Shaka Zulu Quotes

He was then a young Lieutenant.

The Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the PLO were preparing a coordinated attack on Israel. After statements like this, the Israeli’s preempted the attack, routed the Egyptian Airforce and Army, and then defeated the other three. The Arab “War of Liberation” resulted in the Arabs losing more with Israel tripling it’s control of area. The quotation however cast a pall over attempts thereafter to create a Palestinian State as in effect the PLO had announced a policy of a Holocaust—the extermination of the Israelis. The dispute over land was not for the Jewish state a land negotiation amenable to compromise and give and take, but instead was an existential threat to Israel whereby any compromise might result in the death of the entire population. As the ultimate intention of the PLO had been revealed.

It is not known whether Agamemnon ever existed other than in Greek legends. The “quotation” comes to us from Homer’s Iliad which itself was based on oral histories before and itself was oral for years before it was written. So the dialogue may be written by Homer. However, if real, was the earliest reference to genocide. The photograph is of a mask believed to be of the period but there is no certainty is was the King even though was associated with him by Heinrich Schliemann—the 19th century archeologist who found the object.

14 Arab Armies in a coordinated attack on the 1 day old Israeli state, intended to massacre all the Israelis as demonstrated by this quote. Note that this kind of extermnination intent was advertised with pride. To everyone's surprised, the Jewish defenders not only beat back the viscious attacks but enlssarged their terroitory by capturing strategic sites from which the attacks had been launched. Many people credit to the Israely victory to the fact that they were litterally fighting for their lives. Defeat would have meant death for them and their families. The Arab armies, in contrast, were fighting for land that other Arabs claimed that should have been theirs. The willingness to stand and fight for this goal did not match the self preservation that motivated the Israelis--especially in the aftermath of the Holocaust killing 6 million Jews in WWII.

There are some who argue that the quotation was made earlier and was not meant as an incendary call for massacre of Israelis. It well may be that in his original thinking, he was predicting what would happen if the State of Israel was created, basing his thoughts on historical artrocieties of the past. And many think he was concerned about that possible outcome and was trying to avoid it. The import of the quotation was not necessaruly to hisltorically blame Assam for the point of view but to simply establish that there were many Arab voices calling for victories of history where there were massacres in the Middle East. And there were those who took Azzam's quotation and broadcasted it on Arab radio, calling for the very massacre that Assam may have been warning about. Note that this notion of Jewish massacre and extermination was also picked up 60 years later and called for by the President of Iran.

The German catastrophic classification of people as superior and inferior did not start with the Nazis. It had been part of the German culture. What many feel makes Bismarck more cold-blooded than most Germans is that the latter were led to a hatred of the other ethnicities and would exterminate them for that reason, but Bismark had sympathy for the Poles yet advocated genocide simply on practical grounds. The analogy with the wolf shows this mentality at its worst.

Although a very aggressive military commander, Grant did not approve of proposals to have wars of extermination which many called for against different Native American tribes.

He was leading the Gordon Highlanders of the British Army against the Boers during the Boer War. He was seriously wounded and could not go on himself with a charge he had ordered, However, waifing his sword he made this famous qutation. Particualrly noteorthy is the derrogatory terms which he used to describe the enemy--the Boers of South Africa. In many wars and cultures, one or more of the combatants, in order to overcome the avarage soldier's reluctance to kill an enemy, characterizes them as less than human. In this case, vermin, who were to be exterminated. There were two predominant groups of whites who came to South Africa, the English who were generally well-educated and were interested in trading with the exhisting inhabitants and investing in businesses using mostly native labot and the Boers. The latter were of Dutch and German origin, poor farmers with little or no land in the home country and little education. Their interest was to create a nation where they could own land to farm. And the lest expensive way for them to increase their farmland was to sieze it from the native Blacks and who were the major forces behind the racial discrimination which became apartheid. The British contolled the government and sought stability and as in most of the British Empire, they wanted English law to prevail including the rights of the Black natives. The Boers had left Europe for good and would thrive or not in Southern Africa. Proportiopnately, the English might have a career in South Africa or serve there for a few years. They were Englishmen in a foreign country. The Boers saw themselves as citizens of Southern Africa who were fighting the native Blacks for control of the land. The English legal system would not allow any of the land seizures and political discrimination that the Boers saw as existential for their survival in Africa. Soon, the Boers took more and more of the law into their own hands and saw English rule and dmination as inimical to their interests in Africa and they tried to create their own independent states in Southern Africa. That was the essense of the Boer Wars. Dick-Cunyngham was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration of Great Britain, for his exploits in the Afghan War.

Over the years Sherman’s advocacy of Indian extermination went beyond the Sioux to all Indians.

The threat was if Pakistan did not cooperate with the United States after the September 11 attack. Pakistan was full of Islamic fundamentalists with strong ties to the Taliban and other terroristsw. Pakistan did cooperate as a government but the Musharraf government itself was under attack by the Islamic Fundamentalists who tried to assassinate Musharraf a number of times. Armitage has denied that he said such a thing, but he does admit a conversation where he told them that “they were with us or against us.”