David Ben-Gurion: Use

“In our political argument abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us. But let us not ignore the truth among ourselves.”

David Ben-Gurion

Address at the Mapai Political Committee (7 June 1938) as quoted in .
Context: In our political argument abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us. But let us not ignore the truth among ourselves. I insist on the truth, not out of respect for scientific but political realities. The acknowledgement of this truth leads to inevitable and serious conclusions regarding our work in Palestine… let us not build on the hope the terrorist gangs will get tired. If some get tired, others will replace them.
A people which fights against the usurpation of its land will not tire so easily... it is easier for them to continue the war and not get tired than it is for us... The Palestinian Arabs are not alone. The Syrians are coming to help. From our point of view, they are strangers; in the point of law they are foreigners; but to the Arabs, they are not foreigners at all … The centre of the war is in Palestine, but its dimensions are much wider. When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend ourselves — this is only half the truth. As regards our security and life we defend ourselves and our moral and physical position is not bad. We can face the gangs... and were we allowed to mobilize all our forces we would have no doubts about the outcome... But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict which is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves. Militarily, it is we who are on the defensive who have the upper hand but in the political sphere they are superior. The land, the villages, the mountains, the roads are in their hands. The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside. They defend bases which are theirs, which is easier than conquering new bases... let us not think that the terror is a result of Hitler's or Mussolini's propaganda — this helps but the source of opposition is there among the Arabs.

Truth

“We have rebelled against all controls and religions, all laws and judgments which the mighty sought to foist upon us. We kept to our dedication and our missions. By these will the State be judged, by the moral character it imparts to its citizens, by the human values determining its inner and outward relations, and by its fidelity, in thought and act, to the supreme behest: "and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."”

David Ben-Gurion

Rebirth and Destiny of Israel (1954), p. 419.
Context: We have rebelled against all controls and religions, all laws and judgments which the mighty sought to foist upon us. We kept to our dedication and our missions. By these will the State be judged, by the moral character it imparts to its citizens, by the human values determining its inner and outward relations, and by its fidelity, in thought and act, to the supreme behest: "and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Here is crystallized the eternal law of Judaism, and all the written ethics in the world can say no more. The State will be worthy of its name only if its systems, social and economic, political and legal, are based upon these imperishable words. They are more than a formal precept which can be construed as passive or negative: not to deprive, not to rob, not to oppress, not to hurt.

Love , Religion , Law

“Even amidst the violent attacks launched against us for months past, we call upon the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the peace and to play their part in building the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its institutions, provisional and permanent.”

David Ben-Gurion

Israel's Proclamation of Independence, read on (14 May 1948)

People , Peace , Past , Parting

“The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan: one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.”

David Ben-Gurion

Speech in 1937, accepting a British proposal for partition of Palestine which created a potential Jewish majority state, as quoted in New Outlook (April 1977)

People

“Terrorism benefits the Arabs, it may lay waste the Yishuv and shake Zionism. But to follow in the Arabs' footsteps and ape their deeds is to be blind to the gulf between us. Our aims and theirs run counter: methods calculated to further theirs, are ruinous to us.”

David Ben-Gurion

"On three fronts" (3 August 1938) as quoted in * Rebirth and Destiny of Israel
1954
91
Philosophical Library
New York.

“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”

David Ben-Gurion

Attributed to Ben-Gurion (pre-War 1939) by Martin Gilbert in "Israel was everything" in The New York Times (21 June 1987) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE2DB1539F932A15755C0A961948260&pagewanted=2

Children , People

“I was in Dachau and Belsen. I saw chambers where hundreds of Jews were put to death every day. … I saw the gallows in Belsen where Jews were hanged each Jewish holy day, while the rest were paraded to witness the ghastly punishments of men who had perhaps come a few minutes late to their daily grind. … It is beyond mortal power to bring back to life six million who were burned, asphyxiated and buried alive by the Nazis. But our six million brothers and sisters who went to their deaths have bequeathed us a sacred injunction: to prevent such a disaster overtaking the Jewish peoples in the future and to do so by the Jewish people being an independent people in its own land, capable of resisting any foe or enemy by its own strength.”

David Ben-Gurion

Letter to an unnamed American friend, as quoted in David Ben-Gurion, in His Own Words (1969) edited by Amram M. Ducovny, p. 57 - 60; similar remarks appeared in an address at Hebrew University (28 November 1945)

Life , Death , Men , People

“Yet for many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Plonsk was remarkably free of it, or at least the Jews felt well protected in the cocoon of their community life. Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Plonsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size. We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland, a place where we wouldn't be perpetual strangers and that through our toil would become irrevocably our own. Life in Plonsk was peaceful enough. There were three main communities: Russians, Jews and Poles. Each lived apart from the others. The Russians as the occupiers kept a firm hand on the civil administration. There were no Polish or Jewish officials. Officials or the police almost never interfered in dealings between Jewish and Polish communities. They disliked both equally and took an aloof attitude to the town's day-to-day life. The number of Jews and Poles in the city were roughly equal, about five thousand each. The Jews, however, formed a compact, centralized group occupying the innermost districts whilst the Poles were more scattered, living in outlying areas and shading off into the peasantry. Consequently, when a gang of Jewish boys met a Polish gang the latter would almost inevitably represent a single suburb and thus be poorer in fighting potential than the Jews who even if their numbers were initially fewer could quickly call on reinforcements from the entire quarter. Far from being afraid of them, they were rather afraid of us. In general, however, relations were amicable, though distant.”

David Ben-Gurion

Memoirs : David Ben-Gurion (1970), p. 36

Life , Peace , Feeling , Boy

“Let me first tell you one thing: It doesn't matter what the world says about Israel; it doesn't matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive.”

David Ben-Gurion

As quoted by Ariel Sharon, in the documentary The 50 Years War : Israel & The Arabs (1999), this advice was given to him by Ben-Gurion after the controversial raid on Qibya.

World

“Regarding the Galilee, Mr. [Moshe] Sharett already told you that about 100,000 Arabs still now live in the pocket of Galilee. Let us assume that a war breaks out. Then we will be able to cleanse the entire area of Central Galilee, including all its refugees, in one stroke. In this context let me mention some mediators who offered to give us the Galilee without war. What they meant was the populated Galilee. They didn’t offer us the empty Galilee, which we could have only by means of a war. Therefore if a war is extended to cover the whole of Palestine, our greatest gain will be the Galilee. It is because without any special military effort which might imperil other fronts, only by using the troops already assigned for the task, we could accomplish our aim of cleansing the Galilee.”

David Ben-Gurion

From a protocol of the Government of Israel, translated from Hebrew by Israel Shahak, in "Truth or Myth about Israel? Read between Quotation Marks" by Charley Reese in The Orlando Sentinel (13 June 1999); later published as "What Israeli Historians Say About 1948 Ethnic Cleansing" in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (September 1999) http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0999/9909042.html

War , Effort