Maurice Ebileeni > Maurice's Quotes

“Tell him,’ the woman said with a mocking smile, ‘tell him that what he sees is the creature’s member entering the body of its mate, doing what men and women must do ...”
― Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery

“But before franking the letter for the post, next morning, Farley added a few scribbled lines in the margin: ‘In haste: much that I feared has been confirmed in these last hours. Shortly before matins, there was a knock on my door: it was Cunningham’s young assistant. He told me – oh so many things – I shall write of them all to you in time. Suffice it to say for the present, that everything is other than what it appears to be, a phantom of itself. The young man has promised to reveal everything to me if I would but accompany him to his birthplace. Fortunately the place of which he spoke is not far from the location of my clinic. We are to leave tomorrow: I shall write again and in greater detail, dear friend, once I know more ...”
― Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery

“Raising her voice, the woman said to the crowd, in archaic rustic Bengali: ‘The time is here, pray that all goes well for our Laakhan, once again.”
― Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery

“The masthead said The Colonial Services Gazette, in beautiful Gothic characters. Beside the name was a dateline: ‘Calcutta, the twelfth of January, 1898’.”
― Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery

“Urmila stared at him, openmouthed. ‘But he’s meant to come to our flat for dinner tonight,’ she began to explain, meaninglessly. ‘That’s why I’m cooking this fish; that’s why I’m going to be late for the press conference …’ She shook the bag of fish under his nose once again. The secretary sneered. ‘You’re either mad or dreaming,’ he said. ‘Mr Haldar is booked on a flight to Bombay this evening – he has to attend a meeting there. He had no plans to visit you or anyone else here.’ With a gesture of dismissal, he turned to the chowkidar.”
― Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery

“The state of Israel has incorporated the philosophy of the Jewish state—“a state of the Jews for the Jews”—into its identity, official ideology, and policies toward the Palestinian people within Israel and in the ’67 occupied territories, and in the Diaspora. This ideology claims the Jewish people have the historic right to “return” to their homeland, from which they were expelled two thousand years ago, so as to regain their national sovereignty in an exclusive Jewish state.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“The notion of an exclusive Jewish state is essentially incongruous with liberal democracy, in which equal citizenship rights are granted on a territorial basis to all citizens regardless of their ethnic or national origin.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“Israeli law does not recognize an Israeli nationality. Thus, while Jewish citizens are classified as having “Jewish nationality,” Israeli law methodically strips Palestinian citizens of their national identity and reduces them to mere ethnicity or religious affiliation (like Muslims, Christians, Druze, etc.).6 As a result, Israel is not just another nation-state in which minority communities lack some secondary rights owned by the majority. Instead, it is a settler-colonial state established by the Zionist movement for advancing and expanding its colonialist project for the benefit of the Jews alone.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“This overlapping of nation and religion runs in direct conflict with the separation of state and religion in Israel.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“Yet the Supreme Court has accepted this undemocratic feature based upon a basic premise of Zionism: there is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people. Former”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“We are a young state in which an old people have returned to its land. The state of Israel is the fulfillment of aspirations the Jewish people have had for generations, to revive their ancient history, the beginning of deliverance and the realization of the Zionist vision. Deep is the national, religious and historical political bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel, and between the Jewish state and the Jewish people.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“The promise for national equality was deliberately omitted from the list of equal rights emphasized in the Declaration.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“The Zionist Left in Israel has never challenged the prevailing belief that Israeli law implements “the democratic and egalitarian values extolled in the Declaration of Independence.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“It has become commonplace among many Zionist Left scholars and activists to describe the forms of discrimination in the occupied territories as analogous to South Africa’s Apartheid system. In the occupied territories, different legal and administrative systems for the two populations, Jewish and non-Jewish, prevail. The parallels with South Africa are undeniable. Yet members of the Zionist Left in Israel refrain from acknowledging the Apartheid nature within the Green Line.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“Hence, the consistent expectation of the Zionist Left, that the Palestinian citizens will legitimize the Zionist colonial project embodied in the Jewish state, is doomed to fail. This was exemplified in a series of dialogue meetings between Israeli and Palestinian intellectuals from January 1999 to January 2001. The meetings were hosted by the Israel Democracy Institute and aimed “to formulate an agreement that would define the relationship between the majority and minority in the state and their mutual concerns.” However, the intellectuals failed to reach this goal because the Palestinian participants refused to declare their recognition of the Jewish state, a condition demanded by the Israelis.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“The political perspective of Bishara and the NDA has been adopted in principle by the majority of the Palestinian intellectual and political leadership in Israel, as reflected in the four Position Papers, released in 2007 by leading Palestinian organizations. One of the papers, “The Future Vision of the Palestinians in Israel,” was issued by the Palestinians’ highest and most authoritative representative vis-à-vis the state—the Higher Follow-Up Committee for Arabs in Israel.27 All four papers demand, first and foremost, that Israel become a state of all its citizens. The Haifa Declaration, for example, calls for canceling the Law of Return, recognizing Palestinian national identity, and implementing collective national rights for Palestinians through representatives in government. These rights include, among others, the ability to veto all matters pertaining to their interests and the right for cultural autonomy.28”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“It would be the Zionist Left who led the Jewish army in the 1948 war and, after committing the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, established the state of Israel. Their governance lasted until 1977 when the Labor Party lost its governmental monopoly to the right-wing Herut Party—later the Likud—headed by Menachem Begin.31 Though”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“rituals of diplomacy, but also rituals of tribute to an empire.”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land

“our actions often contradicted the ideals of democracy, self-determination, and human rights we professed to embody.”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land

“the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land

“The labor movement’s version of socialism was a tool for implementing colonization rather than a means of creating a new social order.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“Ben-Gurion declared that ‘The only big concern which dominates our thinking and activity is the conquest of the land, and building it through mass immigration (aliya). All the rest is only phraseology, deserts and ‘afters’ and we should not deceive ourselves.’”39 Ben-Gurion also said, “We are the conquerors of the land confronted by an iron wall [Palestinian and Arab nationalism] which we are obliged to crash.”40”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“As the overarching organization of workers’ trade unions, the Histadrut controlled key areas that were needed to accomplish the primary tasks of the Zionist colonial enterprise. These included economic production and marketing, defense, and control of the labor force, as well as creating jobs outside the free market so as to avoid competition with abundant and cheap Arab labor. The Histadrut thus introduced the irregular phenomenon of a “trade union” that established its own industrial, financial, construction, transport, and service enterprises.41”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“Unlike South Africa’s Apartheid, which exploited the vital labor power of the Blacks,46 Zionists rejected the Palestinians outright. Consciously and deliberately, Zionists adopted the model of pure settler colonies, following colonialist precedents set in North America, New Zealand, and Australia, where native populations were exterminated or expelled instead of used for cheap labor.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“I do not deny our moral right to propose population transfer. There is no moral flaw to a proposal aimed at concentrating the development of national life. On the contrary, in a new world order it can and should be a noble human vision.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“However, to gain the legitimization of the international community for the newborn state of Israel, it was necessary to disguise the dispossession policies deployed against Palestinians.60 Hence arose the decision to establish a formal democracy in which Palestinians, who remained within the borders of Israel, were granted citizenship and formal equality before the law. They were granted the right to vote for the Knesset and, at least theoretically, the right to organize on political lists so as to participate in general elections.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“The state and the majority of the Jewish population (in addition to internal and external researchers) view the Ashkenazi bourgeoisie as the embodiment of “Israeli culture” and “Israeli society.” And by maintaining loyalty to the state and to basic Zionist premises, it continues to preserve its centrality as the leading class and culture.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“The Israeli intellectual elite of the Zionist Left are part and parcel of this social class. As in many other places, they fulfill the crucial function of the intelligentsia—namely, sustaining the ideology that gives a major role to state power and “manufacturing the consent” around its policies, ideology, and political culture. In Israel, Zionist Left intellectuals have enlisted in the service of the interests of the Ashkenazi political-social elite (who usually support the Labor Party) and have sustained the hegemonic ideology.70 At the center of this ideology is the “Jewish state”—the key premise of Zionism, as imagined and implemented by the Zionist Labor movement.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“In this context, the repeated failure of “post-Zionists” to create alternatives to the narratives of the Zionist Left is of paramount significance (see chapters 7, 8, and 9). Both Zionist Left and post-Zionist intellectuals speak of and within a liberal, humanist, conceptual, and ideological framework. This has enhanced their credibility among genuine progressives both in Israel and abroad. The Zionist Left role in granting legitimacy to Israel’s version of Apartheid and “close to Fascist” political culture could not have been played by right-wing intellectuals and politicians.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“This chapter reviews the relentless efforts made by Israel’s state agencies to erase the collective memory of the 1948 Nakba, as well as any physical, geographical, or cultural remains of Palestinian society from before the 1948 war. It focuses on the role played by Zionist Left intellectuals as the guardians of collective memory, sustaining the state’s official ideology and narratives. The chapter further examines the supposition of Zionist Left intellectuals that the 1967 occupation is the root cause of the “conflict,” and their associated disregard of the structural discrimination of Palestinians in the Jewish state. Wiping”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine