Israel Quotations

Yes, Israel's our ally. But, are the Palestinians our enemy? No, they are not.

Hamas says in its charter they want to see a world without Israel. They want to obliterate Israel.

Israel remains a foreign body in this large area, and it always proved that it is unable to coexist with this environment, because the, the scope of the massacres that it has committed does not permit it to coexist.

The nations of antiquity rolled away in the current of ages, Israel alone remained one indestructible edifice of gray antiquity... preserved by an internal and marvelous power.

It is not surprising, then, that in the decade since Oslo began, Arafat used all the resources placed at his disposal to fan the flames of hatred against Israel.

I am a Zionist, an ardent supporter of Israel, its defender when I deem Israel to be right and its critic when I deem it to be wrong.

Modern Orthodoxy has a highly positive attitude toward the State of Israel. Our Ultra-Orthodox brethren recognize only the Holy Land, but not the state.

Jerusalem Syndrome is actually a rare psychological condition that occurs to some visitors to the Middle East. They get to Israel and just snap.

If history remembers me at all, in any way, I hope it will be as a man who loved the Land of Israel and watched over it in every way he could, all his life.

One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all.

As Israel prepares to enter, my position is well known. It is one that I have taken at previous Olympics. It is wrong that the IOC refuses to have a minute's silence for Israeli athletes that were slaughtered in Munich.

The most important sign in Matthew has to be the restoration of the Jews to the land in the rebirth of Israel.

The Iranian regime gives financial support to terrorist organizations all over the world, denies the Holocaust, and calls for wiping the state of Israel from the map, while developing long-range missiles and trying to obtain nuclear weapons.

A solution of two national states - a Jewish state, Israel; an Arab state, Palestine. The Palestinians are our closest neighbors. I believe they may become our closest friends.

We have said that Israel has had a very bad history with the United Nations, and whoever cares for himself in Israel distances himself from that Organization.

First of all, Arafat is wrong. Jerusalem is Israel's capital, will never be divided, and will remain the capital of the State of Israel, the capital of the Jewish people, for ever and ever.

Contrary to many of the rumors and innuendo in circulation, I wholeheartedly believe that Obama views Israels security as absolute.

God saw fit, for wise reasons to allow the people of Israel thus to make and possess slaves; but is this any license to us to enslave any of our fellow-men, ... to kill any of our fellow-men whom we please and are able to destroy, and take possession of their estates?

When I'd go to Israel, I felt like a tourist. My social and professional ties had started to dissolve, and it confused me. I didn't know whether I should stay here in Paris or go back to Israel, or even cut off all my ties with Israel so I could really plant roots here. Or maybe go somewhere else altogether.

I studied at the Hebrew University Medical Faculty, graduated, and was an Israel Defense Forces' combat physician on a Navy ship.

American foreign policy has been - and must continue to be - based on unequivocal support for Israel's right to exist and to be free from terror.

In addition to removing our democratically elected government, Israel wants to sow dissent among Palestinians by claiming that there is a serious leadership rivalry among us. I am compelled to dispel this notion definitively.

Israel has created a new image of the Jew in the world - the image of a working and an intellectual people, of a people that can fight with heroism.

Not only must Americans admire Israel, there can be no doubt that we have an interest in, and special responsibility for, that valiant nation.

The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple.

We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem.

If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.

Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.

I don't know that there is one serious American representative that will advise Israel to sit with a terrorist government and negotiate with them.

Every dollar that we send in State Department aid or humanitarian aid that saves us from having to get involved with very expensive military actions is a good investment. And frankly, helping Israel fight terrorism in the Middle East is much cheaper than us fighting it here on our shores.

Nobody has trusted the Iranian government from day one, but the idea of just refusing to have any kind of talks is dangerous in the extreme. Every administration says at least that we're trying to have talks between Israel and Palestine and solve the Middle East peace problem.

We've always had a dual role in the region - friend of Israel, and honest broker. We've given up the honest broker role completely.

Israel no longer has allies in Egypt and in Tunisia, we are saying to the Zionist enemies that times have changed and that the time of the Arab Spring, the time of the revolution, of dignity and of pride has arrived.

During my travels in Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Europe and all over the United States, I have seen and heard the voices of people who want change. They want the stabilization of the economy, education and healthcare for all, renewable energy and an environmental vision with an eye on generations to come.

I hope that France - and all of Europe - we would take an initiative for the year 2012 to be the year of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The question is no longer whether the United States should contribute to assuring Israel's survival and prosperity; that goes without saying.

The Oslo Accords in 1993 determined that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are a single territorial entity which cannot be divided. Immediately, the United States and Israel set about separating the two and making sure that they would not be united.

I've been able to work with great directors in Israel.

Bulgaria is a true friend of Israel, that stood up to save the Jewish people 70 years ago in Europe, and who stood by throughout the terror attack that took place in Burgas last July.

There's Hezbollah, there's Hamas, there is a whole range of terrorist targets out there related to Palestine and to Israel that we ought to be trying to deal with. And there's a great deal of targets in the Philippines, Indonesia. You name it, there are a number of places where there are targets that we ought to be trying to deal with.

Israel is the canary in the mine. What happens to Israel will eventually happen to America itself.

But there's one thing we are not going to compromise at all: when it comes to security of Israeli citizens and the State of Israel, there are not going to be any compromises - not now and not in the future.

Each time there is a conflict between Israel and Gaza, accusations fly over who started it, each side blaming the other.

It is my Middle Eastern hat and my attachment to Israel that ultimately inspires my support for Obama. I know he understands that neither Israel nor America can afford four more years of Iran and the radical Islamists gaining strategic leverage in the Middle East.

The actions of the terrorist organizations, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and Hamas, in Gaza, against Israel are unconscionable. Instead of working towards peace, these terrorist organizations have chosen to perpetuate the violence.

The Arabs could have peace tomorrow if sufficient numbers of Palestinians were not content to be used as cannon fodder in fruitless assaults on Israel, even as the surrounding Arab powers distract the Arab masses with the red herring of Israel while retarding their countries with their repression and corruption.

Zionists believe they are entitled by God to the land, groves and homes of the non-Jewish underclass. They quote the Bible as the reference that 'God gave them the land.' The size of the alleged God-given land has never been determined and Israel's borders still remain fuzzy.

Until 1956, America treated Israel not much differently from other friendly states.

We would like to have friendly regimes with enough broad participation of their populations to maintain long-term stability, so that we would have not only access to the region's wealth, but we would be able to ensure the security of our good friend Israel.

The international community and Israel have the same opinion regarding the Hamas government. We don't say we are going to boycott it forever. We say the Hamas government must abide by the obligations the Palestinian Authority has signed.

I have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism.

We of the modern age are a bridge between the old human and the new one. We still have the mentality of the old human - a slave mentality, like the Children of Israel in Egypt: too controlled, full of fear.

Since its very inception, Israel has been a threat.

My colleagues and I have gone in the footsteps of our predecessors since the very first day we were called by our people to care for their future. We went any place, we looked for any avenue, we made any effort to bring about negotiations between Israel and its neighbors, negotiations without which peace remains an abstract desire.

Israel has a fantastic film industry, and many times we are known for our political films or films that have to do with the army. I love the fact that we can show that there are films coming out of Israel that are just for fun.

I know the dangers and the seductions of the Middle East. It is part of my identity. I grew up among a people who routinely referred to the creation of the State of Israel as the Nakba - the catastrophe. And yet I fell in love with and married a Jewish American woman, the only daughter of two Holocaust survivors, both Jewish Austrians.

With the common Iranian threat bringing the Sunni Arab world and Israel closer together, an Israeli-Palestinian peace would go a long way in improving relations and rebuffing Iran's regional ambitions.

In Israel, there is this reduction of the political discourse to something that is very limited. It's as if you have that pitch that only dogs can hear. Sometimes I feel I speak at such a pitch that very few people around me communicate with what I'm saying.

At the age of nineteen and a half, I went to the Land of Israel to till its soil and live by the labour of my hands. As I did not find work, I sought my livelihood elsewhere.

I can certainly put myself in Israel's shoes. They are humans just like we are. They want peace and security inside their borders.

In my view the European culture carries a very heavy responsibility for the creation of Israel... it is a product of both British and Stalin's anti- Semitism, but the British never faced their own complicity in its construction.

The driving force for the Arabs is hatred of Israel. Hatred of the Jewish people.

Netanyahu is pressured easily, gets into a panic, and loses his senses... to run a country like Israel a leader needs to have reason and judgment and nerves of steel, two traits he does not have.

The military operation in Lebanon was the most successful military operation in recent Israeli history. Many in Israel don't recognise that.

Well, the right-wing policy with regard to Israel - the people who don't want to deal with Arafat, who don't want a Palestinian state - the whole sort of right-wing view is consistent with the view toward Iraq. It's the same policy and the same people.

