Hassan al-Banna Quotes

This clause has been the cause of immense problems in the Mid-East. Hamas castigates any Palestinian who even suggests that there should be negotiations with Israel that are sincere as nothing less than the end of Israel is consistent with their charter. Anyone who uses the peace process for anything else but tactical advantage and buying time to strike again is a traitor. Meanwhile, the clause is taken be Israel to demonstrate that there is no point to any negotiations so long as the Palestinian Authority allows such an organization with this charter clause to be legal and operate in the open. The Palestinian Authority leadership are not willing to risk a civil war, and thus little or no progress is made.

14 Arab Armies in a coordinated attack on the 1 day old Israeli state, intended to massacre all the Israelis as demonstrated by this quote. Note that this kind of extermnination intent was advertised with pride. To everyone's surprised, the Jewish defenders not only beat back the viscious attacks but enlssarged their terroitory by capturing strategic sites from which the attacks had been launched. Many people credit to the Israely victory to the fact that they were litterally fighting for their lives. Defeat would have meant death for them and their families. The Arab armies, in contrast, were fighting for land that other Arabs claimed that should have been theirs. The willingness to stand and fight for this goal did not match the self preservation that motivated the Israelis--especially in the aftermath of the Holocaust killing 6 million Jews in WWII.

There are some who argue that the quotation was made earlier and was not meant as an incendary call for massacre of Israelis. It well may be that in his original thinking, he was predicting what would happen if the State of Israel was created, basing his thoughts on historical artrocieties of the past. And many think he was concerned about that possible outcome and was trying to avoid it. The import of the quotation was not necessaruly to hisltorically blame Assam for the point of view but to simply establish that there were many Arab voices calling for victories of history where there were massacres in the Middle East. And there were those who took Azzam's quotation and broadcasted it on Arab radio, calling for the very massacre that Assam may have been warning about. Note that this notion of Jewish massacre and extermination was also picked up 60 years later and called for by the President of Iran.

This threat of massacre by the Arabs backfired in that the Israelis had no other alternative but to fight and win or else die. It also gained them a great deal of world sympathy and revulsion at the Arab call for massacre. See related quotes for another of the many examples.

The Arab League Members have historically been at each others throats with little concordance except hatred of Israel and Jews

Kissinger and Nixon were talking about the Russian discrimination and persecution of Jews throughout the Soviet Union. Kissinger had drawn an extreme hypothetical analogy of Russians sending Jews to gas chambers. See related quote. This quotation was uncovered in 2010 when more of the Nixon White House tapes were released. Nixon tended to have the worst stereotyped view of all minority groups.

”Palestine” to the Arabs of the area meant the territory of the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel itself. They wanted to expel the Jews and or take over the whole area as a single state—Palestine—with an Arab majority. With the Israeli Defense Forces successes under Dayan, this notion of Palestine was “finished”. The notion of a Palestinian State which included the West Bank and Gaza but not Israel was then negotiated and these negotiations were ongoing for years. Minorities of Arabs and Israelis did not want to see a any Palestinian state that did not include Israel proper, and they blocked it whenever they could.

Actually, this is a relatively new phenomenon. Before this, it was the Western Colonialists who were to blame. Before that it was the Ottoman Turks who occupied their land, and before that it was the Christian Crusaders. Since the Arab countries have started their decline from one of the most advanced people and cultures of the world to one of the least, they have always found some external source to blame. Many scholars observe that that process of blaming others and not looking inward and avoiding the reforms that other religions and cultures went through is among the biggest reasons for their decline.

For years of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Palestinians would never negotiate with Israel over anything. Finally that barrier was broken and, the PLO became a negotiating party with Israel. However, the terrorist organization Hamas, had challenged the PLO for political control of the Palestinians and then took over the Gaza strip—part of the Palestinian territory. They then shot thousands of rockets into Israel, a clear act of war under international law. The Israelis then attacked the Hamas infrastructure and any building of facility where they had command or communications, meetings, trainings or stored weapons or ammunitions. The Gazans suffered many more casualties than the Israelis—about 20 to 1 ratio. Many other countries tried to broker a ceasefire which the Israelis agreed to but Hamas would not. The Israeli ambassador was asked on American television if Israel would be willing to negotiate on the larger issues of the conflict as they had negotiated with the PLO. This was his reply. The major problem was that the Hamas Charter had two clauses that made negotiations impossible. Hamas was committed to the destruction of Israel and would not agree that the Israel had a right to exist. Second, the Hamas charter called for the killing of Jews anywhere in the world—men, women and children. The Israelis asked what they would negotiate about given those two charter items and the Hamas terror history in killing as many Israelis as they could.