Larry Collins > Quotes

“For the Arabs, and the above all for the 1.2 million Arabs of Palestine, the partitioning of the land in which they had been a majority for seven centuries seemed a monstrous injustice thrust upon them by white Western imperialism in expiation of a crime they had not committed. With few exceptions, the Jewish people had dwelt in relative security among the Arabs over the centuries. The golden age of the Diaspora had come in the Spain of the caliphs, and the Ottoman Turks had welcomed the Jews when the doors of much of Europe were closed to them. The ghastly chain of crimes perpetrated on the Jewish people culminating in the crematoriums of Germany had been inflicted on them by the Christian nations of Europe, not those of the Islamic East, and it was on those nations, not theirs, the Arabs maintained, that the burden of those sins should fall. Beyond that, seven hundred years of continuous occupation seemed to the Arabs a far more valid claim to the land than the Jews' historic ties, however deep.”
― Larry Collins, Ô Jérusalem

“Jinnah to Lord Mountabatten in one of his many meetings before partition: "India has never been a true nation. It only looks that way on the map. The cows I want to eat, the Hindus stops me from killing. Every time a Hindu shakes hands with me he has to wash his hands. The only thing the Muslim has in common with Hindu is his slavery to the British.”
― Larry Collins

“On 23 June 1757, marching through a drenching rainfall at the head of 900 Englishmen of the 39th Foot and 2000 Indian sepoys, an audacious general named Robert Clive routed the army of a troublesome Nawab in the rice paddies outside a Bengali village called Plassey.”
― Larry Collins, Freedom at Midnight

“Bombay that morning of 28 February 1948, Platt and his men had put the final full stop to the British imperial adventure. Twenty-five years later, by that”
― Larry Collins, Freedom at Midnight

“Over two thousand people died in that vicious intramural bloodletting. While the Jews of Palestine were developing the young leaders and the social institutions that would be their greatest resource, Haj Amin Husseini methodically deprived the Arabs of theirs. Throttling progress and any drift to rational thought with his angry fanaticism, cowing with the guns of his ignorant villagers the educated elite, he reduced a generation of Arab leadership to fear and silence.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“la ration de viande était si réduite que les chansonniers prétendaient qu’on pouvait l envelopper dans un ticket de métro - à condition que le ticket n’eut pas été poinçonné, sinon, la viande risquait de tomber par le trou. (…) Certaines étoffes étaient en fibre de bois. (…) quelques cinémas restaient ouverts grâce aux générateurs électriques qu’actionnaient de vaillants pédaleurs. (1re partie, ch. 2)”
― Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?

“Mountbatten was stunned by the rigidity of Jinnah's position. 'I never would have believed,' he later recalled, 'that an intelligent man, well-educated, trained in the Inns of Court, was capable of simply closing his mind”
― Larry Collins, Freedom at Midnight

“In Arab eyes, the Balfour Declaration had been an act of pure imperialism, a mortgaging by Britain of the future of a land to which she had no rightful claim, without any effort to consult the wishes or the desires of the Arabs who had constituted ninety-two percent of Palestine's population when the declaration was issued.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“Urged by the Vatican, the Catholic nations of Latin America had made it clear to the Jews that the price of their votes for the plan to partition Palestine would be the internationalization of Jerusalem. Without them, the Jews had no hopes of mustering the ballots needed to pass partition. With a heavy heart, they had yielded, and Jerusalem's loss was the measure of the price they were willing to pay for a Jewish state.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“The autonomy this Paris command gave him was a new experience for von Choltitz. Until now, he had always been firmly locked inside Germany's impersonal military machine. His decisions, with the exception of minor tactical ones, had always been made for him. Now, at the very moment at which his visit to Rastenburg [where he met Hitler & was ordered to Paris] had jarred his confidence in the Third Reich and its leader, circumstances had placed von Choltitz in a command in which he had to make decisions. He preferred to postpone them. Nordling's suggestion offered him that chance.
If, he told Nordling, the commanders at the Prefecture of Police could demonstrate in an hour's trial that they could control their men, he would agree to discuss a cease-fire for the city.”
― Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre

“Arab-Jewish relations in the Old City had always been good. Most of the property in the quarter was Arab-owned, and one of its familiar sights was the Arab rent collector making his way from house to house, pausing in each for the rent and a ritual cup of coffee. Here the Islamic respect for men of religion had been naturally extended to the quarter's scholars in their yeshivas. As for the quarter's poor artisans and shopkeepers, the most natural of bonds, poverty, tied them to their Arab neighbors.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“The General Assembly of the United Nations," the broadcaster read, "by a vote of thirty-three in favor, thirteen against and ten abstentions, has voted to partition Palestine.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“Feeling themselves betrayed by the British and the French, their claim to Palestine thwarted by the Balfour Declaration, the Arabs lived a rude awakening in the aftermath of World War I. As was perhaps inevitable, the focal point of their fury became the Zionist return”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“One blessing, one sire, one womb Their being gave. They had one mortal sickness And share one grave Far from an England they never knew.”
― Larry Collins, Freedom at Midnight

