Israel/Palestine

Netanyahu: "We must defend ourselves against the wild beasts"

The government is preparing a multi-year plan to surround Israel with security barriers, prime minister says.' In the area that we live in, we must defend ourselves.

Lieberman: "Those who are against us, there's nothing to be done - we need to pick up an axe and cut off his head."

"Whoever's with us should get everything," Lieberman said, in reference to the loyalty of Israeli Arabs, who make up some 20 percent of Israel's population. "Those who are against us, there's nothing to be done – we need to pick up an axe and cut off his head. Otherwise we won't survive here."

Shaked: "They should go, as the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there."

Shaked is known for her strident (some would say extremist) views regarding Palestinians and the enfeebled Israeli left. In July, in a controversial post on Facebook, the then-member of the Knesset posted the text of an article by the late Israeli writer Uri Elitzur that referred to Palestinian children as "little snakes" and appeared to justify the mass punishment of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. The post has since been deleted, but an archived version remains.

Rabbi Ben Dahan: "Palestinians are beasts, they are not human"

Ben Dahan has made controversial remarks about Palestinians. While discussing the resumption of peace talks in a radio interview in 2013, Ben Dahan said that “To me, they are like animals, they aren’t human.”

“The Palestinians aren’t educated towards peace, nor to they want it,” he said.

Regev: "I am happy to be a fascist"

Fears over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to appoint Regev as culture minister were there from the start. Regev, after all, is renowned for being a staunch anti-intellectual: loud, proud and ready to shout. In recent years, she has become one of Israel’s most controversial politicians, proudly proclaiming in a 2012 television interview, “I am happy to be a fascist!”

Ya'alon: “The Palestinian threat harbors cancer-like attributes that have to be severed. There are all kinds of solutions to cancer. Some say it’s necessary to amputate organs but at the moment I am applying chemotherapy.”

The newly appointed Israeli chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Moshe Yaalon, is urging a decisive victory to destroy the "cancer-like" threat posed by the Palestinians.

Israeli leftwingers criticised his blunt assessment of the danger, saying he had overstepped the mark separating the military from the politicians.

Netanyahu: “beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable."

A newly revealed tape of Netanyahu in 2001, being interviewed while he thinks the cameras are off, shows him in a radically different light. In it, Netanyahu dismisses American foreign policy as easy to maneuver, boasts of having derailed the Oslo accords with political trickery, and suggests that the only way to deal with the Palestinians is to “beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable”