Uri Kaufman > Quotes

“In ridding America of anti-Israel advocates, AIPAC is an equal opportunity (un)employer.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“Whereas in Northern Ireland, the Mitchell Principles had excluded any party from the talks the moment it committed a single act of violence, in Israel, the world was introduced to a different set of Mitchell Principles: in a land of stabbings, shootings, and suicide bombings, Mitchell called on Israel to immediately resume negotiations.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“The people who lived in the kibbutzim surrounding Gaza included some of the best-known peace activists in the country. They were people like Vivian Silver, a Canadian-Israeli, who had co-founded the group Women Wage Peace and served on the board of the leftist NGO B’Tselem, and who long volunteered to drive sick Gazans to medical treatment in Israel. Hamas knew her address from her humanitarian work, and had terrorists drive straight to her home and kill her. Then they burned her house to the ground.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“By all accounts, it was the Palestinians and their Arab allies that started the 1948 War. Never in the history of the world has there been a “right of return” for aggressors—Poles have a right of return; Germans do not. Even if Palestinians had been on the receiving end of an invasion rather than the perpetrators, never in history has refugee status been handed down from father to son.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“While Israel buried its dead, and before its ground operation in Gaza even began, eighteen progressive members of the U.S. Congress signed a resolution calling for “an immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine.” One was quoted as saying “when we say Black Lives Matter, what’s really being said inside of that statement is a history of oppression.” More than a thousand black pastors representing hundreds of thousands of congregants later pushed the Biden Administration for a ceasefire as well. “We see them as a part of us,” one reverend told The New York Times. “They are oppressed people. We are oppressed people.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“It is worth pointing out that Israel was within its rights to build settlements under all of the Oslo agreements. Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi excoriated Arafat and the Palestinian leadership for agreeing to this, but the logic was unassailable.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“Of the Palestinians, he [President Obama] demanded that they take concrete steps to end “incitements to violence”—but not the violence itself.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“[Ehud] Barak offered a Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution, one that ceded to the PLO all of Gaza, the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and the equivalent of 92 percent of the West Bank (later sweetened to 97 percent). CIA Director George Tenet was “astounded” by how much Barak offered and asked incredulously, “Why hasn’t Arafat accepted this?”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“For terrorists, there is no bad publicity—all publicity is good because it puts the cause back on the global agenda. This is doubly so for the Palestinians because they enjoy broad support in the international community, as well as in academia and media, no matter what atrocities they commit.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“In May 2024, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sent a letter to pro-Palestinian college protesters, praising them for “standing on the right side of history” by forming “a branch of the Resistance Front.” When a man accustomed to leading cries of “Death to America” finds common cause with Americans, you know that something is awry.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“South Africa filed a complaint against Israel with the International Court of Justice, claiming it was committing genocide (never mind that it is Hamas that howls its wish to commit genocide). South Africa’s ruling African National Congress, which harbored Sudanese warlords wanted for genocide in Darfur, was then in financial turmoil, its assets seized by creditors. But shortly after it filed the complaint, it announced that its finances had “stabilized,” leading many to speculate that Iran had bought off its leaders.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“On September 21, 2005, the Israeli government declared Disengagement complete…crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel required an international passport. The Israeli army no longer exercised any jurisdiction inside Gaza. It was a foreign country. For better or worse, the vaunted two-state solution had finally been realized. Under international humanitarian law, an occupying power must assume responsibility for the health, safety, and well-being of the local population…. But any responsibility to a local population disappears the moment the occupying army marches out of the territory…The trouble for Palestinians in Gaza was that they depended on Israel for everything…Israel’s most strident critics were also thrown into turmoil. The whole thesis of their argument was that Israel was a racist-apartheid-colonizer because it was an occupier.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“Gay Palestinians seek asylum in Israel to avoid the fate of people like Ahmad Abu Marhia, who was beheaded in the West Bank.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“The Kitty Genovese story seemed fishy to rival newspapers at the time, but no one would question it. It had to be true. It was reported in The New York Times. It took decades, but the real story eventually came to light…Journalists are human and make mistakes just like the rest of us…When The New York Times reports something, it becomes the truth for a large part of the population. Whether it actually happened is almost beside the point.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“The very people in the Congressional Progressive Caucus who signed the letter calling for a cutoff of aid to Ukraine screamed the loudest when the Trump Administration cut off aid to the Palestinians. Why abandon Ukraine but embrace the Palestinians?”