Attribution is not documentation.
Cite the source for this quote, as well as the precise date and place and circumstances.
I think you'll find this quote exists ONLY on anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist web sites, without documentation.
Tell a lie enough times and anyone will believe it, right?
EDIT: I tried, I really did. I looked over many pages to try tofind a legitimate attribution for this quote. ALL I found were quoted on anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist sites. NO neutral citations at all.
Find me ONE---just ONE--citation that lists the exact date and location or publication where this statement first occured. For a legitimate journalist, one would not be enough, but I will accept ONE legitimate citation.
And yes, Mr. Natural, objective and verifiable truth works well for me.
How is your unreasoned hate working for you?
EDIT #2: The complete text of Menachem Begin's speech to the Knesset, on June 8, 1982, can be found on the official web sote of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign affairs.
The page is at http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign+Relations/Israels+Foreign+Relations+since+1947/1982-1984/7+Statement+in+the+Knesset+by+Prime+Minister+Begin.htm
It is a long text, but I have located the out-of-context quote that was distorted by journalist Amnon Kapeliouk in The Statesman, June 25, 1982, and that hate groups have taken to almost surrealistic highs (or lows) in revisionism. Kapeliouk claimed Begin referred to Palestinians as "two-legged beasts."
In a lengthy speech about Palestinian terrorists, Begin spoke of terrorists who killed school children.
He said:
"I want to declare to all nations: The children of Israel will happily go to school and joyfully return home, just like the children in Washington, in Moscow and in Peking; in Paris and in Rome; in Oslo, in Stockholm and in Copenhagen. The fate of a million and half a million Jewish children has been different from all the children of the world throughout the generations. No more. We will defend our children. If the hand of any two-footed animal is raised against them, that hand will be cut off, and our children will grow up in joy in the homes of their parents."
The alleged quote given above by Mr. Natural was not anywhere in Begin's speech, NOR in the article in The Statesman.
The quote in this Y/A post is like some hideous example of the game of "telephone" in which a word or phrase is whispered around a circle until that message is severely distorted.
In this case, the quote, already badly distorted by Kapeliouk, was repeated over and over again on hate sites, with embellishments, until the original quote has all but disappeared under the offal of bigotry.
I would give Mr. Natural the benefit of the doubt, and allow that he might have been legitimately deceived, and would ask him to refrain from continuing to spread an ugly lie, and acknowledge his error here.
EDIT #3: The quote Mr. Natural cited above did NOT originate with Kapeliouk (who made a much less incendiary misquote), but has been found to have originated on an anti-Semitic site called Propaganda Matrix. The author of the quote is Texe Marrs.
EDIT #4: Rense is a known anti-Semitic site, but that aside, your "citation" is still false, as the quote is NOT part of the New Statesman article. The piece that was challenged by CAMERA and other pro-zionist watchdog groups was the one I cited to you and in my reply regarding the "two-legged beasts."
There is NO evidence that Kapeliouk EVER wrote the lengthy quote that has been ascribed to his article by Rense, or by Propaganda Matrix or any of the other blatantly anti-Zionist/ant-Jewish sites.
Even on the sites that refute Kapeliouk, such as the blatantly PRO-Zionist CAMERA watchdog site, NO reference to the text you cite is ever made in connection to Kapeliouk.
This is not only libel against Begin, but ALSO against Kapeliouk. I suspect you would favor Kapeliouk's anti-Zionist point of view, which is fine, but to use THIS quote in his name is not only unfair in reference to Begin, but also in reference to Kapeliouk.
THIS quote was a sheer fabrication, and cannot be found ANYWHERE but on such sites. I know. I spent HOURS last night looking for it, just to be sure!
PLEASE correct this!
EDIT #5: As of a few minutes ago, (2/4/09-12:25 pm CST) I have sent an e-mail to the editor of The New Statesman asking for either a copy of the original article or corroberation or denial that the "quote" Mr. Natural gives us ever appeared in Kapeliouk's article. I will report back on results. If successful, I will also contact snopes.com so this particularly nasty piece of defamatory and inflammatory garbage can be publicly refuted once and for all.
Hold onto your hat!
EDIT #6: Note: Marrs is a Holocaust denier. After that, nothing more need be said about his credentials.
EDIT #7: I agree with Mr. Natural that one can be either anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic or both. Please note that I refer to both, separately, although I find that all anti-Semitic web sites are also anti-Zionist, while the opposite is not necessarily true. Many people can oppose Israeli policies, or even question the need for/ or legitimacy of a Jewish state without being specifically anti-Jewish. Unfortunately, more often than not, there is a connection.
As for "revisionists" vs. "deniers"--it is a moot semantic difference to me, as both would impose an Orwellian view of history, erasing that which does not fit their vision or serve their political agenda. Yes, we now have more accurate counts of the dead than before, but the method of execution is well documented, even by the Nazis themselves, so I can hardly see how one can be an apologist for those who use the excuse of "questioning" as a means of advancing their own justification for intolerance.
I feel justified in labeling Marrs as a "denier" when he questions the veracity of Nobel Laureate Elie Weisel.
I have not yet determined if you are ingenuous or disingenuous. I'm waiting to see how you respond to the reply from The New Statesman, which, given the time difference between here and the U.K., will not occur until late tonight or early tomorrow, at best.
EDIT #8: Thank you, now we know who you are. You are clever, so for a while I was not sure. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I doubt no more.
Not for you, Mr. Natural (lost cause), but for those who might need to know:
The Nazis themselves documented many of their crimes. For example, the Höfle Telegram sent by SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle on January 11, 1943 to SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann in Berlin listed
1,274,166 Jews killed in the four camps of Aktion Reinhard during 1942 alone,
while the Korherr Report compiled by an SS statistician, gave a conservative total of
2,454,000 Jews deported to extermination camps or killed by the Einsatzgruppen.
The complete status reports of the Einsatzgruppen death squads were found in the archives of the Gestapo when it was searched by the U.S. Army, and the accuracy attested to by the former Einsatzgruppen members who testified during war crime trials and at other times. These reports alone list an additional
1,500,000 or so murders during mass shootings, the vast majority of these victims were Jews.
Do the math: 5,228,166
Not close enough to 6 million for you?
It does not include random, undocumented shootings by Nazi officers or members of the SS. In any case, is 5.2 million not enough death to qualify as genocide?
Further, surviving Nazi documentation spells out their plans to murder the Jews of Europe (see the Wannsee Conference), recorded the trains arriving at various death camps, and included photographs and films of many atrocities.
Now I know why you won't concede your errors.
You want to keep this going, hoping to draw more people into this web of lies.
I will not be back here to feed this well of historical revisionism and anti-Semitism. I will return when I hear from The New Statesman on the validity of the claim that Kapeliouk ever wrote anything remotely like the disgusting screed you posted above.
Meanwhile, check this out:
Is it better to ignore or to challenge "hate site" lies?
https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20090204133156AAzDuoU