“In 1880, after the assassination of Alexander II, the mobs, aided by the Czar's soldiers, burned and butchered their way through one Jewish community after another, leaving a new word in their wake: pogrom.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“Blessed art Thou, O Lord," murmured Weingarten, "Who had granted us life and sustenance and permitted us to reach this day.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“In their prayers, in their rites, at each salient moment in the passage of a lifetime, they had reminded themselves of their attachment to that Promised Land and the transient nature of their separation from its shores.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“The ghastly chain of crimes perpetrated on the Jewish people culminating in the crematoriums of Germany had been inflicted on them by the Christian nations of Europe, not those of the Islamic East, and it was on those nations, not theirs, the Arabs maintained, that the burden of those sins should fall. Beyond that, seven hundred years of continuous occupation seemed to the Arabs a far more valid claim to the land than the Jews' historic ties, however deep.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“It was Zionism. With the energy of his despair, Herzl produced its blueprint, a one-hundred-page pamphlet titled Der Judenstaat—"The Jewish State." "The Jews who will it," it began, "shall have a state of their own.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“Gandhi: "My friend, I'm glad you listened to the voice of God, and not the voice of Gandhi."
Mountbatten: "Well, Gandhiji, his is the only voice I'd sooner listen to than yours, but in what respect did I take God's advice against yours.”
― Larry Collins, Freedom At Midnight

“Dagobert, King of the Franks, drove them from Gaul; Spain's Visigoths seized their children as converts; the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius forbade Jewish worship.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“Neither Gerow nor de Gaulle had to tell Leclerc to hurry into Paris. He was ridden by the fear his troops would reach the capital after its German garrison had fired the explosives seeded through its streets. Angry and disappointed, Leclerc had had to accept the face he would not reach the city for another twelve hours.
The red-haired captain jeeping toward Leclerc...was furious too...twice he had been curtly ordered by his immediate superior to rejoin the main line of attack..."What the hell are you doing here?" Leclerc asked. Dronne told him. "Dronne," Leclerc said, "don't you know enough not to obey stupid orders?...I want you to get into Paris. Take whatever you've got and go.”
― Larry Collins, Is Paris Burning?

“For the Arabs, and above all for the 1.2 million Arabs of Palestine, the partitioning of the land in which they had been a majority for seven centuries seemed a monstrous injustice thrust upon them by white Western imperialism in expiation of a crime they had not committed.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“Yitzhak Sadeh was the spiritual father of the Haganah and the founder of its elite striking force, the Palmach.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“The crowned heads that leaned over his cradle were members of his family. Charlemagne was a direct ancestor; among his uncles and cousins were Kaiser Wilhelm II, Alfonso XIII of Spain, Ferdinand I of Rumania, Gustav VI of Sweden, Constantine I of Greece, Haakon VII of Norway and Alexander I of Yugoslavia. Europe's crises were family problems.”
― Larry Collins, Freedom at Midnight

“They gave it the seductive name Al Fatat—"Young Girl."* Its aim was the liberation of the Arab world from Turkey's Ottoman Empire. More important, it represented the first manifestation of a renascent Arab nationalism that disputed Jewish claims to Palestine for half a century.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“He was the first and the greatest in a line of Arab, African and Asian leaders who in the decades to come would follow his route from a British prison to a British conference chamber.”
― Larry Collins, Freedom at Midnight

“Wheezing slightly with his asthma, he added, his voice faint, "You must realize that my behavior in telling you this could be interpreted as treason." For a few seconds the room was still and breathless in the warm August midday. Then, choosing his words very carefully, von Choltitz spoke a final phrase: "Because," he said, "what I am really doing is asking the Allies to help me...
He had found a way to warn the Allies of the danger hanging over Paris, and he hoped to make them realize that, for the moment at least, the road to Paris was open. How long it would remain open he could not know. If the reinforcements he had been promised arrived before the Allies did, his soldier's honor would force him to try to close the door himself, and defend Paris in a wasting and destructive street battle.”
― Larry Collins, Is Paris Burning?

“was not until 1925, eight years after the Balfour Declaration, that Chaim Weizmann warned: "Palestine is not Rhodesia and 600,000 Arabs live there who . . . have exactly the same rights to their homes as we have to our National Home.”
― Larry Collins, O Jerusalem

“Mrs Penn Montague, who spoke six languages, rose every day at four in the afternoon.”
― Larry Collins, Freedom at Midnight