Israeli History Quotes

I had never met an Israeli before.

Israel exists; it has a right to exist in peace behind secure and defensible borders; and it has a right to demand of its neighbors that they recognize those facts. I have personally followed and supported Israel's heroic struggle for survival, ever since the founding of the State of Israel 34 years ago. In the pre-1967 borders Israel was barely 10 miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel's population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again.

I became a prime minister within four-and-a-half years, the shortest kind of career ever in Israeli political history.

Generally speaking, Israeli intelligence did not hunt Nazi war criminals.

If U.S. focuses on truth and justice, we'll realize that Israel has been there for 3,000 years - the same language, the same people, the same culture for 3,000 years - and it's always astonishing to me that we somehow now think that they're the occupiers.

After '45, Ben Gurion started to organize the Zionist movement and the conference in Baltimore. At this convention, they decided that the helm of the Zionist movement has to be a Jewish commonwealth... a Jewish commonwealth!

Amos Oz is one of the finest novelists of this entire period. MY MICHAEL is a beautiful work of great depth and in some indescribable way lingers in the mind as a lyric song to his country's people as much as a moving love story.

I lead Labor - Labor is the party that founded the state of Israel; it's deeply rooted in Israeli society.

One wonders what exactly Israel did to earn Arab enmity between 1948 and 1967, when Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria.

Lehi was not a part of the Zionist movement, not a part of the Revisionist Party. It was sometimes something apart, and Lord Moyne was the highest British official in the Middle East... and because we fought against the British in this area, we took him for a target.

The whole Zionist project was based on a whole spectrum of different and even conflicting dreams and visions.

David Ben-Gurion established the Israeli intelligence community in June of 1948, just three weeks after the establishment of Israel and in the midst of war.

There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.

David Ben-Gurion was a mythic figure, the founding father of Israel and a modern-day prophet, but he was also a real man who stormed through history on human legs. It was my great privilege to know him and work with him for many years.

There is a structural difference between the way that Europe views Israel, and America views Israel. The European view is informed by the importance of colonialism in Europe's past. So for Europeans we are like Belgiums in the Congo, or the French in Alger, or the British in India. Strange interlopers in somebody else's land. But in fact, we [Israeli] have been here for 4,000 years. This is our ancestral homeland.

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.

History is for all of us to discuss. All history is our common heritage to discuss and analyze. The founding of the state of Israel, for example, based on ethnic cleansing is there for us all to discuss.

I think that life in Israel is sometimes bigger than the movies.

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

A little more than a hundred years ago, "Tel Aviv" was not a city. It was a title of a novel written by an author. The "Return to Zion" was a name of another novel. There was a bookshelf. There was no country. There was no state. There was no nation. There was no physical Jewish reality in this country.

The existence of these refugees is a direct result of the Arab States' opposition to the partition plan and the reconstitution of the State of Israel. The Arab states adopted this policy unanimously, and the responsibility of its results, therefore is theirs

I'm not in the most comfortable position, but I think my government is very stable, perhaps more stable than any government in modern Israeli history.

I love that country [Israel].

Israel never meant to take over the West Bank and Gaza - it got stuck with them after the 1967 war.

Israel was also the last European frontier opened in the nineteenth century, either considerably or slightly later than the others. The Jewish pioneers also encountered a large indigenous population which, while not primitive in the way of aboriginal peoples, were "Old World"; that is to say, set in a traditional culture that they were prepared to modernize to a degree but did not intend to abandon for frontier-like adventures. Still, in the short space of four or five generations, Israel has passed through or into all the frontier stages and the chain reaction seems to be working for it as it has for the classic frontiers