Israel Palestine Quotes & Sayings

I had already been a young singer. And once, as a profession, I was a young singer, what you would call a soprano in England, but I was an alto in singing Jewish music in bar mitzvahs and weddings and synagogues throughout New York City because, after Israel, New York is probably the biggest Jewish community in the world. — Charlemagne Palestine

All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable. I felt this when sitting in the old Ottoman courtyards of Jerusalem, and I felt it even more when I saw the hideous 'Fort Condo' settlements that had been thrown up around the city in order to give the opposite impression. If the statelet was only based on a narrow strip of the Mediterranean littoral (god having apparently ordered Moses to lead the Jews to one of the very few parts of the region with absolutely no oil at all), that would be bad enough. But in addition, it involved roosting on top of an ever-growing population that did not welcome the newcomers. — Christopher Hitchens

Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel. — Yasser Arafat

Peace without justice is equivalent to institutionalizing injustice. — Omar Barghouti

Hamas, also elected to governmental leadership in Palestine, includes the jihadists, people who have declared war on the United States of America and its ally, Israel. — Zach Wamp

President George W. Bush is the first American president to call openly for two-states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. — Lee H. Hamilton

European anti-Semitism goes much further back than to the partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel in 1948. It even goes further back than the Holocaust. — Daniel Barenboim

All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, including Israel and Hamas. But Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic and totalitarian regimes. It does not deform the truth; it inverts it. It routinely paints a picture for the outside world that is diametrically opposed to reality. And all of us reporters who have covered the occupied territories have run into Israel's Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories - required under the rules of American journalism - although we know they are untrue. — Chris Hedges

The border between the State of Israel and the occupied Gaza Strip had always reminded him of the line between Tijuana and greater San Diego. There, too, ragged men the color of earth waited with the mystical patience of the very poor on the pleasure of crisply uniformed, well-nourished officials. Some months before, Lucas had come down for the dawn shape-up at the checkpoint, and he had not forgotten the drawn faces in the half-light, the terrible smiles of the weak, straining to make themselves agreeable to the strong. — Robert Stone

I want to see young people who as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as their young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have ... excuse me, but we have the truth! — Becky Fischer

Bringing Israel and modern Zionism into the subject of the Holocaust is to bring current (i.e. late 20th and early 21st Century) issues into a historical event that occurred on another continent altogether in the early-mid 20th Century. — James Morcan

I would like to see real peace and a state of Israel living peacefully alongside a state of Palestine. — Elie Wiesel

Nobody has trusted the Iranian government from day one, but the idea of just refusing to have any kind of talks is dangerous in the extreme. Every administration says at least that we're trying to have talks between Israel and Palestine and solve the Middle East peace problem. — Douglas Brinkley

I am interested to learn that a group of distinguished men and women is to be formed to spread knowledge and appreciation of the rehabilitation which is going forward in Palestine under Jewish auspices, and to add my expression to the sentiment among our people in favor of the realization of the age-old aspirations of the Jewish people for the restoration of their national homeland. — Herbert Hoover

The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state. — Barack Obama

For if life had taught her anything, it was that healing and peace can begin only with acknowledgment of wrongs committed. — Susan Abulhawa

Part of Sykes's motive was rooted in religiosity. A devout Catholic, he regarded a return of the ancient tribe of Israel to the Holy Land as a way to correct
a nearly two-thousand-year-old wrong. That view had taken on new passion and
urgency with the massacres of the Armenians. To Sykes, in that ongoing atrocity, the Ottoman Empire had proven it could never again be trusted to protect
its religious minority populations. At war's end, the Christian and Jewish Holy
Land of Palestine would be taken from it, and the failure of the Crusades made
right. — Scott Anderson

Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime [Israel] must be wiped off the map ... We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine ... I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The borders of Israel and an independent Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps. Each state needs secure and recognized borders, and there must be robust provisions that safeguard Israel's security. — Denis McDonough

There's a Palestine that dwells inside all of us, a Palestine that needs to be rescued: a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist; a Palestine where the meaning of the word "occupation" is only restricted to what the dictionary says rather than those plenty of meanings and connotations of death, destruction, pain, suffering, deprivation, isolation and restrictions that Israel has injected the word with. — Refaat Alareer

When it comes to the heart and soul of the Jewish faith - the law of Moses - Jesus was adamant that his mission was not to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). That law made a clear distinction between relations among Jews and relations between Jews and foreigners. The oft-repeated commandment "love your neighbor as yourself" was originally given strictly in the context of internal relations within Israel. The verse in question reads: "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people , but shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). To the Israelites, as well to Jesus's community in first-century Palestine,"neighbor" meant one's fellow Jews. With regard to the treatment of foreigners and outsiders, oppressors and occupiers, however, the Torah could not be clearer: "You shall drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. They shall not live in your land" (Exodus 23:31-33) — Reza Aslan