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“It was in Judea and Samaria that the Jews built all their great temples. It was in Judea and Samaria that Judah the Maccabee was killed leading his revolt against the Seleucid Greeks. In that entire period of over three millennia, there was only one short, nineteen-year period in which Jews did not live in the land we now call the “West Bank.” It was the first nineteen years of the existence of the modern State of Israel.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“A Palestinian minister said that Arafat planned violence from the moment he returned from Camp David.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“White Europeans in the New World took land from indigenous peoples by forcing them out. The Zionists did it by buying them out.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“Obama said that the “occupation” had made the plight of the Palestinians “unbearable.” The trouble, of course, was that there was no occupation. Israel had withdrawn from Gaza almost twenty years before.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“The Palestinian spokesman and literary critic Edward Said laid it out in his work The Question of Palestine. He spills much ink insisting that Zionist leaders were racists, but supplies little evidence to back it up.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“No two conflicts are identical. But Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine are about as close of two control groups as one will ever find. Both conflicts started in the 1920s. Both are nationalist struggles over the same territory, with sectarian divisions that go back centuries. Both involve groups deemed terrorist organizations by much of the world. Both involve allies on one side that are said to have a “special relationship” with Washington. But plainly, some relationships are more special than others. Britain was never asked to suffer a single act of violence, while Israel was pressured to continue making concessions, even as its citizens were being murdered in the hundreds.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“On the contrary, Arab leaders need American presidents to give them political cover.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“In the various histories of the Oslo Peace Process, pro-Palestinian writers focus on the checkpoints Israel set up throughout the territories—as if the checkpoints caused terrorism and not the other way around.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“The U.S. Army states in the Department of Defense Law of War Manual that “It is a legitimate method of war to starve enemy forces… Military action intended to starve enemy forces, however, must not be taken where it is expected to result in incidental harm to the civilian population that is excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated to be gained.” This is the law that American lawyers applied when President Obama ordered Operation Inherent Resolve, the war to drive the Islamic State out of Iraq and Syria. They considered all the precedents and concluded that it was proportional to use starvation as a tool of war. U.S. forces worked together with Iraqi troops to besiege the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. No food, water, or fuel were allowed in.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“Israel elected its first openly gay politician to its national parliament, the Knesset, in 1973.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“Overcoming cognitive dissonance is hard work. This is why The New York Times described Gaza as being under Israeli military occupation for years, long after the Israeli army withdrew. This is why Amnesty International described Israel as an apartheid state at a time in which an Arab political party was part of Israel’s coalition government. And this is why numerous left-wing media outlets and politicians denied that Hamas terrorists committed rape on October 7, even as those same terrorists admitted on tape that they did.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“His [Michael Kinsley’s] point was that the National Book Award is little more than a popularity contest, as the Pulitzer Prize no doubt is as well…the clique that controls the process looks to advance certain themes, all of which seem to cluster inside certain ideological zip codes…before the 2024 Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences…officially changed the rules. From now on, to qualify for the Best Picture award, “diversity in hiring…is considered. So is the movie’s plot.” The academy…now receives less than half the ratings it did just ten years ago. The only thing surprising about this is that people are surprised.”
― Uri Kaufman

“Arafat could fight terrorists—when he wanted to. After Hamas challenged Arafat and his Fatah group—the group that predominated within his PLO—his gunmen killed thirteen Hamas members and wounded over 150 others in a firefight on November 18, 1994. But when the Israelis demanded that he arrest an arch-Hamas terrorist named Muhammad Deif whose name was a household word throughout the territories, he pretended not to know who the man was. He insisted that Mossad agents were responsible for bombings of Israeli civilians, even as Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“Early in the war, on November 13, Biden said that Shifa Hospital “must be protected,” and called for “less intrusive action” by Israeli forces. But while he was vice president, on December 7, 2016, American planes deliberately bombed the al-Salem Hospital in Mosul, Iraq and destroyed it.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism

“Liberal Israelis are driven by their revulsion of war; liberal Americans are driven largely by their revulsion of racism. Although the origins are different, both share the same set of delusions contrary to all evidence. Both agree that the real problem is the settlements. Both agree that Israel should immediately implement the two-state solution, even as the Palestinians reject it. And both agree that the obstacle to everything is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
― Uri Kaufman, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War and the New Antisemitism