yesterday leads to today

this from the the "founding father" of the modern israeli state.

David Ben-Gurion sez: “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel, 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?”

Ben-Gurion also sez: “What is necessary is cruel and strong reactions. We need precision in time, place, and casualties. If we know the family, we must strike mercilessly, women and children included. Otherwise, the reaction is inefficient. At the place of action, there is no need to distinguish between guilty and innocent.”



as bad as the recent attacks are against the people of gaza, the crimes of israel are nothing new. here are some statements which go back to the initial crime of the israeli state, namely, the way in which it was created.

"palestine belongs to the arabs in the same sense that england belongs to the english or france to the french. what is going on in palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. if the jews must look to the palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter under the shadow of the british gun. a religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. they can settle in palestine only by the goodwill of the arabs. as it is, they are co-sharers with the british in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. i am not defending the arab excesses. i wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard an an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. but according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds."
mahatma gandhi, 1938

"i should much rather see reasonable agreement with the arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a jewish state. apart from practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of judaism resists the idea of a jewish state, with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal of power, no matter how modest. i am afraid of the inner damage judaism will sustain."
einstein

eric fromm, noted jewish writer and thinker..."in general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or the rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the arabs in israel have much more legitimacy than the jews. just because the arabs fled? since when is that punishable by confiscation of property, and by being barred from returning to the land on which a people's forefathers have lived for generations? thus, the claim of the jews to the land of israel cannot be a realistic claim. if all nations would suddenly claim territory in which their forefathers lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse. i believe that, politically speaking, there is only one solution for israel, namely, the unilateral acknowledgement of the obligation of the state towards the arabs. not to use it as a bargaining point, but to acknowledge the complete moral obligation of the israeli state to its former inhabitants."

martin buber, noted philosopher..."only an internal revolution can have the power to heal our people of their murderous sickness of causeless hatred. it is bound to bring complete ruin upon us. only then will the young and old in our land realize how great was our responsibility to those miserable arab refugees in whose towns we have settled jews who were brought from afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest; the fruits of whose gardens, orchards, and vineyards we gather; and in whose cities that we robbed we put up houses of education, charity, and prayer, while we babble and rave about being the "people of the book" and the "light of the nations."

so, there you have it; words spoken not by some "islamic extremists" that in our western arrogance we can write off, but rather, words from some of our most respected thinkers, most of them jewish.

as yet again, reality tells its tale, and is listened to by few without power, and acted on by no one with power.