Israeli Military Quotes & Sayings

I got a number of very thoughtful responses to the email I sent out last night, most of which I don't have time to respond to right now. Thanks everyone for the encouragement, questions, criticism. Daniel's response was particularly inspiring to me and deserves to be shared. The resistance of Israeli Jewish people to the occupation and the enormous risk taken by those refusing to serve in the Israeli military offers an example, especially for those of us living in the United States, of how to behave when you discover that atrocities are being commited in your name. Thank you. — Rachel Corrie

In November 2008, the day of the presidential election, Israeli military forces invaded Gaza and killed half a dozen Hamas militants. Well, that was followed by a missile exchange for a couple of weeks in both directions. — Noam Chomsky

And the PRCS [Palestinian Red Crescent Society] had not lost just one hospital: thirteen clinics and nine hospitals all over Lebanon had been destroyed in this way. Only Gaza Hospital, for a reason I was to discover three years later, was still standing. At the height of the air raids, when the Palestinians found out that every single PRCS hospital and clinic was a bomb target, they put three Israeli soldiers captured in south Lebanon on the upper floors of Gaza Hospital, and radioed a message to the Israeli Army saying that any further military action on Gaza Hospital would result in Israeli lives being lost. That saved Gaza Hospital from further destruction. — Ang Swee Chai

All countries take the kidnapping of their troops seriously. But it drives Israel absolutely crazy. It is an affront to every person. Almost everyone in Israel is or has been a soldier. There is total commitment to the principle "leave no man behind" because nearly everyone could be that man or woman. All men and women, except some Israeli Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews, serve in the military, and remain in the reserves. When a soldier is kidnapped, Israelis think of their own sons and daughters. That — Richard Engel

We're going to make sure, regardless of disagreements we have on policy, that our military and intelligence cooperation to keep the Israeli people safe continues and that cooperation also helps the American people stay safe. — Barack Obama

You can't have occupation and human rights. — Christopher Hitchens

Our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but ... it is a mystery no longer because it is solved. Darwin and Wallace solved it ... I was surprised that so many people seemed not only unaware of the elegant and beautiful solution to this deepest of problems but, incredibly, in many cases actually unaware that there was a problem in the first place! — Richard Dawkins

Nobody gets to be Queen of England by being loveable. You will have to play your cards right. — Philippa Gregory

We are in a strange world,' one senior Israeli official said to me, 'where the defense minister and to a lesser degree the prime minister are focused intently on the military option, and the intelligence services and the military, with some exceptions, are deeply doubtful. — David E. Sanger

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

I definitely have a strong sense of my Jewish and Israeli identity. I did my two-year military service; I was brought up in a very Jewish, Israeli family environment, so of course my heritage is very important to me. — Gal Gadot

When Arab apologists wring their hands over an Israeli military incursion, they never mention what the Israelis are reacting to, or else diminish and distort it. — Jack Schwartz

Every town has its secrets." He began. "San Felipe is no different. Skeletons are hidden in closets for a reason my friend. And trust me when I tell you, San Felipe has many skeletons. The moral of the story is; don't go snooping into strange closets. You will only find sins and betrayal. Why do you think we drink tequila so much? — Carroll Bryant

We must all realise that the Israeli society is a military society - men and women. We cannot describe the society as civilian ... they are not civilians or innocent. — Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

Don't go jumping off any rooftops. Don't run into the highway or set yourself on fire. It doesn't work that way. You won't end up where I ended up. — Rick Riordan

Probably, I thought, my suffering and training is a lifelong process. It will end only when I go to be with Christ. — Joni Eareckson Tada

Janet Malcolm had famously described journalism as the art of seduction and betrayal. Any reporter who didn't see journalism as "morally indefensible" was either "too stupid" or "too full of himself," she wrote. I disagreed. Without shutting the door on the possibility that I was both stupid and full of myself, I'd never bought into the seduction and betrayal conceit. At most, journalism - particularly when writing about media-hungry public figures - was like the seduction of a prostitute. The relationship was transactional. They weren't talking to me because they liked me or because I impressed them; they were talking to me because they wanted the cover of Rolling Stone. — Michael Hastings

The Israeli military plays more than a critical role in defending the citizens of the Jewish state. It also plays an important social, scientific and psychological role in preparing its young citizens for the challenging task of being Israelis in a difficult world. — Alan Dershowitz