The answer is to let Israel say it will recognize a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, release the prisoners, and recognize the rights of the refugees to return to Palestine. Hamas will have a position if this occurs. — Ismail Haniyeh

The long conflict between Israel and Palestine has, for better or worse, become the world's conflict. It permanently destabilizes the Middle East, blocks the settlement of urgent crises, and intensifies looming threats to the West. — Stephen Kinzer

The Second World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences between the Fascists and the political Zionists. This war must be brought about so that Nazism is destroyed and that the political Zionism be strong enough to institute a sovereign state of Israel in Palestine. During the Second World War, International Communism must become strong enough in order to balance Christendom, which would be then restrained and held in check until the time when we would need it for the final social cataclysm. — Albert Pike

I think it was smart that you're wary of using the word "terrorism," and if you talk about the cycle of violence, or "an eye for an eye," you could be perpetuating the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a balanced conflict, instead of a largely unarmed people against the fourth most powerful military in the world. — Rachel Corrie

Peace can happen in 24 hours ... just like war can happen in 24 hours. — Sari Nusseibeh

You can't ignore reality. You won't wake up one morning and find that the Arabs of Umm al-Faham have become part of Palestine and are no longer in Israel. — Ami Ayalon

The Middle East is a land of great injustice. The Israelis can claim - or wish to, at least - that Lord Balfour's Declaration of 1917 promised Britain support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which didn't just mean the left-hand bit that became Israel. — Robert Fisk

Palestine must be built up without violating the legitimate interests of the Arabs.. Palestine is not Rhodesia ... 600,0000 Arabs live there, who before the sense of justice of the world have exactly the same rights to their homes as we have to our National Home. — Chaim Weizmann

A policy of peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine is the foundation of the tower, which will be built for the future; and visible from afar, the tower will be a non-violent symbol forever lasting peace. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens
and honor its own previous commitments
by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel's right to live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories. — Jimmy Carter

It is Israel that must recognize Palestine's rights. We cannot believe in empty statements, twiddle our thumbs and watch our children getting killed. Israel must end occupation and aggression, and our actions won't take much longer after that. — Khaled Mashal

I want to see a flowering of Arab and Jewish cultures in a country without racism or anti-Semitism, without rich or poor or spat-upon: everyone beneath the vine and fig tree living in peace and unafraid. A homeland for each and every one of us between the mountains and the sea. A multilingual, multireligious, many-colored and -peopled land where the orange tree blooms for all. I will not surrender this vision for any lesser compromise. — Aurora Levins Morales

Religious practice in the Land of the Bible tends to encourage exclusivity and discrimination rather than love and magnanimity. There is no place like the Holy Land to make one cynical about religion. — Raja Shehadeh

Actually - and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable - some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan - 'a land without a people for a people without a land' - disclosed its own negation when I saw the densely populated Arab towns dwelling sullenly under Jewish tutelage. You want irony? How about Jews becoming colonizers at just the moment when other Europeans had given up on the idea? — Christopher Hitchens

I have on numerous occasions, as you know, expressed my sympathy in the establishment of a National Home for the Jews in Palestine and, despite the set-backs caused by the disorders there during the last few years, I have been heartened by the progress which has been made and by the remarkable accomplishments of the Jewish settlers in that country. — Herbert Hoover

In the time that we're here today, more women and children will die violently in the Darfur region than in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel or Lebanon. So, after September 30, you won't need the UN - you will simply need men with shovels and bleached white linen and headstones. — George Clooney

Palestine is not the ultimate goal of the Jews; the world is. Palestine is just the place for the world state headquarters. — Israel Shamir

Business of blurring is fantastic. They both are playing the politics of avoidance. They avoid all the issues on corporate power, Iraq, Palestine, Israel, so on and so forth. They avoid all those. That's the politics of avoidance. All the major issues that are so much on people's minds - health care, living wage, public works, jobs - they avoid. — Ralph Nader

I saw [Ronald] Reagan. I've watched Jimmy Carter and his selflessness, getting involved in things like votes in African countries, but also putting his foot right into the whole Israel-Palestine crisis. Sometimes into places where people are going, "Why are you doing that?" . — David Mandel

