Best 1179 quotes in «israel quotes» category

All Abraham's sons were taught that God would progressively reveal Himself. God's wholeness has yet to be realized. There will always be gaps in our understanding. Why should we fill those gaps with suspicion, bigotry and accusations? Men do it to women; Jews do it to Christians; Christians do it to Muslims. Yet, all these have an implied duty to Abraham. pg 54

All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, including Israel and Hamas. But Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic and totalitarian regimes. It does not deform the truth; it inverts it. It routinely paints a picture for the outside world that is diametrically opposed to reality. And all of us reporters who have covered the occupied territories have run into Israel’s Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories—required under the rules of American journalism—although we know they are untrue.

Although 9-11 is disguised and interpreted by the government and media as an act of terrorism carried out by Islamic fanatics, the evidence indicates that it was a carefully planned false-flag attack carried out by the Israeli military after years of planning and preparation.

And in all truth it can be said- yes the zionist jews were responsible for 9/11.

All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable. I felt this when sitting in the old Ottoman courtyards of Jerusalem, and I felt it even more when I saw the hideous 'Fort Condo' settlements that had been thrown up around the city in order to give the opposite impression. If the statelet was only based on a narrow strip of the Mediterranean littoral (god having apparently ordered Moses to lead the Jews to one of the very few parts of the region with absolutely no oil at all), that would be bad enough. But in addition, it involved roosting on top of an ever-growing population that did not welcome the newcomers.

Anyone who is portraying Israel as a friend is a servant of Israel. I warn some sides against turning enemies into friends and friends into enemies. Some in the Arab world try to present "Israel" as a friend and Iran as a foe. Yet such conspiracies will fail. "Israel" has not been helping because of its hostile and aggressive nature. The Arab world is realising day after day that Iran is a friend, which was highlighted in Iran's support to Gaza and Lebanon.

At least in America, you lose your house, you can get it back from the bank. In Israel, you lose it to the rockets.

Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink—help the alcoholic who can't.' ('Can't'?) The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favor of Britain in the Corfu Channel dispute with Albania. At the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced the newly formed NATO alliance as a tool for aggression against the USSR. The rising Chinese Communists, under a man then known to Western readership as Mao Tze-Tung, announced a limited willingness to bargain with the still-existing Chinese government in a city then known to the outside world as 'Peiping.' All this was unknown to me as I nuzzled my mother's breast for the first time, and would certainly have happened in just the same way if I had not been born at all, or even conceived. One of the newspaper astrologists for that day addressed those whose birthday it was: There are powerful rays from the planet Mars, the war god, in your horoscope for your coming year, and this always means a chance to battle if you want to take it up. Try to avoid such disturbances where women relatives or friends are concerned, because the outlook for victory upon your part in such circumstances is rather dark. If you must fight, pick a man! Sage counsel no doubt, which I wish I had imbibed with that same maternal lactation, but impartially offered also to the many people born on that day who were also destined to die on it.

Bashir walked toward a glass cabinet in the dining room. Dalia followed Bashir, and the two stood looking through the glass. "Look at the cabinet and tell me what you see," Bashir said. "Is this a test?" "It is a test. Please tell me what you see in the cabinet." Books, vases, a picture of Abdel Nasser. Maybe some things hiding behind. And a lemon." "You won," Bashir said. "Do you remember the lemon?" "What about it? Is there a story?" "Do you remember when me and my brother came to visit?...Yes? Do you remember that Kamel asked you for something as we left? And do you remember what you gave him as a gift?" Dalia was silent for a moment, Bashir would recall. "Oh, my God. It's one of those lemons from that visit. But why did you keep it? It has been almost four months now." They walked from the cabinet and took their seats in the living room. "To us, this lemon is more than fruit, Dalia," Bashir said slowly. "It is land and history. It is the window that we open to look at our history. A few days after we brought the lemons home, it was night, and I heard a movement in the house. I was asleep. I got up, and I was listening. We were so nervous when the occupation started. Even the movement of trees used to wake us. And left us worried. I heard the noise and I got up. The noise was coming from this room right here. Do you know what I saw? My father, who is nearly blind." "Yes," said Dalia. She was listening intently. "Dalia, I saw him holding the lemon with both hands. And he was pacing back and forth in the room, and the tears were running down his cheeks.

