Notable Quotes

On Palestinian Glorification of Terrorists

Palestinians continue to defend their practice of honoring terrorists who have killed Israelis by naming public places and events after them.

Iran’s Unchanged Rhetoric

“Definitely the day will come when nations of the region will witness the destruction of the Zionist regime.

Holocaust Memorials

 On January 27, many nations memorialize the Holocaust on International Holocaust {image_1}Remembrance Day, as designated in 2005 by the UN. This date marks the liberation of the largest Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz–Birkenau. Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, Yom HaShoah, falls in April just prior to Memorial Day and Independence Day. These quotes come from speeches made in January.

Ashkenazi: We Won’t Rely on Foreign Armies

{image_1}ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES CHIEF OF STAFF GABI ASHKENAZI gave a speech in Berlin in October in which he promised never again to allow foreign armies to be the sole protectors of the Jewish people. “We will never look lightly upon those who scheme our demise. We will not deposit our security in the hands of foreigners, and we will allow no one to control the future of the State of Israel,” he said during a ceremony held at the ill-famed Platform 17 in Berlin, from which many Jews left for concentration camps.

Nasrallah Rages against “Hegemonic” US

HIZBULLAH Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah laid out his political platform on November 30 during a speech filmed by closed-circuit cameras. The platform promotes armed battle against Israel and the United States, as well as all of the latter's protectorates. “We see the US as a power that aims to impose hegemony in the region,” Nasrallah explained. “The Islamic resistance movement in Lebanon aims to fight this hegemony and the [Israeli] occupation.” He said the United States has been treating the globe as a market it aims to control, and that it was waging “a strategy of unlimited expansion.”

“The Bush administration found in September 11 a chance to impose his influence, with the excuse of a war on terror,” the Hizbullah leader said. “He tried to create a parallel between terror and resistance. There is no doubt that American terror is the source of all terror in the world. This administration gave itself the right to embark on a war of destruction, which does not distinguish between one man and the other.”

Vilnai: Next War to Include All Israel

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THREE-AND-A-HALF years have passed since the Second Lebanon War, and on November 24 a project for the renovation and restoration of bomb shelters in northern Israel was celebrated in a festive ceremony. The Prime Minister's Office and the Defense Ministry invested NIS 96 million (roughly US $25.27 million) in the renovation of 3,019 public shelters. An additional 1,838 joint shelters were renovated by the administration for the restoration of the North.

Netanyahu to UN: Stand with Israel against Iran

{image_1}ON SEPTEMBER 24, ISRAELI PRIME Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his hope that the world can “learn from history—that we can prevent danger in time.” In an English speech that touched on topics ranging from the reality of the Holocaust to the “travesty” of the recent UN report on Operation Cast Lead in Gaza that accused Israel of war crimes, Netanyahu attempted to portray a world in which forces for peace are faced off against extremist forces, with the UN facing vital choices on how to respond.

Nasrallah: Israel is Cancerous, Illegal

{image_1}Hizbullah Chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah criticized moderate Arab nations which support normalization with Israel, saying that Israel was “a cancer…a metastasis which must be eradicated.”

Netanyahu… Rules Out More Evictions

{image_1}“My government will not participate in increasing the number of evacuees…” The nation “will never make the same mistake [of evacuating citizens as it did from the Gaza Strip in 2005] again…The withdrawal from the Gaza Strip brought us neither peace nor security. The territory has become a base for the pro-Iranian Hamas movement.”

—Announced before his cabinet on August 9, 2009

We Won’t Recognize Israel

{image_1}“We will maintain the resistance option in all its forms, and we will not recognize Israel. Not only don’t we demand that anyone recognize Israel; we don’t recognize Israel ourselves. However, the Palestinian Authority government is required to do it, or else it will not be able to serve the Palestinian people…I am certain that we will hinder all the traitors who wish to remove the resistance option from the movement’s charter.”

—Senior Fatah official Rafik al-Natsheh, prior to the sixth General Assembly for the Palestinian Fatah party in August