Toughness found fertile soil in the hearts of Palestinians, and the grains of resistance embedded themselves in their skin. Endurance evolved as a hallmark of refugee society. But the price they paid was the subduing of tender vulnerability. They learned to celebrate martyrdom. Only martyrdom offered freedom. Only in death were they at last invulnerable to Israel. Martyrdom became the ultimate defiance of Israeli occupation. — Susan Abulhawa

I have spent a great deal of my life during the past thirty-five years advocating the rights of the Palestinian people to national self-determination, but I have always tried to do that with full attention paid to the reality of the Jewish people and what they suffered by the way of persecution and genocide. The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, coexistence, and not further suppression and denial. Not accidentally, I indicate that Orientalism and modern anti-Semitism have common roots. Therefore, it would seem to be a vital necessity for independent intellectuals always to provide alternative models to the reductively simplifying and confining ones, based on mutual hostility, that have prevailed in the Middle East and elsewhere for so long. — Edward W. Said

A lasting solution to this problem will have an exceptionally positive influence foremost on the peoples of Palestine and Israel, as well as on the region and the international community. — Recep Tayyip Erdogan

We attack whatever is different, anything we don't understand, anything that might change our world, our environment, reduce our chances of survival. Racism, class warfare, sexism, east versus west, north and south, capitalism and communism, democracy and dictatorships, Islam and Christianity, Israel and Palestine, they're all different faces of the same war: the war for a homogeneous human race, an end to our differences. — A.G. Riddle

There's Hezbollah, there's Hamas, there is a whole range of terrorist targets out there related to Palestine and to Israel that we ought to be trying to deal with. And there's a great deal of targets in the Philippines, Indonesia. You name it, there are a number of places where there are targets that we ought to be trying to deal with. — Lawrence Eagleburger

The history of Israel-Palestine conflict cannot be understood without its underlying emotional meanders. The emotional frameworks of the loss of Palestine for the Arab-Islamic world touched deep scars that go back to the Crusades, symbolizing a proof of Arab-Islamic decay, political impotence, and perceived (British/French) betrayal and antagonism. — Nayef Al-Rodhan

If every single Jew born anywhere in the world has the right to become an Israeli citizen, then all the Palestinians who were chucked out of Palestine by the Zionist Government should have the same right, very simple. — Tariq Ali

I think one of the problems when we discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict is people talk too much in terms of, 'What's your preference?,' like politics is a Chinese menu - I'll take one from column A and two from column B. That's not what politics is about. — Norman Finkelstein

Jewish nationalism means no more than recognition of the peoplehood of Israel, and of the propriety of that people's being a religio-cultural group in America, a nationality in Eastern Europe, and in Palestine an actualized nation. — Milton Steinberg

Between what is going on in Iraq and Mumia being locked up unjustly, things going on in Israel, Palestine, we don't really have anyone right now like Gandhi. We don't have anyone like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X anymore. It's really a reference to a vision of hope, like someone like Gandhi. — Vinnie Paz

The heart and mind of every Muslim is affected by whether or not the Israel-Palestine issue is dealt with fairly. — Jimmy Carter

You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine. — Cindy Sheehan

In general, Europeans need to get a wider perspective on the problem of Islamism. Even if the Israel-Palestine question were solved - and I think and hope that one day soon it will be - this wouldn't stop one person from becoming a terrorist. — Bernard-Henri Levy

parents, part of the older, more conservative generation, talked for a while, about the immorality of alcohol, the way the British had sold Palestine to the Jews and how Israel controlled America "like a boy on the back of an elephant", in their words. — Jamie Alexander

The Lord made what was once the desolation of the Palestine Mandate fertile again, as modern-day Israel, and if He so wills it, He will do the same for the Ilemi Triangle, for his own glory. The desert will bloom. — James Wesley, Rawles

I know of no one who would be a good High Commissioner of Palestine except God. — John Chancellor

It's a little-known fact that most terrorist groups fail, and that all of them die. Lest this seem hard to believe, just reflect on the world around you. Israel continues to exist, Northern Ireland is still a part of the United Kingdom, and Kashmir is a part of India. There are no sovereign states in Kurdistan, Palestine, Quebec, Puerto Rico, Chechnya, Corsica, Tamil Eelam, or Basque Country. The Philippines, Algeria, Egypt, and Uzbekistan are not Islamist theocracies; nor have Japan, the United States, Europe, and Latin America become religious, Marxist, anarchist, or new-age utopias. The numbers confirm the impressions. — Steven Pinker

The battle between two men over a girl is the same as the fight for two men over a piece of land. It is all about desire. There is no difference between a love triangle and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. — Bruno Dumont

