Ari Shavit Quotes
The Right said, "If we only annex the West Bank, we'll be safe and sound." The Left said, "If we only hand over the West Bank, we'll have peace". The Right said, "Our dead died because of the Left's delusions", while the Left said, "Our dead died because of the Right's fantasies." Rather than face a tragic reality imposed on us from without, we chose to create a simplistic narrative of Right against Left.
Ari Shavit, Israeli Political Commentator, Historian & Writer, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, 2013
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
A minority of Jewish Israelis do not recognize the United Nations 1949 partition boundaries of the land creating modern Israel. They believe that God gave all the land to the Jewish people—as described in the Bible. Therefore, to them, the West Bank is a part of Israel. No Israeli government has ever maintained that position. However some governments which depend on settler and ultra-Orthodox support do not publicly disavow the position. Palestinians, look with alarm, on this view and the constant attempts at encroachment on West Bank land that the settlers attempt. Like the extremist Palestinians who want to sabotage any two-state solution, there is a minority of Israelis who do the same. These two groups made the peace process very difficult as their adherents are not only very passionate about their views, but have political influence out of proportion to their relatively small number of voters.
The same sentiment has been attributed to Aristotle.
This was the time of the rise of Hitler and efforts of communist revolutionary activity alike.
This quotation was very important to the issue of Freedom of the Press in America in the early 21st century. Al Jazeera was an independent Qatar News Network founded in 1996 and was heavily viewed throughout the Middle East. They then started an English Language Channel. Despite some very innovative News Reporting and access that other news networks were not able to get, there were many areas and cable networks in the United States (and other countries) that would not broadcast Al Jazeera. Their reason was twofold: First, that the English version was generally very moderate and responsibly designed to create a favorable opinion of the Arab World in the Middle East. However, for the Arabic, original channel, the broadcasts are extremely inflammatory with regard to Islam and the West and the Israeli-Arab Conflict. Second, that key Al Jazeera officials were supporters of terrorism and subtly were advocating terrorism in their broadcasts in English, and overtly in Arabic. These quotations by the Chief Editor, established that he had a strong political point of view and justified and advocated Palestinian terrorism. Most news network chief editors, have political opinions of one kind or another but are careful to keep them private. The fact that Sheikh did not, and supported the deliberate. Intentional killing of innocent women and children caused most American and many other networks to refuse to carry Al Jazeera despite the excellent journalism they had in other areas. Al Jazeera in its Arab version has never reported that the number of Palestinians killed by Israelis is far fewer than other historical occupations of similar length. For terrorist acts, even murder, Israel does not have capital punishment. Over the years, the Jordanians and Syrians have killed many more Palestinians than Israel has in all the occupation. Likewise the PLO, Hamas and other Palestinian organizations have deliberately murdered more Palestinians than the Israelis have inflicted casualties over the years. After the Arabs refused to accept the United Nations 1949 decision to partition Palestine, the Arab nations attacked the Jews with over a dozen Arab Armies. Over the years, Israel has negotiated a peace treaty with Egypt and Jordan, but the Palestinians have always refused to even sit down and negotiate an overall treaty.
The United States should be One major problem at the time was that the Soviet Union was supporting and instigating revolutions in many parts of the world. When most nations of the UN wanted to provide peace keeping troops to quell the conflict, the Russians would veto and block the effort, Vandenberg wanted the UN to change the rules regarding the veto. The original right of veto for the major nations was originally included at the insistence of the United States and many Americans did not want to give it up or have any exceptions lest there be more. The Russians at that time also did not want to give up any of their veto powers. Another method that Vandenberg wanted to solve the Russian peacekeeping blockage problem was for America to engage in more collective security pacts so that action could be taken without UN Security Council unanimity by going around the UN.
Israel started it nuclear weapons program under Perez’s leadership. They do not admit that it is even in existence. Yet all their potential enemies in the Middle East realize that they have enough nuclear weapons capacity that if they are in danger of being overrun, they can literally destroy the attacking nation and all the countries that might be assisting that nation. Before Israel had developed this capability, some in the Middle East had as their objective to destroy the state of Israel and “drive the Jews into the sea”. No one believes that it is now possible to militarily defeat Israel without the attacking nations also being destroyed. For years, Israel has had the military might to conquer any nation in the Middle East and use their nuclear shield to protect them from any interference, but they have not done so demonstrating that the Israeli governments will not use nuclear weapons for any other purpose.
Ari Shavit is an Israeli reporter and writer. Shavit was a Senior Correspondent at the left-of-center Israeli newspaper Haaretz before he resigned when a pattern of sexual misconduct came to public attention.