Ha’aretz Recycles Unverified Golda Meir Quote
Seven years ago, after writing that Golda Meir “said that after what the Nazis did to us, we can do whatever we want,” Ha’aretz writer Gideon Levy admitted that he had no source for the virulent quote. In an Aug. 12, 2004 email to CAMERA, he acknowledged: “Therefore we dropped the quotation in the original version in Hebrew and by mistake it was printed in the English version.”
Today, Akiva Eldar, Levy’s colleague, recycles the unsubstantiated quote:
The death of John Demjanjuk recalls the declaration that Shulamit Aloni attributes to the late Prime Minister Golda Meir after the Eichmann trial: “Now, when everyone knows what they did to us, we can do anything we want and no one has the right to criticize us and tell us what to do.”
After searching for the Hebrew wording of this alleged quote, we learn that Shulamit Aloni cited the purported Meir statement in an Aug. 14, 2009 Op-Ed in Ha’aretz.
At the time, writer Uri Heitner blogged (CAMERA’s translation from the Hebrew):
Did Golda really say this? I never heard about it. Since I read the article, I checked with journalists and researchers if anyone knows about such a statement — no one has heard of it. The closest quote deals with the request not to impose the death sentence on Eichmann: “Only from us do they require this because the world is not accustomed to viewing the nation of Israel like the rest of the nations.” And what does Google have to say about the matter? There is a similar mention, in a lecture by Shulamit Aloni during a Gush Shalom panel discussion, during the second intifada. But based on what I know of Aloni and other like-minded Golda admirers, if Golda said these things, we would have been hearing about it non-stop.
So Shulamit Aloni wrote it, Ha’aretz published without checking, and by press time we were not able to get a comment from Golda Meir. It could be assumed that Golda will not deny the claim.
And yet. . . Shulamit Aloni ought to have been required to explain the basis for her claim. If Golda did say it, who heard her, how was it recorded.
Since then, Aloni has yet to provide this information, but that hasn’t stopped Eldar from recycling the unverified quote.
(See here for more on bogus Zionist quotes.)
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