I have drawn inspiration from the Marine Corps, the Jewish struggle in Palestine and Israel, and the Irish. — Leon Uris

Israel must withdraw from Jerusalem so that it becomes the capital of a state of Palestine. — Yasser Arafat

If we are not in conflict with Palestine than why are they so afraid of us presenting Palestinian voices? Of course the answer is obvious, and we see it throughout the U.S. and the world, controlling the master narrative of Israel means vigilantly controlling the narrative about Palestine. — Jon Rubin

Coolidge expressed his "sympathy with the deep and intense longing which finds such fine expression in the Jewish National Homeland in Palestine." — Calvin Coolidge

If the Palestinian people really wish to decide that they will battle to the very end to prevent partition or annexation of even an inch of their ancestral soil, then I have to concede that that is their right. I even think that a sixty-year rather botched experiment in marginal quasi-statehood is something that the Jewish people could consider abandoning. It represents barely an instant in our drawn-out and arduous history, and it's already been agreed even by the heirs of Ze'ev Jabotinsky that the whole scheme is unrealizable in 'Judaea and Samaria,' let alone in Gaza or Sinai. But it's flat-out intolerable to be solicited to endorse a side-by-side Palestinian homeland and then to discover that there are sinuous two-faced apologists explaining away the suicide-murder of Jewish civilians in Tel Aviv, a city which would be part of a Jewish state or community under any conceivable 'solution.' There's that word again ... — Christopher Hitchens

A solution of two national states - a Jewish state, Israel; an Arab state, Palestine. The Palestinians are our closest neighbors. I believe they may become our closest friends. — Shimon Peres

Israel, Palestine, if you're going to make it, that probably is the hardest deal there is to make. People are born with hatred, they're taught hatred. — Donald Trump

Ghetto living is more than just a feeling of confinement; it is a sense of suffocation too. — Susan Nathan

There are a lot of other terrorist targets we ought to be focusing on. Well, there is Syria, for example, which is pumping through - because of Iran, is pumping weapons on into Hezbollah and so forth - which is then producing a lot of agony in Palestine and in Israel. We ought to be doing a bit to try to stop that. — Lawrence Eagleburger

The allied nations with the fullest concurrence of our government and people are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth. — Woodrow Wilson

There is no doubt that the new wave [of attacks] in Palestine will wipe off this stigma [Israel] from the face of the Islamic world. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Imagine the situation between Israel and Palestine. It's such a big mess. You can be on one side or the other. But what's clear is that there's an urgent need for a solution there and that's been dragging on for so long. — Javier Bardem

Only in the early twentieth century, after years in the Protestant melting pot, was the theological concept of "Land of Israel" finally converted and refined into a clearly geonational concept. Settlement Zionism borrowed the term from the rabbinical tradition in part to displace the term "Palestine, — Shlomo Sand

They had bombed and burned,killed and maimed,plundered and looted.Now they had come to claim the land. — Susan Abulhawa

As an Israeli, I have come to understand: there is no way to love Israel and reject a two-state peace, no way to love Israel and reject Palestine. — Yael Dayan

We know what they say, they want all of Palestine (including Israel) and say that negotiations did not work. They talk about wanting reform. That doesn't mean they will do it. — Hanan Ashrawi

A partnership was established between Hitler's Nazis and the leadership of the Zionist movement ... [the Zionists] gave permission to every racist in the world, led by Hitler and the Nazis, to treat Jews as they wish, so long as it guarantees immigration to Palestine. — Mahmoud Abbas

Nothing could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it. And even then your experience is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and of course, the fact that I have the option to leave. I am allowed to see the ocean. — Rachel Corrie

All necessary measures should be taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale. - joint statement signed by both Chaim Weizmann and Prince Faisal — Sol Stern

The first century was an era of apocalyptic expectation among the Jews of Palestine, the unofficial Roman designation for the vast tract of land encompassing modern day Israel/Palestine as well as large parts of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon (the land would not be officially called Palestine until after 135 C.E.) — Reza Aslan

We would do well to remember that the success of any struggle depends on the determination of its leaders and the clarity of its purpose, not the doubts of naysayers. — Saree Makdisi

The ultimate goal is two states for two people: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people and the State of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people - each state in joined self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace. — Barack Obama

The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized ... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever. — Menachem Begin

the perfect preparation for active Zionism. Von Weisl's early journalism is full of prescient observations of the Middle East power struggle. His article called "Islam's Iconoclasts at Mekka's Gates," published in the fall of 1924, warned of the growing power of the Wahhabis in Arabia, and stated that "Hussein will have reason to regret that he refused to sign the Anglo-Hejaz Treaty, and to recognize the Jewish rights in Palestine. For Jews in Erez Israel - Israel - are far less dangerous enemies for him than are Wahhabis at the gates of Mekka. — Tom Reiss

