"Only then [after an internal revolution] will the young and old in our land realize how great was our responsibility to those miserable Arab refugees in whose towns we have settled from afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest; the fruit of whose gardens, orchards and vineyards we gather; and in whose cities that we robbed, we put up houses of education, charity and prayer." -- Philosopher Martin Buber addressing fellow Jews in 1961

"For it was precisely the unignorable plight and suffering of the Palestinian Arabs during April-May of that year that forced the hand of the reluctant Arab political and military leaders to take the plunge and invade Palestine on 15-16 May. -- Israeli Historian Benny Morris in an 03-04/1998 article in Tikkun

"After the Palmach men left [Deir Yassin], the men of the [Irgun and Stern Gang] started a shameful massacre of the inhabitants...[The massacre] was carried out...when the village was in Jewish hands, and without the inhabitants having taken any provocative action..." Meir Pa'il, official Haganah observer on the scene, Yediot Ahranot, April 29, 1972)

"All of the killed, with very few exceptions, were old men, women or children. The dead we found were all unjust victims, and none of them had died with a weapon in their hands." --Eliyahu Arieli, Haganah member who arrived at Deir Yassin shortly after the massacre, O Jerusalem, Collins and Lapierre, 1972.

"There is no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. Many young girls were raped and later slaughtered. Old women were also molested." General Richard Catling, British Army Assistant Inspector after interrogating several female survivors (The Palestinian Catastrophe, Michael Palumbo, 1987)

"Jews came and took, by means of uprooting and expulsion, a land that was Arab. We wanted to be a colonialist occupier, and yet to come across as moral at the same time... The Arab armies -- chiefly from Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Transjordan, now Jordan -- totaled just over 20,000 men. The core of the Arab nations' fighting forces remained behind, in part to ensure the internal stability of their own fledgling regimes.... Crucially, Israel had a quiet agreement with Transjordan that its Arab Legion, the strongest of the invading armies, would take over only the West Bank, which the U.N. partition plan had intended as the center of a Palestinian Arab State." -- Ilan Pappe', Israeli Historian at Haifa University.