Throughout its history, the members of Shearith Israel have observed Thanksgiving by reciting in synagogue the same psalms of praise and gratitude sung by Jews all over the world on festive days like Hanukkah.

Women are a key part of the sound of the groups that accompany male singers like Kirk Franklin, Israel Houghton, and myself.

Well, I grew up between Holland and Israel and then moved to France when I was eleven.

My family moved to Israel when I was eight until I was 10, and then we came back, and my parents split up. I was suddenly in a single-parent home and on scholarship. Fifth grade was such a hard year for me.

I covered the first Gulf War in Saudi Arabia and Israel for ABC News.

Well, Israel, obviously, thinks of the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel.

I am 73 years old. I was born in Jerusalem. I'm the first prime minister of Israel to be born here. I am the only former general to become a prime minister.

And by the way, a piece of news, Israel is the one country in which everyone is pro-American, opposition and coalition alike. And I represent the entire people of Israel who say, 'Thank you, America.'' And we're friends of America, and we're the only reliable allies of America in the Middle East.

When the President of Iran talks about removing Israel from the face of the Earth and is building nuclear bombs with a range of 3000km, you have to be worried.

It should be known that Israel is based on treachery.

After 1957, Israel had to wait 10 full years for its flag to fly again over that liberated portion of the homeland.

Being from Israel and a Jew is complex already, but with France, there is a freedom and a mix of culture. I have met musicians from all over the world.

My mother and I were part of a deal in the mid-'60s between Romania and Israel. Israel bought freedom for Romanian Jews for $2,000 a head. Ceausescu made a bundle in hard currency. He also 'sold' ethnic Germans to West Germany. Instead of going to Israel, my mother and I came to the United States.

I've always been supportive of the right of Israel as a state, and I've always fought against anti-Semitism, even in my own community.

Israel's a small country but both the audience and programme-makers are very sophisticated.

Surely it is time for Jews, worried over the huge growth of Arabs in Israel, to consider finishing the exchange of populations that began 35 years ago.

Every country that has experimented with women in actual combat has abandoned the idea, and the notion that Israel uses women in combat is a feminist myth.

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.

President George W. Bush is the first American president to call openly for two-states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.

Everyone should unconditionally accept that Israel is an indispensable element of the Middle Eastern mosaic.

I would not rule out going to Israel because I disapprove of the foreign policy any more than I would refuse to play in the UK because I disapprove of Tony Blair's foreign policy.

Israel's capital will never again be a divided city, a city with a wall at its center, a city in which two flags fly. This city, will, in its entirety, absorb immigrants, welcome pilgrims and be the eternal capital of Israel forever.

The Palestinians want a state, but they have to give peace in return. What they're trying to do in the United Nations is to get a state without giving Israel peace or giving Israel peace and security. And I think that's, that's wrong. That should not succeed. That should, that should fail.

David - the man after God's own heart - was a man of war and a mighty man of valour. When all Israel were on the run, David faced Goliath - alone... with God - and he but a stripling, and well scolded, too, by his brother for having come to see the battle.

The Jewish people can do a lot of good if we stay united and strong - Israel and the Diaspora working together. If we don't, I always worry about the continuation of the Jewish people in Israel and abroad.

As long as Palestinian violence exists, but not a Palestinian state, Israel is in danger, because it cannot obtain assistance from the international community against an entity that is not subordinate to international law.

Unprovoked attacks on Israel's borders, murdering Israeli soldiers, taking Israeli hostages and showering rockets targeting and killing Israeli civilians are not furthering any legitimate goal.

Those who closely watched the campaign should not be surprised by Obama's hostility toward Israel, given his relations with pro-Palestinian, virulent critics of Israel and his voluntary membership in Reverend Wright's decidedly anti-Semitic church. Furthermore, his campaign website featured anti-Semitic posts.

Israel is a country that respects freedom - freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and freedom of worship.

Only weeks after Oslo began, when nearly all the world and most of Israel was drunk with the idea of peace, I argued that a Palestinian society not constrained by democratic norms would be a fear society that would pose a grave threat to Israel.

In Israel, a land lacking in natural resources, we learned to appreciate our greatest national advantage: our minds. Through creativity and innovation, we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology.

The one thing that I'm absolutely sure about is that the people of Gaza aren't going anywhere. And neither are the people of Israel.

A lasting solution to this problem will have an exceptionally positive influence foremost on the peoples of Palestine and Israel, as well as on the region and the international community.

Israel has incredible entrepreneurial spirit and a deep bench of technology talent.

All of the land of Israel is ours.