There's no fun in a bag if it's not kicked around so that it looks as if the cat's been sitting on it - and it usually has. The cat may even be in it! I always put on stickers and beads and worry beads. You can get them from Greece, Israel, Palestine - from anywhere in the world. — Jane Birkin

In the case of Israel-Palestine, a one-state solution will arise only on the U.S. model: with extermination or expulsion of the indigenous population. — Noam Chomsky

Palestinian and Israeli leaders finally recover the Road Map to Peace, only to discover that, while they were looking for it, the Lug Nuts of Mutual Interest came off the Front Left Wheel of Accommodation, causing the Sport Utility Vehicle of Progress to crash into the Ditch of Despair. — Dave Barry

I'm not trying to convert the entire nation of Israel and the entire nation of Palestine to Christianity. But at least if you can educate them about the ideology of love, the ideology of forgiveness, the ideology of grace. Those principles are great regardless, but we can't deny they came from Christianity as well. — Mosab Hassan Yousef

The zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history. — Malcolm X

The city was a puzzle box built of symbols, a confusion of old and new, armored cars and donkeys in the streets, Bedouins and bankers. The Turks and Haredim, the showy Greek and Russian processions -- everyone seemed to be in costume, reenacting the miraculous past. — Stewart O'Nan

BDS is perhaps the most ambitious, empowering, and promising Palestinian-led global movement for justice and rights. BDS has the capacity to challenge Israel's colonial rule and apartheid in a morally consistent, effective, and, crucially, intelligent manner. — Omar Barghouti

I will continue - as Labour Leader - to pursue the causes of peace and justice in Israel-Palestine, the wider Middle East and all over the world. But those who claim to do so with hateful or inflammatory language do no service to anyone, especially dispossessed and oppressed people in need of better advocacy. — Jeremy Corbyn

Well, I myself am a 100% atheist. And I am increasingly worried that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, which dominates our entire life, is assuming a more and more religious character. — Uri Avnery

The more Israel sinks into the West Bank, the more it is delegitimized and isolated, the more the world focuses on Israel's colonialism rather than Iran's nuclear enrichment, the more people call for a single democratic state in all of historic Palestine. — Thomas Friedman

It is human nature to seek revenge in the face of relentless suffering. You can't expect an unhealthy person to think logically. — Izzeldin Abuelaish

We repeat today that we are with the establishment of a Palestinian state on any liberated part of Palestinian land that is agreed upon by the Palestinian people, without recognizing Israel or conceding any inch of historical Palestine. — Ismail Haniyeh

Just watching Israel bombarding Palestine and Palestine sending one or two little rockets over to Israel - it's just too sad for words. — Richard Branson

The American administration is trying to achieve any gain in the shadow of the embarrassment hitting it because of its failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine after the failure of Israel's war on Lebanon and the retreat of America's project in the region. — Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah

A truce between Israel and Palestine? Imagine walking into a doctor's office. You sit down, pick up a magazine, and begin to read. A few minutes later, a man walks in, the man who killed your wife, the man whose son you murdered. He sits down, picks up a magazine, and begins to read.
A two-state solution to the problem between Israel and Palestine? Imagine walking into a doctor's office. You sit down, pick up a magazine, and begin to read. Next door, a man walks into the restaurant, the man who killed your wife, the man whose son you murdered. He sits down at a table, orders a meal, and begins to eat.
In either case, there is an intolerable tension that has resisted resolution by diplomacy, combat, sanctions, or segregation. Forgiveness is the only reasonable solution. — Ron Brackin

How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? — Bertrand Russell

Only the high priest can enter the Holy of Holies, and on only one day a year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when all sins of Israel are wiped clean. On this day, the high priest comes into presence of God to atone for the whole nation. If he is worthy of God's blessing, Israel's sins are forgiven. If he is not, a rope tied to his waist ensures that when God strikes him dead, he can be dragged out of the Holy of Holies without anyone else defiling the sanctuary. — Reza Aslan

Part of this myth related to assertions about the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) - assertions promoted by liberal Zionists in both the US and Israel and shared with the rest of the political forces in Israel. The allegation is that the PLO - inside and outside of Palestine - was conducting a war of terror for the sake of terror. Unfortunately, this demonization is still very prevalent in the West and has been accentuated after 2001 by the attempt to equate Islam, terrorism, and Palestine. — Noam Chomsky