It is an exaggeration to call the Hamas and Islamic Jihad announcement a military alliance. It is rather a message that our people are united in the face of Israeli aggression. — Ahmed Yassin

The Israeli military believes it has destroyed all of Hamas's tunnels, or at least all the ones it knew about. — Richard Engel

I think in life the key thing is just to fight really hard to make sure something survives. If it looks like you've done everything you can to avoid failure, just move forward, move on and learn from it. — Richard Branson

The definition of terrorism has to be more precise, so that we are able to discriminate between, for example, what it is that the Palestinians are doing to fight the Israeli military occupation and terrorism of the sort that resulted in the World Trade Center bombing. — Edward Said

The result is that you are now experiencing what we experienced in the war in Algeria: The Israeli government says that it is a victim of terrorist activity, but this activity is less visible than the military strikes. — Jean-Marie Le Pen

If you look at military and intelligence positions from the 1950s, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been against American national interests. — Abdallah II Of Jordan

All the art for Tool is done by the me and the band. — Adam Jones

Palestine is occupied land, and under international law, the Palestinians have the legal right to resist this occupation by any and all means. This may make busses, restaurants, discos-where Israeli military congregate, lawful targets. — Enver Masud

The State of Israel has faced obstacles and challenges to its very survival, with conventional military attacks leading the way to suicide bombers who have killed innocent Israeli men, women, and children. — Jerry Costello

The close Turkish-Israeli relations go back to the late 1950s - military intelligence, commercial, more recently, tourism and cultural relations. — Noam Chomsky

Wars are motivated by the need to seize the wealth of our neighbours, to wield power, to protect ourselves from real or imagined threats: in short they have, as we have seen, political, social, economic or demographic causes. There is no need to refer to Islam or the clash of civilizations to explain why the Afghans or the Iraqis resist the western military forces occupying their countries. Nor to speak of anti-Jewish sentiment or anti-Semitism to understand the reasons why the Palestinians are not overjoyed by the Israeli occupation of their lands. — Tzvetan Todorov

A senior Israeli intelligence officer explained that the IDF attacked "both aspects of Hamas - its resistance or military wing and its dawa, or social wing," the latter a euphemism for the civilian society. — Noam Chomsky

Israel's pro-American orientation exists not just among Israeli elites but also among the whole population. Come what may in Israel, it's inconceivable that this fundamental orientation will change. Combined with its overwhelming military power, this makes Israel a unique and irreplaceable American asset in the Middle East. — Norman Finkelstein

I heard an Israeli speaking on Palestinian human rights issues, an interesting guy, and he said 'There's no military solution to terrorism. If there were, Israel would be the safest place in the world. But there's no military solution.' — Bradley Whitford

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

Art is subjective and art as a form of entertainment escapism is as high art as any. — Miranda Hart

outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war was not a result of some global strategy, but of a set of specific, regional calculations and miscalculations; on one hand, Israel's long-standing wish to strike at the growing military power of Egypt and, on the other, the tactical mistakes of Nasser in May of that year, through which he requested the withdrawal of UN buffer forces and so left himself open to the Israeli attack. — Fred Halliday

Not every bitch is a queen. Most chicks are just regular. Most of them know it and accept it, as long as nobody points it out. A queen is authentic, not because she says so, just because she is. A queen doesn't have to say nothing. Everybody can see it, and feel it too. — Sister Souljah

The 1948 war's diplomatic maneuvers and military campaigns are well engraved in Israeli Jewish historiography. What is missing is the chapter on the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Jews in 1948. As a result of that campaign, five hundred Palestinian villages and eleven urban neighborhoods were destroyed, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were expelled, and several thousand were massacred.2 Even today, it is hard to find a succinct summary of the planning, execution, and repercussions of these tragic results. — Noam Chomsky

Military metaphors are rarely exact, but sending Republicans against Democrats when the issue hangs in the balance is nearly always as futile as sending George B. McClellan against Robert E. Lee, the Italians against Marshal Montgomery's desert rats or an Arab armored division against an Israeli rifle company. The copy desk can write the headline before the battle begins and take the rest of the night off. — Wesley Pruden

Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return. Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office. Israel's own Kahan commission found that Sharon shared responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres. — Ken Livingstone