You can make peace with an enemy, if the enemy abandons the idea of destroying you. That is the critical test. Democracies fail to understand what I just said.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHUSo for Europeans we are like Belgiums in the Congo, or the French in Alger, or the British in India. Strange interlopers in somebody else’s land. But in fact, we [Israeli] have been here for 4,000 years. This is our ancestral homeland.
More Benjamin Netanyahu Quotes
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The rules of engagement have become so rigid that governments often straightjacket themselves in the face of unambiguous aggression.
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Israel has done enormous amount of, for peace. I myself have done things that no prime minister previously had done.
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I think they’re timid, they’re afraid to actually stand up to these killers. And I think that they’re afraid, maybe for their own sake, for their own political hides, sometimes for their own physical safety. And they don’t take that necessary plunge.
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No partial solution, not even the total redressing of the grievance he complains of, will satisfy him — until our social system is destroyed or delivered into his hands.
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Most of the approaches to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, have been directed at trying to resolve the most complex problems, like refugees and Jerusalem, which is akin to building the pyramid from the top down.
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If there is willingness on the Palestinian side to reach an agreement, it is possible. We are conducting the negotiations with goodwill.
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Hamas is simply continuing all its operations. And Israel will not let this terror operation decide when it’s convenient for them and not convenient for them to attack our people.
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I don’t want a one-state solution. But I certainly don’t want a zero-state solution, a no-state solution, where Israel’s very existence would be jeopardized. And that’s what the people of Israel overwhelmingly elected me to do.
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I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.
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Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders.
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The only peace that can endure is a peace that can be defended.
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I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state and evacuate territory gives territory away to radical Islamist attacks against Israel.
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But so far, you know who’s been violating the nuclear nonproliferation pact day and night? Those who signed it. Iran, Iraq, Libya and Iran violates it while calling for Israel’s destruction and racing to develop atomic weapons to that end.
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They’re trying to basically detour around peace negotiations by going to the U.N. and have the automatic majority in the U.N. General Assembly give them, give them a state.
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You don’t have people chanting ‘Death to America’ in Israel.
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Israel has no better friend than America. And America has no better friend than Israel. We stand together to defend democracy.
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The Nazis believed in a master race. The militant Islamists believe in a master faith.
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When I say that terrorism is war against civilization, I may be met by the objection that terrorists are often idealists pursuing worthy ultimate aims — national or regional independence, and so forth. I do not accept this argument.
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Israel does not target civilians. It targets the terrorists.
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Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.
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They deny the rights of women, deny democracy, brutalize their own people, don’t give freedom of religion.
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I don’t think you can rely on Iran. I don’t think you can rely on other radicals like the Taliban. They dispatched Al Qaida to bomb New York and Washington.
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We are using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.
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So I think we should stay focused on the real problem in the Middle East. It’s not Israel. It’s these dictatorships that are developing nuclear weapons with the specific goal of wiping Israel away.
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I always lose the election in the polls, and I always win it on election day.
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Israel is doing what any other country would do, and certainly the U.S. would do. If 80 percent of your population were under fire and you had 60 seconds or 90 seconds to get into bomb shelters.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU