Israel Quotes

“The Palestinians must no longer define themselves by what they resist (the Ottomans, the British Mandate, the Zionists, etc.) but instead by what they want to create. And they need to get real with a very basic question: What is the Palestinian national ambition really about? Is it about having a state and living side by side with Israel? Or is it about wiping Israel off the map and creating a Sharia state?”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“After the 1948 war, there were approximately 700,000 displaced people. Now UNRWA has 5.6 MILLION ‘refugees’ registered in their books… (The refugee status is passed down through the generations.) ...UNRWA keeps the Palestinian people in an eternal loop of displacement. Instead of solving the problem in any meaningful way, they have overseen the problem’s exponential growth… The best way to keep the war with Israel alive is to maintain a perpetual ‘refugee problem’ under UN legitimacy, which maintains an international concept of ‘right of return,’ at the cost of so many hopeless generations.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“The BDS on campus operation is organized by, among others, a group in Chicago, Illinois, called American Muslims for Palestine, or AMP. For years, AMP, through its sponsorship of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), has been sending strategists, digital and communications experts, graphic designers, video editors, and legal advisors to colleges all over America and running flashy events in expensive hotels for the purpose of delegitimizing Israel, minimizing pro-Israel voices on campus, and harassing Jewish and pro-Israel students in order to deter them from supporting Israel. The embodiment of Cancel Culture. Managing such a sophisticated network of political operatives, extensive marketing, and (pre-COVID) ritzy gatherings at nice hotels is extremely expensive.11 So where is the money coming from? I”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“The conflict is not between the Palestinians and the Israelis. It’s between the Arab world and Israel.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“When a society turns on its Jews it is usually a sign of a wider ill-health. Hasn’t history shown us that racism never stays confined to mere ‘pockets.’ Once the virus is inside, it does not rest until it has infected the entire body.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“Israel wants peace.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“it is probably best to shut up and listen.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“The kibbutz is not for everyone, but it was a genius Israeli invention created to solve one big problem: how to start a country.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“Zionism was created as a movement for Jewish liberation, it is about the Jewish people having self-determination and self-governance in their ancestral land in a Jewish, BUT NOT AN EXCLUSIVELY Jewish, state.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“tensed towards that conversation,”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“And this is the key: The conflict is not between the Palestinians and the Israelis. It’s between the Arab world and Israel.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel

“The Jews did not “take Palestine.” There was no Palestine for the taking. There was no state, no united governance, not much industry, or a healthcare system, or agriculture, economic or education systems. There was certainly no democracy, equality, safety, or prosperity for the people living there. The pioneers, my grandparents, turned much of the land from a place that was nearly uninhabitable into a flourishing community of agriculture and booming economic growth, a foundation for the state Israel is today.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel

“religion, peoplehood, tikkun olam, and nationhood.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“A dream and an action are not as different as people tend to think, for all of human actions are initiated into completion from a dream. And if you shall not will all that I have written into reality, a dream it is and a dream it shall remain.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“Here's the nugget: settling the refugee problem would mean ending the war against Israel. And as of now, the Palestinians and many of the Arab world have been refusing to do so. The best way to keep the war with Israel alive is to maintain a perpetual refugee problem...”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“Instead of helping people move forward UNRWA keeps the Palestinian people in an eternal loop of displacement. Instead of solving the problem in any meaningful way, they have overseen the problem's exponential growth.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“on June 3, 1967, on the eve of the Six Day War, Israel sent a clandestine message to Jordan’s King Hussain offering to recognize the Green Line as the official border between the countries—so long as Jordan didn’t join the Arab countries’ war efforts.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“And this, I later learned, is a very Jew-y thing to do. To keep the old traditions and adapt them to modern times.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“But as Bari Weiss so perfectly described it: “Antisemitism is not just a prejudice, it is a conspiracy theory…. It says that there is a secret hand controlling the world, and that secret hand is called the Jew.”22”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“The entire world is experiencing some form or another of zealotry these days, and we cannot allow fanaticism, from any religion, nation, or political group, to infect any country ever again. We have a very well-documented past to learn from.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“After all, an enemy you get to know cannot stay an enemy for long.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“two borders for the Jordan River, this one is ours, that one as well.” This idea had obviously been abandoned years ago, as even the most zealous of Jews understand that they need a land, not all of it. The same needs to happen on the Palestinian side.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“In order to make peace a nation needs a unique leader, and by the same token, to fuck things up royally, a nation also needs a unique leader.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“The Jews did not “take Palestine.” There was no Palestine for the taking. There was no state, no united governance, not much industry, or a healthcare system, or agriculture, economic or education systems. There was certainly no democracy, equality, safety, or prosperity for the people living there.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“There is almost no difference between the establishment of Israel and Pakistan. They were both created as a safe haven for persecuted groups: Jews and Muslims. They are both engaged in land disputes. They both control religious sites of other religions. And they were even established only a few months apart.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“The truth is, there is absolutely nothing that can be said of Israel, that cannot be said of Pakistan.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“Israel grants equal rights to all its citizens, including, of course, the 21 percent of citizens who are Arab.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“recent years have shown us that antisemitism is not only still around but it also seems to have become acceptable again.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“From 2015 to 2019, the United Nations General Assembly adopted more resolutions against Israel than against Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Russia combined.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

“When you weigh the entire region and look at Israel’s unique freedoms (of religion, speech, gender, LGBTQ+ rights, etc.) and add to those what Israel gives the world and can also give to the entire the Middle East in tech, arts, sciences, and humanitarian aid and knowledge, it is really hard to understand why it sometimes feels like everyone wants to drag us down.”
― Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth