Bertrand Russell on Palestine

[Will Williams]

Here is Bertrand Russell's comments on Palestine. Lord Russell is probably the preeminent English language philosopher of the Twentieth Century. I believe he made this statement in a public address in 1974 shortly before he died.

Ed Corrigan

http://franknatter.wordpress.com/2010/0 ... palestine/

AUGUST 17, 2010
Bertrand Russell on Palestine

“The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was “given” by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?

It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate?

Israel has expanded by force of arms. After every stage in this expansion Israel has appealed to “reason” and has suggested “negotiations.” This is the traditional role of the imperial power, because it wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has already taken by violence. The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate.

We are frequently told, “We must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis.” What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy. “

-Bertrand Russell

[Will Williams]

This quote by Dr. Pierce is from an editorial by him in the December 1982 National Vanguard magazine (Issue No. 91). It has nothing to do with Russell, but it does mention Palestine and shows Dr. Pierce's contempt for Christian fundamentalist leaders and of their thoughtless actions at the time:
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We heard Christian fundamentalist leaders tittering excitedly about the prospect of another Constitutional amendment, one to permit school prayer, which, they said, "would help the nation return to morality." At the same time they were reaffirming their support for "God's chosen people," while the chosen people were busily incinerating Lebanese and Palestinian children with U.S.-supplied phosphorus bombs for the glory of Greater Israel.