Raquela; A Woman of Israel Quotes

“Mama wept openly. “If I don’t die now,” she cried, “there is no death.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“How does one comfort a young woman whose body must hunger for her husband? How does one help her mourn? How does one comfort the wives and mothers and children of dead soldiers?”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“The passionate love of a mature woman.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Only you would think of Sholom Aleichem to make the people forget for a little while.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“What does your friend Abdullah mean, they were here before us? Abraham was here more than four thousand years ago. Thousands of years before Mohammed, who died, if I remember right, in A.D. 632.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Russia swiftly resupplied the Arabs; in the course of one day alone, Friday, October 12, Soviet cargo planes made sixty flights to Cairo and Damascus, ferrying in new military hardware.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“She searched her mind. Are there special words to send your son into battle?”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Of all the Arabs who encircled Israel, the Syrians were the most vicious.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“The fog of war hinders the enemy, and so let us leave him with it rather than dispel it.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Time had no meaning, save that it was running out.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Intelligence warned that the Egyptians, who had already used poison gas in Yemen, were planning to use gas in Israel.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“German scientists, many of them former Nazis, were building rockets outside Cairo that could penetrate Israel within minutes.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Gadna was pre-military training for fifteen- to seventeen-year-olds.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Thirty-nine. A widow. Trying to fill her sons’ needs. Trying to be both mother and father. Careful not to demand too much of the boys.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Again the desert, unpeopled, limitless, empty to the horizon.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Twenty months. Six thousand dead. One out of every ten Jews dead on the battlefield. The nation born—like all births—in blood.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Remembering his own feelings when he had lost his eye on a mission for the British, Dayan stopped at their bedside to cheer them up. “Boys,” he said, “for all that’s worth seeing in this wretched world, one eye is enough.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“The Israelis had a secret weapon—Ein Brent, “no alternative.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“The Arab Legion was the most formidable—twelve thousand soldiers trained by the British, armed by the British, and led by the English general Sir John Glubb.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Does every young woman, she wondered, discover herself through the eyes of the men who love her?”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“But Palestine was derived from the name “Philistine,” the people who were constantly at war with the ancient Israelites.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Fifty million Arabs in seven neighboring Arab states, five regular Arab armies, a million Arabs in Palestine—against 650,000 Jews.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“As time passed, hundreds of Arabs streamed out from neighboring areas and the Old City with more guns, hand grenades, and Molotov cocktails. British soldiers watched from their post less than a hundred yards away and did nothing.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Could a child who had never been inside a house, who had never seen a bathtub, or a flush toilet, who had long forgotten what his parents looked like before they were shot or burned, ever be normal?”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“To let the famous brain surgeon into Palestine would mean helping the Jews. The British would sooner throw him in jail.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“But the other face of British rule now showed itself naked and clear: political expediency in its most treacherous form; betrayal of the promise and the hope; surrender to the Arabs for their petroleum favors.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“The courage, the will, the guts, to fight the British, even if they end up here, like you, in Cyprus. I don’t know any other place in the world where this is happening.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“See my gray hair. I know I look like an old woman. I’m thirty-eight. My hair turned gray overnight.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Beware of Mrs. Meir. She is a formidable person.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“They’ll give you the ein hora—the evil eye.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel