Quote #7

Using the moral yardstick mentioned by [Moshe Sharett], I must ask: Are [we justified] in opening fire on the Arabs who cross [the border] to reap the crops they planted in our territory; they, their women, and their children? Will this stand up to moral scrutiny . . .? We shoot at those from among the 200,000 hungry arabs who cross the line - will this stand up to moral review? Arabs cross to collect the grain that they left in the abandoned villages and we set mines for them and they go back without an arm or a leg. . . [It may be that this] cannot pass review, but I know no other method of guarding the borders. then tomorrow the State of Israel will have no borders.

More from Moshe Dayan

  1. The quote is taken from an address Dayan gave to Technion University students on March 19, 1969. A transcription of the speech appeared in …
  2. The only method that proved effective, not justified or moral but effective, when Arabs plant mines on our side [is retaliation]. If we try…
  3. We have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads.
  4. Let us not today fling accusation at the murderers. What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, th…
  5. It is not in our hands to prevent the murder of workers: and families: but it is in our hands to fix a high price for our blood, so high th…
  6. We could not guard every water pipeline from being blown up and every tree from being uprooted. We could not prevent every murder of a work…
  7. Along the Syria border there were no farms and no refugee camps - there was only the Syrian army... The kibbutzim saw the good agricultural…
  8. All that is required is to find an officer, even a captain would do, to win his heart or buy him with money to get him to agreed to declare…

All Moshe Dayan quotes