Moshe Sharett

Our role in Israel is a pioneering one, and we need people with certain strength of fiber.

A reprisal of this magnitude... has never been carried out before. I paced back and forth in my room perplexed and completely depressed, feeling helpless.

So we need people who will remain steadfast in any hardship and who have a high degree of resistance.

We don't know what may yet happen to us, what military and political defeats we may yet have to face.

I saw clearly how those who saved the state so heroically and courageously in the War of Independence would be capable of bringing a catastrophe upon it if they are given the chance in normal times.

I imagine that the intention is to get rid of them. The interests of security demand that we get rid of them.

The opportunities which the present position open up for a lasting and radical solution of the most vexing problem of the Jewish state are so far-reaching as to take one's breath away.

What is our vision on this earth - war to the end of all generations and life by the sword?

As for the long-term future: I am prepared to see in this a vision, not a mystical way but in a realistic way, of a population exchange on a much more important scale and including larger territories.

An there is always the question: is it really proven that retaliatory actions solve the security problem?.

We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it, that governs it by the virtue of its language and savage culture.

As for now, we must not forget who would have to exchange the land? those villages which live more than others on irrigation, on orange and fruit plantations, in houses built near water wells and pumping stations, on livestock and property and easy access to markets.