Below are some quotes by prominent Israelis and by Sheldon Adelson, Israel's richest and one of its most powerful supporters.  My critics will point out that they provide an unbalanced portrait of Israel and that I do not include quotes by Palestinians and their supporters which portray Palestinians in a bad light. To which I say, "Guilty as charged!"  I make no pretense that this is a balanced presentation.  But I present to you this unbalanced picture for two reasons.

1. I can rely on Israel's army of spin doctors and their supporters to portray Israel in the best possible light and to paint the Palestinians as the sole source of evil.  Their message is heard loud and clear in our media and in Congress.  They do not present a balanced presentation, so this column should be considered as a counterweight to the ubiquitous propaganda issued by Israel, AIPAC, and other pro-Zionist groups.
2. Americans are constantly being told that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and that it is solely the Palestinians who are responsible for the failure of the peace process.  Yet Israeli leaders sometimes say downright racist things that would NEVER fly in America today.  And sometimes they say things that prove they aren't serious about peace negotiations, despite Bibi Netanyahu's proclamation that he favors a two-state solution.  American taxpayers have a right to know what Israeli leaders really think.

My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

          --Theodor Meron in the Top Secret memo he prepared for Israel's Foreign Ministry shortly after the 1967 Six Day War.  Read more about Meron and his memo here.

"[Palestinians] are beasts, they are not human." — MK Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan, Aug 1, 2013.

"A Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile, even if he is a homosexual." — MK Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan, Dec 27, 2013.

Eli Ben-Dahan Is Israel's Deputy Defense Minister in charge of Civil Administration in the West Bank

Update 10/11/15: On Oct. 9, 2015 Ben-Dahan said "Palestinians have to understand they won’t have a state & Israel will rule over them."

Asylum seekers from Sudan are "a cancer on our body".

            --Knesset member Miri Regev  5/24/12

Regev later apologized, but not to the asylum seekers.

 When I compared the migrant worker phenomenon to cancer I was referring to the way the phenomenon had spread, and not anything else. If anyone took it otherwise and was consequently offended, I apologize and I surely did not intend to hurt either Holocaust survivors or cancer patients. 

                --Miri Regev 5/27/12

Regev was  appointed as Culture Minister in May 2015

More than 3000 Israeli artists have signed a petition against Miri Regev to protest her "anti-democratic" censorship.   She responded by claiming the Israeli art world was controlled by the left wing, and that there was now a new sheriff in town.  She said:

I am the one who sets the criteria. If I want to, I can decide that the money will go to the periphery and the settlements only. The government isn't obligated to support culture. I can decide where the money goes, and you artists are not going to dictate anything. If we can agree on those terms, you're going to have a partner. Otherwise, we'll be in trouble.

Israeli artists sign petition against ‘anti-democratic’ censorship

In new interview, Miri Regev lashes out at Israeli artists

 

Those who are against us, there's nothing to be done – we need to pick up an ax and cut off his head. Otherwise we won't survive here.

                     -- Then Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, speaking about Arab Israelis March 8, 2015

 I don’t think the Bible says anything about democracy. I think God didn’t say anything about democracy," [Sheldon] Adelson said. "God talked about all the good things in life. He didn’t talk about Israel remaining as a democratic state, otherwise Israel isn’t going to be a democratic state — so what?

          ---Multi-billionaire friend of Bibi Netanyahu, Sheldon Adelson. (Nov. 9, 2014). Adelson spent $150 million in 2012 trying to buy the election for Mitt Romney and several Republican Senators. On October 22, 2013, Adelson said the U.S. should start nuclear talks with Iran by dropping a nuclear weapon on an Iranian desert and then threatening to nuke Tehran if Iran did not give us everything we wanted. Adelson put together a conference of hundred millionaires and billionaires during the first weekend of June 2015 to fight the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement. 

Israel employs diplomacy in bid to curb human rights groups

                        --Times of Israel  headline, July 26, 2015

 

The future is bleak.  It's dark, the future.  Where does it lead?  To a change in the people's character because if you put most of our young people in the army, they'll see a paradox.  They'll see it strives to be a people's army, like the Nahal unit, involved in building up the country.  On the other hand, it's a brutal occupation force, similar to the Germans in World War II.  Similar, not identical.  And I'm not talking about their behavior toward the Jews.  That was exceptional, with its own particular characteristics.  I mean how they acted to the Poles, the Belgians, the Dutch. . . To all of them... The Czechs.  It's a very negative trait that we acquired, to be... I'm afraid to say it, so I won't.  We've become cruel, to ourselves as well, but mainly to the occupied population, using the excuse of the war against terror.

            -- Avraham Shalom: Head of Shin Bet 1980 - 1986   The Gatekeepers

Someone who wants to protect the Jewish People and oppose mixed marriages is not a racist. Someone wants to let Jews live a Jewish life without non-Jews is not a racist. . . . I believe in God’s words.  I prefer that Jews make a living and wouldn’t sell a house to Arabs.

            --Knesset Member Bezalel Smotrich, Jerusalem Post  7/16/15

I see in Gush Emunim [the ‘Bloc of the Faithful,’ the ideologically driven founders of the settlement movement,] one of the most acute dangers in the whole phenomenon of the State of Israel. . . .

What is ‘settlement’ anyway? What struggle is this? What methods? ‘Kadum’ [a settlement] is a bloated fart." . . .

 Gush Emunim is not a settlement movement. It is comparable to a cancer in the tissue of Israel’s democratic society. It’s a phenomenon of an organization that takes the law into its own hands.

            --Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in a 1976 interview that was not published until September 2015.  Rabin also feared that Israel was in danger of becoming an "Apartheid State" if it annexed the West Bank.  Source: Times of Israel,  Sept. 25, 2015

Conversation between Rabbi  Yisrael  Ariel, head of the Temple Institute and an audience member on Sept. 9, 2015

Therefore Maimonides says that if you see a person in the street who does not follow the Seven [Noahide ] Laws — this is what he says — if we have the might, you have to kill him. If you catch Obama on the street, and you know that he does not follow the Seven Laws, etc.

A man in the audience interjected: "You are commanded to kill him."

Ariel responds: "Sorry?"

The man repeats: "You are commanded to kill him, and the sooner the better."

Ariel responds in the affirmative: "This is why we have Maimonides. If someone threatens you, to ruin you, to kill you, you kill him first."

"[Handovers of] Judea and Samaria aren’t even on the list of options we're offering the Palestinians," [Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely] announced. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while professing to support the creation of a Palestinian state in principle, "never said that the evacuation of Judea and Samaria is an option. He says we learned the lessons of the [2005 Gaza] Disengagement and that the world needs to get used to this idea. That’s one of the messages that I place great emphasis on."

 

The world needs to internalize that the West Bank is to remain under Israeli "de facto sovereignty," Hotovely said. "It’s not a bargaining chip. It does not depend on the Palestinians' goodwill. It’s the land of our forefathers. We don't intend to evacuate it, certainly not for the Islamic State or al-Qaeda or other extremist organizations that would sure to gain control over the territory."

              --Times of Israel report about Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, Sept. 27, 2015

Update 10/26/15:

At this time, we need to control all of the territory for the foreseeable future . . .I'm asked if we will forever live by the sword — yes.