lambs, wolves, and other quotable quotes

My kids are in Israel; Our youngest already called to "send money", so I know that (b'ezrat Hashem) everything is ok! I'm missing them so much; the Chagim are coming up, and we won't have family with us, and we can't afford to go there, so I am feeling a bit pensive, and decided to post these quotable quotes, musings and Great Moral Principles gleaned from various sources (including The Simpsons, a very astute, informative source on our society today) which don't necessarily have anything to do with each other. Credit is given where known. So reflect, ponder, and snicker a little:

"Democracy involving Israel and its neighbors is two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for lunch. And the agressor is a heavily armed lamb."
Don't know to whom to attribute that to (my husband found the quote), but how true it is.

From the JewishVirtualLibrary:
"In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."

"Israel's right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved. Israel's legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgement....there is certainly no other state, big or small, young or old, that would consider mere recognition of its 'right to exist' a favor, or a negotiable concession.” (-Abba Eban).

The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations stated at the General Assembly in May, 1947: "Palestine was part of the Province of Syria" and that, "politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." (again, see Jewish Virtual Library, Myths & Facts Online by Mitchell G. Bard.)

In 1975, a resolution was adopted in the UN General Assembly equating Zionism with racism. This by Abba Eban was quoted in then-Ambassador Herzog's response to that resolution:
" Zionism is nothing more -- but also nothing less -- than the Jewish people's sense of origin and destination in the land linked eternally with its name. It is also the instrument whereby the Jewish nation seeks an authentic fulfillment of itself. And the drama is enacted in twenty states comprising a hundred million people in 4 1/2 million square miles, with vast resources. The issue therefore is not whether the world will come to terms with Arab nationalism. The question is at what point Arab nationalism, with its prodigious glut of advantage, wealth and opportunity, will come to terms with the modest but equal rights of another Middle Eastern nation to pursue its life in security and peace."

As Mitchell G. Bard wrote on his Jewish Virtual Library (a really great source of information):
"To single out Jewish self-determination for condemnation is itself a form of racism.
When approached by a student at Harvard in 1968 who attacked Zionism, Martin Luther King responded: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism."

Here's an eye-opener, for those of us who have forgotten or didn't know:
Emir Faisal, son of Sharif Hussein (who led the Arab revolt against the Turks) wrote in a letter in 1919:
"The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement....We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home....We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is nationalist and not imperialist. And there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be a real success without the other".
So, after reading the above, one could ask, 'what happened?' The Arabs have had many years since then believing their own lies. Here is a quote from Samuel Katz's Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in Palestine, a book which I heartily recommend:
"Al-Ghazzali, the great eleventh-century Moslem theologian, wrote: "Know that a lie is not haram [wrong] in itself, but only because the evil conclusions to which it leads the hearer, making him believe something that is not really the case...If a lie is the only way of obtaining a good result, it is permissible...We must lie when truth leads to unpleasant results."
"..."Lying," writes the Arab sociologist Sania Hamady, "is a widespread habit among the Arabs and they have a low idea of truth...The Arab has no scruples about lying if by it he obtains his objective..."
"...For it is a known part of the character of Arab fantasy that the inventor of a story comes to believe it himself. A charming little tale from Arab folklore tells of a man whose afternoon nap was disturbed by the noise of children playing in the courtyard below. He went out to the balcony and called, 'Children, how foolish you are! While you are playing here, they are giving away figs in the marketplace.' The children rushed off to collect their figs, and the man, pleased with his invention, went back to his couch. But just as he was about to drop off, a troublesome thought aroused him: 'Here am I, lying around, when there are free figs to be had in the marketplace!"

So there it is, folks. Which leads conveniently right into the torah (le-havdil) of The Simpsons:

" Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!"
"They have the Internet on computers, now?"
"When I look at the smiles on all the children's faces...I just know they're about to jab me with something."
"If something is too hard to do, then it's not worth doing."
Kill my boss? Do I dare live out the American dream?"
"If this were really a nuclear war we'd all be dead meat by now."

And the piece de resistance:

" It's not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child, but somehow I managed to squeeze in 8 hours of TV a day."

That, folks, is the torah for today, על רגל אחת . Have a good one!