By, among other, the Toronto Star.
They explain:
Damaging Israeli misquote finally corrected TheStar.com - World - Damaging Israeli misquote finally corrected
It was a hot day in summer – or so they say – when Moshe Yaalon delivered a harsh, unyielding verdict on the fate of a thwarted nation. "The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people," the Israeli officer said – or is said to have said.
The year was 2002,..There's just one problem. Yaalon did not say what he is supposed to have said.
Certainly, Yaalon did not speak these words during a 2002 interview with Ari Shavit, a reporter with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in whose pages the now-notorious remark is widely supposed to have originally appeared.
...in January, after Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi repeated the quotation in an op-ed piece for The New York Times, attributing it to Yaalon.
That finally set the wheels of editorial clarification in motion.
...the error originated with Henry Siegman, a pundit and academic formerly associated with the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington-based think tank.
In a piece for The New York Review of Books in December 2003, Siegman referred to Yaalon as "the official who had formerly talked of how war would `sear deep' into Palestinian consciousness that they are a defeated people."
In that instance, the only words that appeared in quotation marks were "sear deep."
But in August 2007, in an article for the London Review of Books, Siegman repeated the passage almost word for word and, this time, he placed the entire phrase in quotation marks, once again attributing it to Yaalon.
This past February, Time magazine printed a version of the quote similar to Siegman's – "It will be seared deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people" – and credited Yaalon for the remark...
...In the 2002 Haaretz interview, in which he is supposed to have uttered the offending words, Yaalon actually seems to have been trying to make a very different point.
Attempting to define what would constitute an Israeli victory in the Palestinian conflict, he said the following:
"I defined it from the beginning of the confrontation – the very deep internalization by the Palestinians that terrorism and violence will not defeat us, will not make us fold."
But Daniel Pipes has another opinion:
With the record now clear that Ya'alon did not say this in 2002, I would like to say it on my own behalf in 2009. Here goes: The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.
There, I did it.
It sums up my understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict and accurately represents my views. The world may quote me on it without fear of contradiction. (August 8, 2009)
