Moshe Dayan Quotations

It was in our power to set high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying.

I have traveled a long road from the battlefield to the peace table.

Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.

I have only one eye. Do you want me to look at the road or the at the speedometer.

If I had to resign every time the Cabinet disagrees with me, I could not last as a Defense Minister one week.

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. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.

I have the strength to endure it all.

Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood.

Most important, don't do anything you don't want.

I know that plans and reality may be two different things, but I think my demands on life are minimal.

I don't think we should be a model family living in a model home.

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.

After all, we are not children. It's time we planned our life.

To aim and hit, you need one eye only, and one good finger.

It's a democracy and if I am outvoted, I have to accept the majority decisions.

It isn't a secret that my heart is damaged. All the treatments and medications haven't been effective.

I feel I've lived so long, and went through so much, that all I want is calm and rest.

The method of collective punishment so far has proved effective.

The Old City of Jerusalem is in our hands.

There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.

I make no pretenses. I'm studying day and night in order to complete my B.A. in less than two years, but I manage to be in Tel Aviv on the weekend.

The supreme efforts will be demanded of you, the troops, fighting in the air, on the land, and on the sea. Our security rests with you.

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.

Anyone who has practical ideas or proposal to encourage emigration, let him speak up. No idea or proposal is to be dismissed out of hand.

Supreme efforts must be made to acquire more arms and ammunitions until the date of the clash, but one thing must not be made dependent on the other.

A new State of Israel with broad frontiers, strong and solid, with the authority of the Israel Government extending from the Jordan to the Suez Canal.

It is not in our hands to prevent the murder of workers… and families… but it is in our hands to fix a high price for our blood, so high that the Arab community and the Arab military forces will not be willing to pay it.

Without [the settlements] the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) [Israeli Defense Force] would be a foreign army ruling a foreign population.

In two cases I did not fulfill my role as defense minister, in that I did not stop things that I was sure should have been stopped.

Take the American declaration of Independence. It contains no mention of territorial limits. We are not obliged to fix the limits of the State.

It lies upon the people's shoulders to prepare for the war, but it lies upon the Israeli army to carry out the fight with the ultimate object of erecting the Israeli Empire.

If we lose this war, I'll just start another in my wife's name.

I am not supposed to be an expert in every field. I am supposed to be an expert in picking experts.

It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce the policy of strength toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.

Israel cannot afford to stand against the entire world and be denounced as the aggressor.

The proposed policy [of raising the level of public service in the occupied territories] may clash with our intention to encourage emigration from both [Gaza] Strip and Judea and Samaria. Anyone who has practical ideas or proposal to encourage emigration-let him speak up. No idea or proposal is to be dismissed out of hand.

We have no solution... You [Palestinians] shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads.

There is no more Palestine. Finished.

During the last 100 years our people have been in a process of building up the country and the nation, of expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional settlements in order to expand the borders here. Let no Jew say that the process has ended. Let no Jew say that we are near the end of the road.

Before (the Palestinians) very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they and their ancestors have lived We are the generation of colonizers and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a house.

We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village.

I know of nothing more exciting than war.

Soldiers of Israel, we have no aims of conquest. Our purpose is to bring to naught the attempts of the Arab armies to conquer our land.

We could not guard every water pipeline from being blown up and every tree from being uprooted. We could not prevent every murder of a worker in an orchard or a family in their beds. But it was in our power to set high price for our blood, a price too high for the [Palestinian] Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying. . . . It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce 'the policy of strength' toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.

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.

Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.

Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.