Best quotes by Israel Shahak

Israel Shahak

Israeli professor of organic chemistry

Israel Shahak (born Israel Himmelstaub, 28 April 1933 – 2 July 2001) was an Israeli professor of organic chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a Holocaust survivor, an intellectual of liberal political bent, and a civil-rights advocate and activist on behalf of both Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews). For twenty years, he headed the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights (1970–90) and was a public critic of the policies of the governments of Israel. As a public intellectual, Shahak's works about Judaism proved controversial, especially the book Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (1994).

All quotes by Israel Shahak:

That is a Nazi expression. The Nazis called Germans who defended Jewish rights self-hating Germans.

You cannot have humane Zionism, it is a contradiction in terms.

I strongly believe that antisemitism and Jewish chauvinism can only be fought simultaneously.

We realize that by criticizing Jewish fundamentalism we are criticizing a part of the past that we love. We wish that members of every human grouping would criticize their own past, even before criticizing others.

It is my considered opinion that the State of Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of this term: In this state people are discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most important areas of life, only because of their origin. This racist discrimination began in Zionism and is carried out today mainly in co-operation with the institutions of the Zionist movement.