The Israeli assault on Palestine, when does it become genocide?

"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."

- David Ben Gurion, quoted in

The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum

Goldmann, Weidenfeld and

Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.

"We must expel Arabs and take their places."

- David Ben Gurion, 1937, Ben

Gurion and the Palestine Arabs,

Oxford University Press, 1985.

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist."

- Golda Meir, statement to The

Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."

- Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.

"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!"

- Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version

of Rabin memoirs, published in the

New York Times, 23 October 1979.

"[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."

- Menachem Begin, Israeli Prime Minister,

speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon

Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"'

New Statesman, June 25, 1982.

"[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat."

- Yitzhak Rabin (a "Prince of Peace" by Clinton's

standards), explaining his method of ethnically

cleansing the occupied land without stirring a

world outcry. (Quoted in David Shipler in the

NYT, 04/04/1983 citing Meir Cohen'sremarks

to the Knesset's foreign affairs and defense

committee on March 16

"(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls."

- Yitzhak Shamir, former Israeli Prime Minister

in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times

April 1, 1988

"Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."

- Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy

Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of

Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan

University, from the Israeli journal Hotam,

November 24, 1989.

"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."

- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing

a meeting of the Tsomet Party, AFP, Nov. 15, 1998.

"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more"....

- Ehud Barak, Former Prime Minister of Israel,

August 28, 2000. Reported in the

Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000

"If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force...."

- Ehud Barak, Israeli Prime Minister

quoted in Associated Press,

November 16, 2000.

"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."

- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Prime Minister,

25 March, 2001, BBC News Online

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Nadia Hijab @ Axis of Logic - During a visit to Ramallah a year ago while the Israeli bombardment of Gaza was underway, I shared my fears with a close Palestinian friend. "It may sound insane, but I think the Israelis' real objective is to see them all dead."

My friend told me not to be silly, the assault was horrific, but it was not mass killing. I said that wasn't the issue: This was a population already very vulnerable to disease, ill-health, and malnutrition after years of siege, with its infrastructure rotted, its water and food contaminated. Israel's war would surely push the people over the brink, especially if the siege was maintained -- as it has been.

In other words, Israel would not directly kill tens of thousands of Palestinians, but it would create the conditions for tens of thousands to die. Any epidemic could finish the job. My friend fell silent at these words, but still shook his head in disbelief.

Two things have changed since last year: More people have started to apply the term "genocide" to what Israel is doing to Gaza. And not only is Israel being directly accused but also, increasingly, Egypt. Read more.