BDS is perhaps the most ambitious, empowering, and promising Palestinian-led global movement for justice and rights. BDS has the capacity to challenge Israel's colonial rule and apartheid in a morally consistent, effective, and, crucially, intelligent manner.

Between 1980 and 2000 the number of patents registered in Israel was 7652 compared with 367 for all the Arab countries combined. In 2008 alone is really inventors applied to register 9591 new patents. The equivalent figure for Iran was 50 and for all majority Muslim countries in the world with 5657.

Both incest and the Holocaust have been subject to furious denial by perpetrators and other individuals and by highly organised groups such as the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and the Committee for Historical Review. Incest and the Holocaust are vulnerable to this kind of concerted denial because of their unfathomability, the unjustifiability, and the threat they pose to the politics of patriarchy and anti-Semitism respectively. Over and over, survivors of the Holocaust attest that they were warned of what was happening in Poland but could not believe it at the time, could not believe it later as it was happening to them, and still to this day cannot believe what they, at the same time, know to have occurred. For Holocaust deniers this is a felicitous twist, for their arguments denying the Holocaust and therefore the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state capitalize on the discrepancies of faded memory. In the case of incest, although post-traumatic stress disorder, amnesia, and dissociation represent some of the mind's strategies for comprehending the incomprehensible, incest deniers have taken advantage of inconsistencies to discredit survivor testimony.

Bible is a window into the life and practices of the people who lived in Israel and bordering nations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, and Judea.

But, as in the rest of Galilee, the profits firm this increase in the means of production disproportionately benefited the large landowners and moneylenders who resided outside Capernaum: the wealthy priests in Judea and new urban elite in Sepphoris and Tiberias. The majority of Capernaum's residents had been left behind by the new Galilean economy. It would be these people whom Jesus would specifically target - those who found themselves cast to the fingers of society, whose lives had been disrupted by the rapid social and economic shifts taking place throughout Galilee.

But Arafat's devotion was to the Palestinian cause and not to the Palestinian people. [...] As a result, Arafat delayed the conflict's solution, leaving a legacy of avoidable disaster and unnecessary suffering.

But not all Gaza residents were committed to the war. A reporter asked one of the Arabs what he most wanted. He was a taxi driver, father of ten. All he wanted was 'to eat and to work.' What did he think of Nasser? 'Nasser is good, Israel is good, America is good, Britain is good, Canada is good, India is good, Anything is good.

Damu, mto wa maisha unaotiririsha maji yake mwilini kwa kusukumwa na pampu za moyo na kuchujwa na fizi za mapafu, inaundwa na seli na maji yaitwayo utegili au maji ya damu, ambayo kazi yake ni kusafirisha oksijeni na virutubisho katika kila sehemu ya mwili, ndani yake kuna roho. Mungu alitoa kafara ya damu kwa ajili ya Adamu na Hawa katika Bustani ya Edeni. Ibrahimu alitoa kafara ya damu kwa ajili ya Israeli ijapokuwa mapenzi ya Mungu kwa Israeli yalikwisha baada ya kusulubiwa kwa Yesu Kristo. Wana wa Israeli walitoa kafara za damu kwa ajili ya wokovu wa watoto wao wa kwanza na watoto wa kwanza wa wanyama wao nchini Misri. Mungu alitoa kafara ya damu ya Yesu Kristo nchini Israeli kwa ajili ya wanadamu wote duniani. Damu ya mwanakondoo ina nguvu kuliko maombi, imetiwa wakfu na Mwenyezi Mungu na ina uhusiano mkubwa na ulimwengu wa roho. Ukifunikwa na damu ya mwanakondoo Shetani hatakuona. Shetani asipokuona, utafanikiwa.

Death moved in the night, in search for blood, and when it found Life, it passed on by, like a cloud that moves by the face of the moon. When he found those dead without the red, he took the life before them born first, and the mourning emptied itself till the morning.

Die Natürlichkeit, diese Direktheit der Israelis im Umgang miteinander, sagte Inbar, das ist unsere größte Errungenschaft, das ist mehr wert als das Trockenlegen der Sümpfe und unsere ganze High-Tech-Industrie.

At this juncture it is important to say something about Exodus 12:7. This verse implies that we are dealing with a ritual that did not involve atoning for sin, but rather was a rite of protection for God’s people, a different though not unrelated matter. It involved a blood ritual to avoid God’s last blow against the firstborn. Thus Passover and atonement were not originally associated, though apparently by Jesus’ day there were some such associations. Notice that nothing at all is said or suggested here about Israel’s sin, or about forgiveness. This ceremony is more like an insurance policy. Yes, the blood is to avert divine wrath, but it is not wrath against Israel’s particular sins. In this case they simply happened to be too close to the danger zone, or in the line of fire. We must assume that this blood ritual arose before there even was a fully formed priesthood, for it is highly unusual to have such a ritual without any mention of involvement of priests.

Cuando se fundó el Estado de Israel, en 1948, todos mis amigos judíos estaban felices; yo fui el aguafiestas. Les advertí: —Estamos construyendo un gueto nosotros mismos. Estaremos rodeados por decenas de millones de musulmanes que nunca perdonarán, nunca olvidarán y nunca desaparecerán. Estaba en lo cierto, sobre todo cuando resultó que los árabes estaban asentados en la mayor parte de los abastecimientos petrolíferos del mundo. Así que las naciones del mundo, que necesitaban el petróleo, pensaron que era diplomático ser pro-árabe. (Si el tema de las reservas petrolíferas se hubiese conocido antes, estoy convencido de que Israel no se habría creado.) Pero ¿no merecemos los judíos una patria? En realidad, creo que a ningún grupo humano le conviene pertenecer a una “patria” en el sentido habitual de la palabra. La Tierra no debería estar dividida en cientos de secciones diferentes, cada una habitada por un solo segmento autodefinido de la humanidad que considera que su propio bienestar y su propia “seguridad nacional” están por encima de cualquier otra consideración. Soy partidario de la diversidad cultural y me gustaría que cada grupo identificable valorara su patrimonio cultural. Por ejemplo, soy un patriota de Nueva York y si viviera en Los Ángeles me encantaría reunirme con otros neoyorquinos expatriados y cantar Give My Regards to Broadway. No obstante, este tipo de sentimientos deben ser culturales y benignos. Estoy en contra de ello si cada grupo desprecia a los demás y aspira a destruirlos. Estoy en contra de dar armas a cada pequeño grupo autodefinido con las que reforzar su propio orgullo y sus prejuicios. La Tierra se enfrenta en la actualidad a problemas medioambientales que amenazan con la inminente destrucción de la civilización y con el final del planeta como un lugar habitable. La humanidad no se pude permitir desperdiciar sus recursos financieros y emocionales en peleas interminables y sin sentido entre los diversos grupos. Debe haber un sentido de lo global en el que todo el mundo se una para resolver los problemas reales a los que nos enfrentamos todos. ¿Se puede hacer esto? La pregunta equivale a: ¿puede sobrevivir la humanidad? Por tanto, no soy sionista porque no creo en las naciones y porque los sionistas lo único que hacen es crear una nación más para dar lugar a más conflictos. Crean su nación para tener “derechos”, “exigencias” y “seguridad nacional” y para sentir que deben protegerla de sus vecinos. ¡No hay naciones! Sólo existe la humanidad. Y si no llegamos a entender esto pronto, las naciones desaparecerán, porque no existirá la humanidad.

Die Kommunistische Partei bildet zusammen mit Tarabut-Hitchabrut und vielen "Unabhängigen" die "Front für Demokratie und Frieden" (Hadash). Der Knessetabgeordnete Dov Chinin (der Hadash vertritt und selber KP-Mitglied ist) entschied sich vor einem Jahr, der hebräischen Teil der KP zu einem Bündnis mit der zerstörten zionistischen Linken (Meretz) zu ziehen, was den Schulterschluss in dieser Protestbewegung jetzt ermöglichte von so vielen verschiedenen politischen Richtungen, also ein gemeinsames Marschieren von Sozialdemokraten (Meretz) und revolutionären Sozialisten (Hadash). Andererseits weiß die kommunistische Partei immer, was richtig ist, und wer anders denkt, ist ein Feind. Das ist die Politik aller Kommunistischen Partei seit eh und je. Als der Stalinismus sich festigte, wurde klar, dass jedeR Andersdenkende ein Faschist ist. Millionen wurden unter diesem Vorwand ermordet, in Russland, im spanischen Bürgerkrieg, und in vielen andern Ländern. Und das ist nicht nur Paranoja. Das Schlimmste daran ist, dass die meisten Leute die Ziele des Kommunismus mit diesem brutalen unmenschlichen Regime identifizieren. Und genau das geschieht jetzt gerade: Dov Chinins strategische Entscheidung entfernt die Kommunistische Partei und leider auch Hadash – obschon die beiden nicht identisch sind, aber auch das ist ein Prozess der negativen Identifizierung - von den Massen in den Entwicklungsstädten und den "geschwächten" Stadtvierteln, die zwar nie der Kommunistischen Partei nachrannten, mit denen Wir aber in den letzten drei Jahren sehr erfolgreiche Arbeit machten. Diese Bevölkerung interessiert weder die arabischen noch die hebräischen Kader der Kommunistischen Partei, weil sie seit dreissig Jahren Likud oder Schass oder Liebermann wählen. Diese hebräischen Kader nennen Wir "die Dov-Jungens". Wir wollen keinen Kontakt mit ihnen, aber einer dieser Dov-Jungens glaubt fälschlicherweise, dass Wir auf ihrer Seite sind. Er versucht, Uns zu überzeugen, dass diese ganze Initiative, die Peripherie demokratisch an der Führung teilhaben zu lassen, eigentlich ein faschistischer Putschversuch ist. Demokratie, ja, das ist gut für die Theorie, aber in der politischen Realität muss man den verblödeten Massen den Weg zeigen. Wir sind die Avandguarde, die die Macht ergreifen muss, das Volk wird danach schon früh genug verstehen, dass es richtig so war.

First, if you are a homosexual or feel that inclination, keep yourself pure. If you are unmarried, you should practice abstinence from all sexual activity. I know this is difficult, but really what God is asking you to do is pretty much the same thing that he requires of all single people. That means not only keeping your body pure, but especially your mind. Just as heterosexual men should avoid pornography and fantasizing, you, too, need to keep your thought-life clean. Resist the temptation to rationalize sin by saying, “God made me this way.” God has made it very clear that He does not want you to indulge your desires, but to honor Him by keeping your mind and body pure. Finally, seek professional Christian counseling. With time and effort, you can come to enjoy normal, heterosexual relations with your spouse. There is hope.

For Jabotinsky, the confrontation between Jews and Arabs was rooted in the fact that both sides shared historical rights to the same land. This was not a struggle between right and wrong, but between right and right.

Existence has taught me that a man can live on love and fresh water, on crumbs and promises, but he can never survive insults. And insults are all I've known since I came into the world. Every morning. Every evening. That's all I've seen for my whole life.

Ghetto living is more than just a feeling of confinement; it is a sense of suffocation too.

God’s purpose was not simply to deliver Israel from Pharoah’s yoke. It was to bring them under His yoke.

Half the published articles on Gaza contain a standard reference to its resemblance to a vast open-air prison (and when I last saw it under Israeli occupation it certainly did deserve this metaphor). The problem is that, given its ideology and its allies, Hamas qualifies rather too well in the capacity of guard and warder.

He got off on Lincoln and slavery and dared any man there to deny that Lincoln and the negro and Moses and the children of Israel were the same, and that the Red Sea was just the blood that had to be spilled in order that the black race might cross into the Promised Land.

He (her son) is just like his father, doesn't listen to a word I say!

Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a foil against Fatah and the PLO. This I had known since seeing the burning out of leftist Palestinians by Muslim mobs in Gaza as early as 1981. Yet once again, it seemed Edward could only condemn Islamism if it could somehow be blamed on either Israel or the United States or the West, and not as a thing in itself. He sometimes employed the same sort of knight's move when discussing other Arabist movements, excoriating Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, for example, mainly because it had once enjoyed the support of the CIA. But when Saddam was really being attacked, as in the case of his use of chemical weapons on noncombatants at Halabja, Edward gave second-hand currency to the falsified story that it had 'really' been the Iranians who had done it. If that didn't work, well, hadn't the United States sold Saddam the weaponry in the first place? Finally, and always—and this question wasn't automatically discredited by being a change of subject—what about Israel's unwanted and ugly rule over more and more millions of non-Jews? I evolved a test for this mentality, which I applied to more people than Edward. What would, or did, the relevant person say when the United States intervened to stop the massacres and dispossessions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? Here were two majority-Muslim territories and populations being vilely mistreated by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. There was no oil in the region. The state interests of Israel were not involved (indeed, Ariel Sharon publicly opposed the return of the Kosovar refugees to their homes on the grounds that it set an alarming—I want to say 'unsettling'—precedent). The usual national-security 'hawks,' like Henry Kissinger, were also strongly opposed to the mission. One evening at Edward's apartment, with the other guest being the mercurial, courageous Azmi Bishara, then one of the more distinguished Arab members of the Israeli parliament, I was finally able to leave the arguing to someone else. Bishara [...] was quite shocked that Edward would not lend public support to Clinton for finally doing the right thing in the Balkans. Why was he being so stubborn? I had begun by then—belatedly you may say—to guess. Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance believed that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not by definition be a moral or ethical action.

Friedrich spoke thickly. "Don't you think, Mr. Kingscourt, that people would be better if they were better off? "No! If I believed that, I should not be going off to my lonely island; I should have stayed in the midst of humanity. I should have told them how to better themselves. They needn't wait to begin. Not a thousand years, not a hundred, not even fifty. Today! With the ideas, knowledge, and facilities that humanity possesses on this 31st day of December, 1902, it could save itself. No philosopher's stone, no dirigible airship is needed. Everything needful for the making of a better world exists already. And do you know, man, who could show the way? You! You Jews! Just because you're so badly off. You've nothing to lose. You could make the experimental land for humanity. Over yonder, where we were, you could create a new commonwealth. On that ancient soil, Old-New Land! Friedrich heard Kingscourt's words only in a dream. He had fallen asleep. And, dreaming, he sailed through the Red Sea to meet the future.

I am a physician, and as a consequence I see things most clearly in medical terms. I am arguing that we need an immunization program, one that injects people with respect, dignity, and equality. One that inoculates them against hatred.

I am certainly anti-Israel, and I have become anti-Semitic.

I am frequently asked if I have visited Israel, whereas yet, it is simply assumed that I have. Well, I don’t travel. I really don’t, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t visit Israel. I remember how it was in 1948 when Israel was being established and all my Jewish friends were ecstatic, I was not. I said: what are we doing? We are establishing ourselves in a ghetto, in a small corner of a vast Muslim sea. The Muslims will never forget nor forgive, and Israel, as long as it exists, will be embattled. I was laughed at, but I was right. I can’t help but feel that the Jews didn’t really have the right to appropriate a territory only because 2000 years ago, people they consider their ancestors, were living there. History moves on and you can’t really turn it back. (#92 ff.)

