behalf and Great Britain, which has accepted a common responsibility in a direct and definite form, must not, and will not, weary of its lawful discharge.’10 The British Ambassador in Washington, Sir Ronald Lindsay, was not pleased, writing testily to the Foreign Office: ‘The effect of this article can only be to induce Jews in America who might wish to take a moderate view, to refrain from doing so. They will expect a purely Zionist policy from the Conservatives when they come into office again and will hamper any move towards settlement till then, and then the chickens will come home to roost with Mr Winston Churchill.’11 While still in San Francisco, Churchill telegraphed the text of his article to London, where it was published in the Sunday Times on 22 September 1929. Thus his views on Palestine were widely read on both sides of the Atlantic.
Martin Gilbert (Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship)
But out of the fire of the Great War, an opportunity presented itself to the Zionists. The leader of the English Zionists was Dr. Chaim Weizmann, a chemist who created a synthetic (acetone) to compensate for Britain’s lack of cordite during the war. His work for the British brought him into contact with officials in the highest level of the cabinet, and he did his utmost to support the creation of a Jewish home in Palestine.
Eric Gartman (Return to Zion: The History of Modern Israel)
Many Israelis expressed reservations about the removal of the civilians from Lydda and Ramle. One party leader did not accept Allon’s position that strategic needs justified the removal of thousands of women, children, and old men from their homes. A hardened military leader of the operation recalled his conflicting emotions: “For years you’ve trained for this day,” he explained. “You’ve been told there is an inevitable war coming. You’ve been told that the Arabs will have to go. And yet you are in shock. In Lydda, the war is as cruel as it can be. The killing, the looting, the feelings of rage and revenge. Then the column marching. And although you are strong and well-trained and resilient, you experience some sort of mental collapse. You feel the humanist education you received collapsing.”21 Like Deir Yassin, Lydda remains one of the most controversial episodes in Israel’s history, causing much debate and internal anguish to this day, and continued condemnation from the Palestinians, more proof in their eyes of Zionist aggression.
Eric Gartman (Return to Zion: The History of Modern Israel)
The fait accompli attitude of the Jewish state and the prerogatives conferred upon its Jewish citizens prevent any reversal of dispossession policies against Palestinians. Leaders of the peace camp, and Zionist Left intellectuals who have called for dismantling Jewish settlements in the ’67 occupied territories, have never asked the same of the Mitzpim or yishuvim kehilatyim built on confiscated Palestinian land in the Galilee or Wadi Ara, nor even to freeze their expansion. The very existence of “state lands,” most of which was Palestinian land, is uncritically accepted by the Zionist Left intellectuals as a “fact.
Tikva Honig-Parnass (The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine)
Already in 1972—years before figures in the Zionist Left took similar steps—the Black Panthers met PLO leaders and recognized the organization as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people.
Tikva Honig-Parnass (The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine)
Despite the gaps between the two sides’ positions, Sadat’s trip was nonetheless of monumental importance. For the first time, Israelis saw an Arab leader who was charming, well dressed, soft-spoken, clearly wanted peace, and was willing to risk life and limb for it. Perceptions in Egypt changed as well. The people had been impressed by the welcome extended their leader by the Israelis. The Arab press refrained from traditional demonizations of the Zionist enemy and began analyzing the situation with a cooler head.
Eric Gartman (Return to Zion: The History of Modern Israel)
The Likud championed retention of the West Bank, which it referred to by its biblical names, Judea and Samaria, whereas Labor advocated turning over some of the area to Jordan as part of a peace treaty. By using the names Judea and Samaria, the Likud emphasized the biblical link with the land. In their platform, they stated, “The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and linked with the right to security and peace; therefore Judea and Samaria will not be handed over to any foreign administration.” Moreover, the Begin-led government planned not only to retain the territory, but to greatly increase the number of Jewish inhabitants there through the introduction of settlements. It was a major part of their ideology: “Settlement, both urban and rural, in all parts of the Land of Israel is the focal point of the Zionist effort to redeem the country, to maintain vital security areas, and serves as a reservoir of strength and inspiration for the renewal of the pioneering spirit.”1 Likud leaders referred to the building of settlements as “the creation of facts,” which would prevent any withdrawal from the West Bank in the future.
Eric Gartman (Return to Zion: The History of Modern Israel)
The conflict between Arabs and Jews had been an open sore on the region for almost a century, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British, who were then occupying Palestine, committed to create a “national home for the Jewish people” in a region overwhelmingly populated by Arabs. Over the next twenty or so years, Zionist leaders mobilized a surge of Jewish migration to Palestine and organized highly trained armed forces to defend their settlements. In 1947, in the wake of World War II and in the shadow of the Holocaust’s unspeakable crimes, the United Nations approved a partition plan to establish two sovereign states, one Jewish, the other Arab, with Jerusalem—a city considered holy by Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike—to be governed by an international body.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
Zionist leaders embraced the plan, but Arab Palestinians, as well as surrounding Arab nations that were also just emerging from colonial rule, strenuously objected. As Britain withdrew, the two sides quickly fell into war. And with Jewish militias claiming victory in 1948, the State of Israel was officially born.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
the Yishuv, even if willing, was powerless-and transfer was never adopted as official Zionist policy. Yet through the late 193os and early and mid-194os Zionist leaders continued in private to espouse the idea. For example, Weizmann
Benny Morris (1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War)
In the immediate aftermath, however, Transjordan’s King ‘Abdullah was a beneficiary of the war. Memorably described as a “falcon in a canary’s cage,” ‘Abdullah had always wanted to rule over a larger domain with more subjects than small, sparsely populated Transjordan, which had a population of barely 200,000 when he arrived there in 1921.41 Thereafter he sought to expand his territory through a variety of means. The most obvious direction was westward, into Palestine, whence the king’s lengthy secret negotiations with the Zionists to reach an accommodation that would give him control of part of the country. To further this aim, ‘Abdullah privately approved the 1937 Peel Commission’s recommendation to partition Palestine (the only Arab leader to do so), which would have annexed part of the Arab section to Transjordan. Both the king and the British opposed allowing the Palestinians to benefit from the 1947 partition or the war that followed, and neither wanted an independent Arab state in Palestine. They had come to a secret agreement to prevent this, via sending “the Arab Legion across the Jordan River as soon as the Mandate ended to occupy the part of Palestine allotted to the Arabs.”42 This goal meshed with that of the Zionist movement, which negotiated with ‘Abdullah to achieve the same end.
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
For the socialists, as one of them said, the Bible provided "the myth for our right over the land."...Thus, they found themselves faced with a challenging paradox, for they wanted both to secularize Jewish life and to use the Bible as a justification for colonizing Palestine. In other words, though they did not believe in God, He had nonetheless promised them Palestine. For many Zionist leaders, the references in the Bible to the land of Palestine was just a means to their ends, and not the essence of Zionism.
Ilan Pappé (Ten Myths About Israel)
quoted from a statement Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—the leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran—had said just the day before. “. . . it is incumbent upon students to forcefully expand their attacks against America and Israel, so that America will be forced to return the criminal, deposed Shah.” Then she read a lengthy statement prepared by the students. Several lines jumped out at Charlie. “We Muslim students, followers of Imam Khomeini, have occupied the espionage embassy of America in protest against the ploys of the imperialists and the Zionists. We announce our protest to the world, a protest against America for granting asylum and employing the criminal Shah while it has on its hands the blood of tens of thousands of women and men in this country. . . .
Joel C. Rosenberg (The Auschwitz Escape)
It was a turning point in my life. And, like most turning points, I didn't recognize it. My family would begin a journey that night, one that had no end in sight. We would leave our home in Jaffa. The skirmishes between recently immigrated European Jews and local Palestinians had metastasized into all-out war. We would lose. I would never again see that home or the book of my words written in my favorite teacher's hand that — in my haste — I'd left on my gilded couch. I would learn my home was deemed too beautiful to destroy, which meant it was instead given to a Jewish family. Most of the country now called Palestine would be renamed Israel. Women would play a role in every aspect of the war. A leader among those Zionist women was named Golda; very different from the woman Aziz brought to our house that night. This Golda would say that there was no such thing as Palestinians. She would literally say we did not exist, therefore what the Zionists would have to do and did do to remove us from our homes could never have happened. What little land Palestinians would be allowed to have to make a country, or at the very least a reservation, the Zionists eventually would conquer and control within a few decades, claiming God Himself wanted them to have it all.
Betty Shamieh (Too Soon)