#zion

They found grace out in the desert, these people who survived the killing. Israel, out looking for a place to rest, met God out looking for them!" God told them, "I've never quit loving you and never will. Expect love, love, and more love! And so now I'll start over with you and build you up again, dear virgin Israel. You'll resume your singing, grabbing tambourines and joining the dance. You'll go back to your old work of planting vineyards on the Samaritan hillsides, And sit back and enjoy the fruit— oh, how you'll enjoy those harvests! The time's coming when watchmen will call out from the hilltops of Ephraim: 'On your feet! Let's go to Zion, go to meet our God! ↗

— Anonymous

#god #israel #love #scripture #zion

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

#britain #colonialism #europe #holy-land #irony

When we try to push the envelope, there are certain sectors of society that say this is a Zionist plot to sort of destabilize our country, or this is an American agenda. ↗

— Abdallah II

#american #certain #country #envelope #our

The establishment of Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world. ↗

— Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

#establishment #islamic #islamic world #move #oppressor

Zionism was originally a rebellion against religious Judaism and the PLO Charter was essentially secularist. But because the conflict was allowed to fester without a resolution, religion got sucked into the escalating cycle of violence and became part of the problem. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#allowed #became #because #charter #conflict

While we all could agree that the Zionist ideal is alive and well, there is serious doubt whether the Zionist movement can be said to be an ongoing proposition, fragmented as its components are in ideology and in practice. ↗

— Theodore Bikel

#alive #components #could #doubt #fragmented

And the Zionists have used the Holocaust as a weapon to deny the rights of the Palestinians and to cover-up the crimes of Israel. ↗

— David Duke

#crimes #deny #holocaust #israel #palestinians

Put three Zionists in a room and they will form four political parties. ↗

— Levi Eshkol

#four #parties #political #political parties #put

The U.S. always needs an enemy. It comes and goes. Today it is Islam. According to this plan or ideology of the born-again Christians who formed an alliance with Zionism, Islam is the monster. ↗

— Walid Jumblatt

#alliance #always #born-again #christians #comes

I am frequently asked if I have visited Israel, whereas yet, it is simply assumed that I have. Well, I don’t travel. I really don’t, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t visit Israel. I remember how it was in 1948 when Israel was being established and all my Jewish friends were ecstatic, I was not. I said: what are we doing? We are establishing ourselves in a ghetto, in a small corner of a vast Muslim sea. The Muslims will never forget nor forgive, and Israel, as long as it exists, will be embattled. I was laughed at, but I was right. I can’t help but feel that the Jews didn’t really have the right to appropriate a territory only because 2000 years ago, people they consider their ancestors, were living there. History moves on and you can’t really turn it back. (#92 ff.) ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#israel #israeli-palestinian-conflict #zionism #forgiveness