My Promised Land Quotes

“Only a few years ago did it suddenly dawn on me that my existential fear regarding my nation’s future and my moral outrage regarding my nation’s occupation policy are not unconnected. On the one hand, Israel is the only nation in the West that is occupying another people. On the other hand, Israel is the only nation in the West that is existentially threatened. Both occupation and intimidation make the Israeli condition unique. Intimidation and occupation have become the two pillars of our condition.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“There was hope for peace, but there will be no peace here. Not soon. There was hope for quiet, but there will be no quiet here. Not in this generation. The foundations of the home we founded are somewhat shaky, and repeating earthquakes rattle it. So what we really have in this land is an ongoing adventure. An odyssey. The Jewish state does not resemble any other nation. What this nation has to offer is not security or well-being or peace of mind. What it has to offer is the intensity of life on the edge. The adrenaline rush of living dangerously, living lustfully, living to the extreme. If a Vesuvius-like volcano were to erupt tonight and end our Pompeii, this is what it will petrify: a living people. People that have come from death and were surrounded by death but who nevertheless put up a spectacular spectacle of life. People who danced the dance of life to the very end.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: the triumph and tragedy of Israel

“I am haunted by the notion that we hold them by the balls and they hold us by the throat. We squeeze and they squeeze back. We are trapped by them and they are trapped by us. And every few years the conflict takes on a new form, ever more gruesome. Every few years, the mode of violence changes. The tragedy ends one chapter and begins another, but the tragedy never ends.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“Lost were the depths and riches of the Jewish soul. But the revolutionary Hebrew identity was imperative if the Zionist revolution was to prevail.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“What a genius. A self-hating Israeli, but still a genius. Unbelievable how many geniuses this country has spawned. Unbelievable what music and literature and poetry this country has created. Here, on the edge of the desert, in the line of death, we have built a nation of talent and joy and endless creativity.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“The two denials are actually four: the denial of the Palestinian past, the denial of the Palestinian disaster, the denial of the Jewish past, and the denial of the Jewish catastrophe. Four forces of amnesia are at work.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“Most observers and analysts deny the duality. The ones on the left address occupation and overlook intimidation, while the ones on the wight address intimidation and dismiss occupation. But the truth is that without incorporating both elements into one worldview, one cannot grasp Israel or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Any school of thought that does not relate to seriously to these two fundamental is bound to be flawed and futile. Only a third approach that internalizes both intimidation and occupation can be realistic and moral and get the Israel story right.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land

“returned to sow the valley. In the communal dining hall, they sing joyfully. They dance through the night, into the light of dawn.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“worked out a theory of the Israeli Left: its fundamental flaw was that it had never distinguished between the issue of occupation and the issue of peace. Regarding the occupation, the Left was absolutely right. It realized that occupation was a moral, demographic, and political disaster. But regarding peace, the Left was somewhat naïve. It counted on a peace partner that was not really there. It assumed that because peace was needed, peace was feasible. But the history of the conflict and the geostrategy of the region implied that peace was not feasible. The correct moral position of the Left was compromised by an incorrect empirical assumption.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“The third answer is the zeitgeist on campus. Political correctness prevents many in American academia from acknowledging that the Third World, too, is rife with acts of evil. The annihilation of hundreds of thousands in Syria, the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia, the incarceration of homosexuals in Egypt, the persecution of Christians in Gaza, and even the barbaric abominations perpetrated by the Islamic State—seem to get a pass. The legacy of Edward Said is that the intellectual, political, and moral discourse is confined to the misdeeds of the white man. Thus many in academia find it hard to see, and confront, the Middle East as it really is. They are immersed in an endless discussion of victims and victimizers, colonialists and indigenous people, the powerful and the powerless. The Iraq War exacerbated this phenomenon. The trauma it created means that any (Western) show of strength is seen as sinful, and every (Western) use of force is seen as criminal. According to this worldview, the West is always the perpetrator, the guilty party, while the inherent weakness of the non-West cleanses and absolves it of all wrongdoing.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“As the state became everything, the individual became marginalized. As it marched toward the future, Israel erased the past. There was no place for the previous landscape, no place for previous identities. Everything was done en masse. Everything was imposed from above. There was an artificial quality to everything. Zionism was not an organic process anymore but a futuristic coup. For its outstanding economic, social, and engineering achievements, the new Israel paid a dear moral price. There was no notion of human rights, civil rights, due process, or laissez-faire. There was no equality for the Palestinian minority and no compassion for the Palestinian refugees. There was little respect for the Jewish Diaspora and little empathy for the survivors of the Holocaust. Ben Gurion’s statism and monolithic rule compelled the nation forward.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“The people. Israel has extraordinary people. Israeli human capital is absolutely unique. The challenges facing any Israeli business are enormous—a dysfunctional government, an inefficient bureaucracy, wars. Israel’s permanent uncertainty is a real drawback. But what compensates for all these obstacles are the Israelis themselves. I’ve been around the world. There are no such people anywhere else. Israelis are exceptionally quick, creative, and audacious. They are sexy even in the way they work. They are hardworking and tireless. They are endowed with a competitive spirit—with the need to be the first at the finish line. And they are willing to do whatever it takes to be the first at the finish line. They never take no for an answer. They never accept failure or acknowledge defeat.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“He asks me what I think of it and then tells me what I should think of it.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“Israel is a harsh, hot land; ice cream is cold and comforting.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“They were the ones the State of Israel was meant for and planned for. From the outset we were under suspicion. So we were culturally castrated. We were expected to relinquish what we were previously.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“Let us today take stock of ourselves.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“He knew that the Jews needed a shelter and that Israel was a shelter. He understood that the Jews needed a roof and that Israel was their only roof. For secular Jews who had no God and no religion, Israel was also essential for their souls and identities. Without a Jewish state, secular Jews like himself would stand naked in the world.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“The mid-nineteenth-century French physiologist Claude Bernard was the first to overturn the conventional understanding that life is an adjustment to environment. Adjustment to the surrounding environment is death, argued Bernard; the phenomenon of life is that of preserving an internal environment contrary to an outside environment”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“Although unjust and unfounded, the haunting analogy is pervasive. Here it is not suggested by anti-Israel propaganda but rather in the language the soldiers use as a matter of course. When A. gets up to do guard duty in one of the interrogation wards, he says, “I’m off to the Inquisition.” When R. sees a line of prisoners approaching under the barrels of his friends’ M-16s, he says with quiet intensity: “Look. The Aktion has begun.” And even N., who harbors strong right-wing views, grumbles to anyone who will listen that the place resembles a concentration camp. M. explains with a thin smile that he has accumulated so many days of reserve duty during the intifada that soon they will promote him to a senior Gestapo official.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“Yesterday at dawn Roy was murdered. The quiet of the spring morning blinded him, and he did not see those who sought his life hiding behind the furrow. Let us not cast blame today on the murderers. What can we say against their terrible hatred of us? For eight years now, they have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza and have watched how, before their very eyes, we have turned their land and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home. It is not among the Arabs of Gaza, but in our own midst that we must seek Roy’s blood. How did we shut our eyes and refuse to look squarely at our fate and see, in all its brutality, the fate of our generation? Let us today take stock of ourselves. We are a generation of settlement, and without the steel helmet and the gun’s muzzle we will not be able to plant a tree and build a house. Let us not fear to look squarely at the hatred that consumes and fills the lives of hundreds of Arabs who live around us. Let us not drop our gaze, lest our arms weaken. That is the fate of our generation. This is our choice—to be ready and armed, tough and hard—or else the sword shall fall from our hands and our lives will be cut short.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“From whence have we come,” he asked, “and how far have we fallen?”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“¿cómo vamos a soportar un conflicto que ha durado toda una generación si nuestra superioridad estratégica está amenazada, nuestra legitimidad se desvanece y nuestra identidad democrática está fracturada,”
― Ari Shavit, Mi tierra prometida

“Israel proyecta una sensación de seguridad que emana de su éxito material, económico y militar.”
― Ari Shavit, Mi tierra prometida

“twenty-nine”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“Cimarosa’s”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“What changed Peres was the world. He was visiting many countries and listening, and he realized that he did not want Israel to be the new South Africa. For different reasons and in different ways, both Rabin and Peres realized that the conflict had to end. The predictable hawks they were became hesitant doves.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“That there is another people now occupying the land of his ancestors?”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“little time for school. He preferred”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: the triumph and tragedy of Israel

“surreal, man-made miracle. The winter of 1921 is vicious. The valley winds”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“Israel is the only nation in the West that is existentially threatened.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel