Moshe Dayan Quotes

Chief of staff, Israel Defense Forces and Minister of Defense during the 1967 war

4 Quotes by Moshe Dayan

1. I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let’s talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was… The kibbutzim there saw land that was good for agriculture. And you must remember, this was a time in which agricultural land was considered the most important and valuable thing… I can tell you with absolute confidence, the delegation that came to persuade Eshkol to take the heights was not thinking of these things. They were thinking about the heights’ land. Listen, I’m a farmer, too. After all, I’m from Nahalal, not from Tel Aviv, and I know about it. I saw them, and I spoke to them. They didn’t even try to hide their greed for that land.

2. Let us not today fling accusation at the murderers. What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us. For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived...We should demand his blood not from the Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves...Let us make our reckoning today. We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house.

3. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either...There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab Population.

4. We shoot at those from among the 200,000 hungry Arabs who cross the line [to graze their flocks]...Arabs cross to collect the grain that they left in the abandoned villages and we set mines for them and they go back without an arm or a leg. [It may be that this] cannot pass review, but I know no other method of guarding the borders.