I am not one of those who believes—as Obama is said to believe—that a solution to the Palestinian statehood question would bring an end to Muslim resentment against the United States. (Incidentally, if he really does believe this, his lethargy and impotence in the face of Netanyahu's consistent double-dealing is even more culpable.) The Islamist fanatics have their own agenda, and, as in the case of Hamas and its Iranian backers, they have already demonstrated that nothing but the destruction of Israel and the removal of American influence from the region will possibly satisfy them. No, it is more the case that justice—and a homeland for the Palestinians—is a good and necessary cause in its own right. It is also a special legal and moral responsibility of the United States, which has several times declared a dual-statehood outcome to be its objective.

If God's love encompasses the whole world and if everyone who does not believe in him will perish, then surely this question needs to be asked: When, after two thousand years, does God's plan kick in for the billion people he 'so loves' in China? Or for the 840 million in India? Or the millions in Japan, Afghanistan, Siberia, Egypt, Burma ·.. and on and on? Why would a God who 'so loved the world' reveal his message only to a tiny minority of the people on earth, leaving the majority in ignorance? Is it possible to believe that the Father of all Mankind would select as his Chosen People a small Middle Eastern nation, Israel, reveal His will exclusively to them, fight alongside them in their battles to survive, and only after their failure to reach out to any other group, update His plan for the world's salvation by sending His 'only begotten son,' not to the world but, once again, exclusively to Israel?

If God speaks universes into existence, I doubt a handful of stones and bones will keep Him out.

Look at the snow, the woman was saying to the child. The snow absolves Vienna of its sins. The snow falls on Vienna while the missiles rain on Tel Aviv.

In addition to these physical problems, sexually transmitted diseases are rampant among the homosexual population. 75% of homosexual men carry one or more sexually transmitted diseases, wholly apart from AIDS. These include all sorts of non-viral infections like gonorrhea, syphilis, bacterial infections, and parasites. Also common among homosexuals are viral infections like herpes and hepatitis B (which afflicts 65% of homosexual men), both of which are incurable, as well as hepatitis A and anal warts, which afflict 40% of homosexual men. And I haven’t even included AIDS. Perhaps the most shocking and frightening statistic is that, leaving aside those who die from AIDS, the life expectancy for a homosexual male is about 45 years of age. That compares to a life expectancy of around 70 for men in general. If you include those who die of AIDS, which now infects 30% of homosexual men, the life expectancy drops to 39 years of age. So I think a very good case can be made out on the basis of generally accepted moral principles that homosexual behavior is wrong. It is horribly self-destructive and injurious to another person. Thus, wholly apart from the Bible’s prohibition, there are sound, sensible reasons to regard homosexual activity as wrong.

In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.

In the end both people realized something so utterly simple and yet horrifyingly distant- by removing the ‘otherness’ from their respective identification, they can embrace a land that animates their historical sense of purpose and direction. They can embrace fate by embracing each other as joint caretakers of a historical location that witnessed rivers of blood and the silent weeping of those who dream of a New Jerusalem.

In the West "yes" is "yes" and "no" is "no." But when Arabs hear the word "no" from an American they often take it as an insult. That is because Arabs don't say the word "no" directly. Very often they say "in Shaalah" when they mean "no." In dealing with Westerners, an Arab may say "yes' when they really don't mean it, and that gets them in a lot of trouble with Westerners.

I regard anti-Semitism as ineradicable and as one element of the toxin with which religion has infected us. Perhaps partly for this reason, I have never been able to see Zionism as a cure for it. American and British and French Jews have told me with perfect sincerity that they are always prepared for the day when 'it happens again' and the Jew-baiters take over. (And I don't pretend not to know what they are talking about: I have actually seen the rabid phenomenon at work in modern and sunny Argentina and am unable to forget it.) So then, they seem to think, they will take refuge in the Law of Return, and in Haifa, or for all I know in Hebron. Never mind for now that if all of world Jewry did settle in Palestine, this would actually necessitate further Israeli expansion, expulsion, and colonization, and that their departure under these apocalyptic conditions would leave the new brownshirts and blackshirts in possession of the French and British and American nuclear arsenals. This is ghetto thinking, hardly even fractionally updated to take into account what has changed. The important but delayed realization will have to come: Israeli Jews are a part of the diaspora, not a group that has escaped from it. Why else does Israel daily beseech the often-flourishing Jews of other lands, urging them to help the most endangered Jews of all: the ones who rule Palestine by force of arms? Why else, having supposedly escaped from the need to rely on Gentile goodwill, has Israel come to depend more and more upon it? On this reckoning, Zionism must constitute one of the greatest potential non sequiturs in human history.

Israeli ilifikia kikomo cha kipindi chake kikubwa cha mafanikio tangu enzi za Sulemani. Taifa lilikuwa tajiri. Lilikuwa na nguvu. Lilikuwa na silaha nyingi na nzuri zaidi. Lilikuwa taifa lililojidai kwa uwezo wake mkubwa wa nguvu za kijeshi, hekima, ujasiri, utajiri, na faida za kimkakati. Nani angeweza kushindana na Israeli? Lakini Mungu hunguruma onyo kwamba uwezo wote mkubwa wa asili wa taifa, ujuzi waliojipatia, na sifa bora zaidi havikuweza kulisaidia taifa la Israeli. Watu huona nguvu ya taifa katika utajiri wake, idadi yake ya watu, silaha za kijeshi, teknolojia, na maarifa. Lakini Mungu huangalia haki.

Israel's demonstration of its military prowess in 1967 confirmed its status as a 'strategic asset,' as did its moves to prevent Syrian intervention in Jordan in 1970 in support of the PLO. Under the Nixon doctrine, Israel and Iran were to be 'the guardians of the Gulf,' and after the fall of the Shah, Israel's perceived role was enhanced. Meanwhile, Israel has provided subsidiary services elsewhere, including Latin America, where direct US support for the most murderous regimes has been impeded by Congress. While there has been internal debate and some fluctuation in US policy, much exaggerated in discussion here, it has been generally true that US support for Israel's militarization and expansion reflected the estimate of its power in the region. The effect has been to turn Israel into a militarized state completely dependent on US aid, willing to undertake tasks that few can endure, such as participation in Guatemalan genocide. For Israel, this is a moral disaster and will eventually become a physical disaster as well. For the Palestinians and many others, it has been a catastrophe, as it may sooner or later be for the entire world, with the growing danger of superpower confrontation.

Falsehoods, rob the good in the hood, of the good wood. The good wood, that the good in the hood are descended from, is their birthright.

I always have believed that we should not call it an Arab-Israeli issue or a Palestinian-Arab dispute or a peace negotiation. I think we should call it what it is: an occupation of Palestine, full stop. This is not a popular position in mixed company.

If the Palestinian people really wish to decide that they will battle to the very end to prevent partition or annexation of even an inch of their ancestral soil, then I have to concede that that is their right. I even think that a sixty-year rather botched experiment in marginal quasi-statehood is something that the Jewish people could consider abandoning. It represents barely an instant in our drawn-out and arduous history, and it's already been agreed even by the heirs of Ze'ev Jabotinsky that the whole scheme is unrealizable in 'Judaea and Samaria,' let alone in Gaza or Sinai. But it's flat-out intolerable to be solicited to endorse a side-by-side Palestinian homeland and then to discover that there are sinuous two-faced apologists explaining away the suicide-murder of Jewish civilians in Tel Aviv, a city which would be part of a Jewish state or community under any conceivable 'solution.' There's that word again...

I like his optimism,' I said. 'I like the way when he and some other rabbis saw a jackal in the ruins of Jerusalem, and the others began to cry, he laughed and said that just as the prophecy of the destruction of the temple was fulfilled, so the prophecy of the rebuilding would also be fulfilled. I like that.