WISDOM (2)

ARIEL SHARON

“Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches.”
source: Friedman, Robert I. Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement (New York, New York: Random House, 1992), 132-52.

"The Jewish settlements are not a barrier to peace, the Jewish settlements are a barrier to war."
1970s?

MENACHEM BEGIN

"Free women and men everywhere must wage an incessant campaign so that these human values become a generally recognized and practised reality. We must regretfully admit that in various parts of the world this is not yet the case. Without those values and human rights the real peace of which we dream is jeopardized." (Nobel Prize Lecture, December 10, 1978)

"The hour of decision has arrived. You know what I have done, and what all of us have done, to prevent war and bereavement. But our fate is that in the Land of Israel there is no escape from fighting in the spirit of self-sacrifice. Believe me, the alternative to fighting is Treblinka, and we have resolved that there would be no Treblinkas. This is the moment in which courageous choice has to be made. The criminal terrorists and the world must know that the Jewish people have a right to self-defense, just like any other people." (Knesset address prior to invasion of Lebanon, June 5, 1982)

EHUD BARAK

The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more.
in the Jerusalem Post, Aug. 30, 2000.

MOSHE DAYAN

It is not in our hands to prevent the murder of workers… and families… but it is in our hands to fix a high price for our blood, so high that the Arab community and the Arab military forces will not be willing to pay it.
As quoted in Warrior: the autobiography of Ariel Sharon (1989)