Israeli Prime Ministers’ Quotes on Palestinians

Source: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-war-gaza-us-democrats-fuelling-brutal-revenge

David Ben-Gurion

“After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.”[1]

Moshe Sharett

“We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from a people inhabiting it, that governs it by virtue of its language and savage culture…If we seek to look upon our land, the Land of Israel, as ours alone and we allow a partner into our estate—all context and meaning will be lost to our enterprise.”[2]

Levi Eshkol

“We’ll deprive Gaza of water, and the Arabs will leave.”[3]

Golda Meir

“Arab sovereignty in Jerusalem just cannot be. This city will not be divided — not half and half, not 60-40, not 75-25, nothing.”[4]

Yitzhak Rabin

“I would like Gaza to sink into the sea, but that won’t happen, and a solution must be found.”[5]

Menachem Begin

“The massacre was not only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without the ‘victory’ at Deir Yassin.”[6]

Yitzhak Shamir

“Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a means of war.”[7]

Shimon Peres

In response to the Qana massacre, where 106 Lebanese civilians were killed during Operation Grapes of Wrath which he approved, he said, “Everything was done according to clear logic and in a responsible way. I am at peace.”[8]

Benjamin Netanyahu

“In our neighbourhood, we need to protect ourselves from wild beasts.”[9]

Ehud Barak

“They are products of a culture in which to tell a lie…creates no dissonance. They don’t suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture. Truth is seen as an irrelevant category. There is only that which serves your purpose and that which doesn’t. They see themselves as emissaries of a national movement for whom everything is permissible. There is no such thing as ‘the truth.’”[10]

Ariel Sharon

“Everybody has to move, run and grab as many [Palestinian] hilltops as they can to enlarge the [Jewish] settlements because everything we take now will stay ours… Everything we don’t grab will go to them.”[11]

Ehud Olmert

He said that “integrating all of the Palestinians into the state of Israel and giving them full political rights and civil rights” was something he didn’t “want to do because this will change completely the nature of the state of Israel from a Jewish state into something – a binational state, something entirely different.”[12]

Naftali Bennett

“I will do everything in my power to make sure they never get a state.”[13]

Yair Lapid

“I am enthusiastically in favor of annexing the Golan. My principle says maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians.”[14]

[1] https://www.palestiniangenocide.com/quotes/zionist_leaders/

[2] https://www.wrmea.org/israel-palestine/zionisms-original-sin-ignoring-the-fact-that-palestine-was-fully-populated.html

[3] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-11-17/ty-article/.premium/israeli-pm-in-67-well-deprive-gaza-of-water-and-the-arabs-will-leave/0000017f-e8df-da9b-a1ff-ecff5b720000

[4] https://www.palestiniangenocide.com/quotes/zionist_leaders/

[5] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna9265792

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/1971/05/02/archives/letter-to-the-editor-9-no-title.html

[7] https://consortiumnews.com/2012/07/02/yitzhak-shamir-the-well-liked-terrorist/

[8] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/shimon-peres-founder-israel-architect-occupation

[9] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/10/netanyahu-plans-fence-around-israel-to-protect-it-from-wild-beasts

[10] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2002/06/13/camp-david-and-after-an-exchange-1-an-interview-wi/

[11] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-11576714

[12] https://mondoweiss.net/2022/04/we-dont-want-to-integrate-palestinians-and-give-them-equal-rights-npr-gives-israeli-leader-platform-to-legitimize-apartheid/