Quotes about Palestine

There is no collection online about Palestine, which is surprising but also not surprising. We compiled a list of Quotes about Palestine, which is Eretz Israel, The land of Israel, Canaan, the Holy Land, etc.
Also see Quotes denying Palestine.

Quotes

• As long as in our heart of hearts

There throbs a Jewish soul,

And in the Orient, in Zion,

We envision our goal,

Our cherished hope is not yet lost,

The ancient hope not damped—

To regain our fatherland,

Where David once encamped.

• Imber, Tikvatenu (lit. “Our Hope”), 1876.

• Who can contest the rights of the Jews on Palestine? My God, historically it is your country!
  • Yousef al-Khalidi, Mayor of Jerusalem early 1900s, Quoted in Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter, p. 51.

• Palestine is no more of this workaday world. It is sacred poetry and tradition—it is dreamland.
  • Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad.

In Ancient Jewish Literature

• To be buried in Palestine is like being buried under the altar.
  • Rabbi ‘Anan ben David, Ketubot 111a:9. Translated in The Jewish Encyclopedia, “Holiness of Palestine.”
• Palestine is the holiest of all countries
  • Mishnah, quoted in The Jewish Encyclopedia, “Holiness of Palestine.”
• He who traverses so much as four ells in the land of Israel is sure of everlasting life.
  • Talmud, Kethuboth 111a:20. Quoted in Hebraic Literature.
• There are ten degrees of holiness, and Palestine is holy above all other lands.
  • Mishnah Kelim, 1:6.
• He who walks but an hour in the land of Israel, and then dies within it may feel assured that he is a son of the world to come
  • Rabbi Yoḥanan in Midrash Mishle 17:1.
• There are ten portions of courage in the world, nine in Judah and one in the rest of the world. There are ten portions of beauty in the world, nine in Jerusalem and one in the rest of the world. There are ten portions of wisdom in the world, nine in the Land of Israel and one in the rest of the world.
  • Rabbi Natan Midrash Rabbah Esther, 1:17.
• The air of the Land of Israel makes one wise.
  • Rabbi Zeira. Talmud: Baba Bathra, 158b.
• Women will bear daily. ... Trees will yield fruit daily... Eretz Israel will bring forth ready cakes and woolen robes.
  • Gamaliel II. Talmud: Sabbath, 30b.
• Palestine is the center of the world, Jerusalem the center of Palestine, and the Temple the center of Jerusalem... In the Holy of Holies there was a stone, the foundation of the world.
  • Midrash Tanhuma, Kidushin 10:1.

• The inheritance of a deer, as the skin of a deer, unoccupied by the body of the animal, shrinks, so also the the land of the deer (alternative name for the land of Israel), unoccupied by its rightful owners, became contracted.
  • Rabbi Ulla in Talmud: Gittin, 57a:13. Quoted in Hebraic Literature.

• Better to lodge in the wilderness of the land of Israel than dwell in the palaces outside of it.
  • Midrash Rabbah, 39:8. Quoted in Hebraic Literature.

• Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, O My people; and I will bring you into the Land of Israel... And I will put My spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I will place you in your own land.
  • Bible, Ezekiel 37:13-15.

• The Holy One, Blessed be He, gave Israel three precious gifts... These gifts are: Torah, Eretz Israel, and the World-to-Come.
  • Rabbi Shim‘on ben Yoḥai, Talmud: Berakhot 5a:20.
• Each land has some unique property, but the Land of Israel is endowed with all of these, lacking none.
  • Simeon bar Yoḥai. Sifre, #37, to Deut. 11.10.

Quotes By Zionists And Their Supporters

• The generation of Jews we wish to raise in the Land of Israel will be not of the twelfth or of the twentieth century, but, on the one hand, of the thirtieth, and, on the other hand, of a much earlier age, earlier than your entire era, of the period of the Prophets and the Hasmoneans.
  • Samuel Mohilever, letter to S. Reinach. 1896. Quoted in J. Mark. Gdoilim fun undzer Dor. New York, 1927, 245.
• The Zionist aspiration includes not only the return to the Land of Israel, but also the return to the soil.
  • Menaḥem Ussishkin in “Between Shiny Gold and a Burning Sword.”
• The Land of Israel will be small but the people of Israel will make it great. ... Not in opulence but in eminence will their destiny be fulfilled, and the elixir of their pride will be distilled not out of dominion or far-flung borders, but out of the faithful and skillful building of the good society.
  • Abba Hillel Silver, Vision and Victory, 1949.
• When the Jewish people will have redeemed the Land of Israel, the Land of Israel will redeem the Jewish people.
  • Menaḥem Ussishkin in Eretz Israel, 1932, p. 4.

• Upon you, upon the youth, will it depend whether Palestine is to be come the center of mankind or a Jewish Albania, the salvation of nations or the toy of the Powers. Zion will not arise in the physical world if you do not prepare for it in your souls.
  • Martin Buber, Zion and Youth, 1918.

• We come to Zion only by way of Zion.
  • Martin Buber, Zion als Ziel und Aujgabe, 1936.

• It is hard to be a worker; it is a hundred times harder to be a Jewish worker; it is a thousand times harder to be a Jewish worker in Eretz Israel.
  • David Ben-Gurion, address, March 1932.

• Building a State means for us a return to the soil. We found hundreds of Arab villages. We didn’t take them away. ... We established hundreds of new Jewish villages on new soil. ... We didn’t merely buy the land, we recreated the land. We did that in rocky hills like Motza. ... In the swamps of Hedera hundreds of Jews died of malaria, and they refused to leave that place until it was made healthy. ... We did it on the sand dunes of Rishon le-Zion. With our toil, our sweat, and with our love and devotion, we are remaking the soil to enable us to settle there, not at the expense of anybody else.
  • David Ben-Gurion, to Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, March 19, 1946.

• The real miracle of Palestine is the Jew who masters the labor of orchard and garden, field and vineyard, quarry and harbor, water and power, factory and craft, highway and byway. That sort of Jew the Diaspora never made.
  • David Ben-Gurion, March 2, 1932. Rebirth and Destiny, 49.

• If Palestine is to be restored ... it must be by settling Jews on its soil. The condition to which the land has been reduced ... is such that restoration is only possible by a race that is prepared for sentimental reasons to make and endure sacrifices for that purpose.
  • David Lloyd George. Hearst Newspapers, July 1923.

• The heart of the people—that is the foundation on which the land will be regenerated.
  • Aḥad Ha‘am, “The Wrong Way,” 1889.

• In Palestine we can and should found for ourselves a spiritual center of our nationality.
  • Aḥad Ha‘am, Dr. Pinsker & His Pamphlet, 1892.
• There is no greater service for the pious Jew to perform than to rebuild the ruins of the Holy Land
  • Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, Derishat Zion, 1862. Quoted in Hess, Rome & Jerusalem, 264.

• History is no longer enough for the Jews—history, the heroic fatherland of time. They are yearning for a small, simple home on earth. More young Jews are returning to Palestine. This is a return to self, to one’s own roots, to growth.
  • Franz Kafka, quoted in The Jewish Frontier, March 1953, p. 33.

• The beginning of the Redemption will come through natural causes by human effort and by the will of the governments to gather the scattered of Israel into the Holy Land.
  • Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, quoted in HaDoar, June 4, 1954, p. 578.

• We will return to Zion as we went forth, bringing back the faith we carried away with us.
  • Mordecai Manuel Noah, 1824. Quoted in J. H. Hertz. A Book of Jewish Thoughts, 123.

• Zion is greater than a piece of land in the Near East. Zion is greater than a Jewish commonwealth in this land. Zion is memory, admonition, promise. Zion is . . . the foundation stone of the messianic upbuilding of humanity. It is the unending task of the Jewish people.
  • Martin Buber, Zion and Youth, 1918.

• The very name Palestine stirs within us the most elevated sentiments. ... All find consolation in that land, some by its memories, others by its hopes.
  • Solomon Munk, 1863. Quoted in J. H. Hertz. A Book of Jewish Thoughts. London, 1917.

• The generation of Jews we wish to raise in the Land of Israel will be not of the twelfth or of the twentieth century, but, on the one hand, of the thirtieth, and, on the other hand, of a much earlier age, earlier than your entire era, of the period of the Prophets and the Hasmoneans.
  • Samuel Mohilever, letter to S. Reinach. 1896. Quoted in J. Mark. Gdoilim fun undzer Dor. New York, 1927, 245.

• Perhaps it is the great world-historical task of the Jewish settlement in Palestine to effect a synthesis of Europeanism and Orientalism.
  • Franz Oppenheimer. Reflex, July, 1927, p. 68.

• From each Jewish heart an invisible path leads to the Land of Israel.
  • David Shimonovitz BaDerekh, 1923. Shirim, ii. 110.

• The Land of Israel will be small but the people of Israel will make it great. ... Not in opulence but in eminence will their destiny be fulfilled, and the elixir of their pride will be distilled not out of dominion or far-flung borders, but out of the faithful and skillful building of the good society.
  • Abba Hillel Silver, Vision and Victory, 1949.

• To bring water to the thirsty earth, shade to the sun-parched sands, the laughter of children to a countryside where only jackals howl; to unearth the good soil under the rocks, to push back the desert, and remove the last swamps—these are among the tasks of the Jewish National Fund in its second fifty years.
  • Ḥaim weizmann in a message in January 19, 1951. Quoted in the New York Times, Jan. 20, 1951.

• The chief merit of your leadership is that it seeks to restore or create the self-respect of the Jewish people. ... In Palestine the Jew is on horseback, head up, free from the care what others think of him.
  • Josiah Wedgewood to Zionist Agency. Parliamentary Debate, June 9, 1942.

• If before I die there are half a million Jews in Palestine, I shall be content because I shall know that this “saving remnant” will survive. They, not the millions in the Diaspora, are what really matter.
  • Ḥaim Weizmann, to McDonald, 1933, quoted in McDonald, My Mission, 251.

• It was the Jewish genius that bestowed its radiance upon Palestine.
  • Alfred North Whitehead. Atlantic Monthly, March 1939, “An Appeal to Sanity.”