Gaza in Crisis Quotes

“Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus'—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“The new crimes that the US and Israel were committing in Gaza as 2009 opened do not fit easily into any standard category—except for the category of familiarity.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“The Palestinians were offered two options: 1) to accept life in an Israeli open prison and enjoy limited autonomy and the right to work as underpaid laborers in Israel, bereft of any workers’ rights, or 2) resist, even mildly, and risk living in a maximum-security prison, subjected to instruments of collective punishment, including house demolitions, arrests without trial, expulsions, and in severe cases, assassinations and murder.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians

“The seventh myth was that Israel intended to conduct a benevolent occupation but was forced to take a tougher attitude because of Palestinian violence. Israel regarded from the very beginning any wish to end the occupation—whether expressed peacefully or through struggle—as terrorism. From the beginning, it reacted brutally by collectively punishing the population for any demonstration of resistance.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians

“Since 1949, the United States has passed to Israel more than $100 billion in grants and $10 billion in special loans.36 Other bodies not part of the administration annually transfer to Israel $1 billion. This is larger than the amount of money transferred by the United States to North Africa, South America, and the Caribbean put together.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians

“Any attempt to solve a conflict has to touch upon its very core; the core, more often than not, lies in its history.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians

“international community” —a technical term referring to the U.S. government and whoever goes along with it.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians

“While Arab governments and Palestinian leaders were willing to participate in a new and more reasonable UN peace initiative in 1948, the Israelis assassinated the UN peace mediator, Count Bernadotte, and rejected the suggestion of the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), a UN body, to reopen negotiations. This intransigent view would continue; Avi Shlaim has shown in The Iron Wall that, contrary to the myth that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss peace, it was Israel that constantly rejected the peace offers that were on the table.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians

“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, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians

“If American opinion has been uninformed, misinformed and prejudiced, the missionaries are largely to blame. Interpreting history in terms of the advance of Christianity, they have given an inadequate, distorted, and occasionally a grotesque picture of Moslems and Islam.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians

“Since the terms" aggression "and" terrorism "are inadequate, some new term is needed for the sadistic and cowardly torture of people caged with no possibility of escape, while they are being pounded to dust by the most sophisticated products of U.S. military technology. That technology is used in violation of international and even U.S. law, but for self-declared outlaw states that is just another minor technicality....
...The United States is just "too big to hold to account," whether by judicial inquiry, boycott and sanctions, or other means.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“In his important work on the subject, Stephen Sizer has revealed how Christian Zionists have constructed a historical narrative that describes the Muslim attitude to Christianity throughout the ages as a kind of a genocidal campaign, first against the Jews and then against the Christians.12 Hence, what were once hailed as moments of human triumph in the Middle East—the Islamic renaissance of the Middle Ages, the golden era of the Ottomans, the emergence of Arab independence and the end of European colonialism—were recast as the satanic, anti-Christian acts of heathens. In the new historical view, the United States became St. George, Israel his shield and spear, and Islam their dragon.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians

“Thus, the ghettoization of the Palestinians in Gaza did not reap any dividends. The ghettoized community continued to express its will for life by firing primitive missiles into Israel. Ghettoizing or quarantining unwanted communities, even if they were regarded as dangerous, has never worked in history as a solution. The Jews know it best from their own history”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“It can be seen, then, that a public debate on the issue of the Nakbah, whether conducted in Israel itself or in the United States, its imperial protector, could open up questions concerning the moral legitimacy of the Zionist project as a whole. The mechanism of denial, therefore, was crucial, not only for defeating the counter-claims made by Palestinians in the peace process, but, far more importantly, for disallowing any significant debate on the very essence and moral foundations of Zionism.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians

“Desegregating the activity of civil society in the West, as well as inside Israel, illustrates the very essence of a one-state solution when the one-state movement is still in its embryonic stage. An activity around themes, and not according to national, religious, or ethnic identity, can be the unique contribution of the one-state movement. But again themes can sound too abstract and fluid for a movement that seeks desperately to change the public mind after years of being conditioned by a distorted historical narrative, manipulated media coverage, and a lethal futuristic vision.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“Unmasking the paradigm of parity, the charade of a genuine debate in the Israeli society, and revealing the strategy behind Israeli policy in the last forty years is a task the one-state movement should take upon itself in the near future.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“While George W. Bush was in power, the killing of women and babies in Gaza could be justified by the American administration as being part of a holy war against Islam (a practice not alien to the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan) under the banner of fighting terrorism.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“One can seek ambiguities and incompleteness, but not in the case if the United States and Israel, which remain in splendid isolation, not only in words.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“The United States is just" too big to hold to account, "whether by judicial inquiry, boycott and sanctions, or other means.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“The convention is understandable on the doctrinal principle that though the U.S. government sometimes makes mistakes, its intentions are by definition benign, even noble. In the world of attractive imagery, Washington has always sought desperately to be an honest broker, yearning to advance peace and justice. The doctrine trumps truth, of which there is little hint in the speech or the mainstream coverage of it.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“Inflicting pain on civilians for political ends is another long-standing doctrine of state terror, in fact its guiding principle.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“Thus, the circle is being closed, almost before our very eyes. When Israel took almost 80 percent of Palestine in 1948, it did so through settlement and the ethnic cleansing of the original Palestinian population. The country now has a consensual government that enjoys wide public support, and wants to determine by force the future of the remaining 20 percent. It has, as have all its predecessors, from Labor and Likud alike, resorted to settlement as the best means for doing this. This entails the destruction of an independent Palestinian infrastructure. These politicians sense-and they may not be wrong in this—that the public mood in Israel would allow them to go even further, should they wish to do so.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“The mechanisms of denial in Israel are very effective, because they are a comprehensive means of indoctrination, covering the whole of a citizen's life from the cradle to the grave. It ensures the state that its people do not get confused by facts and reality, or, at least, that they view reality in such a way that it does not create any moral problems.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“When a politician uses the word" folks, "we should brace ourselves for the deceit, or worse, that is coming.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“For historians the evidence in the archive of the regime committing the ethnic cleansing prevents a clear picture from emerging, since the aim of the regime from the beginning was to obscure its intentions, and this is manifested in the language of the orders and that of the post-event reports. This is why evidence of victims and victimizers is so vital.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“But the imperial mentality is so deeply embedded in Western culture that this travesty passes without criticism, even notice.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“Though it is obligatory to hail our leaders for their sincere dedication to bringing democracy to a suffering world, perhaps in an excess of idealism, the more serious scholar/advocates of the mission of “democracy promotion” recognize that there is a “strong line of continuity” running through all administrations: the United States supports democracy if and only if it conforms to U.S. strategic and economic interests.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians

“there is a crucial difference between a one-state solution and a binational state. In general, nation-states have been imposed with substantial violence and repression for one reason—because they seek to force varied and complex populations into a single mold.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians

“The report defines acts of ethnic cleansing as including the separation of men from women, the detention of men, and the destruction of houses and their repopulation by another ethnic group later on. This was precisely the repertoire of the Jewish soldiers in the 1948 war.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians