Adnan Pachachi - Quotes

Quotes

• "My feelings about Egypt and Gamel Abdel Nasser had deep rooted origins. In the first place I shared my father's belief that Egypt was the most important Arab country and that Iraq should at all times have the best relations with her. My father, in and out of power, consistently called for the closest ties with Egypt. It cost him his political career in 1950. He remained very close to Abdul Nasser and supported him during the fateful days of the Suez War. Being a fervent Arab nationalist, I was naturally attracted by Nasser's call for Arab unity, and during the Suez crisis I supported him without reservation. While I was at the United Nations at the height of a quarrel between Egypt and Qassim's regime, I had maintained the closest relations with my Egyptian colleagues. I admired Abdul Nasser because he personified, more than anyone, the idea of Arab unity and seemed the only leader capable of achieving it." (p. 69)

- Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "We are certain that sooner or later, the people of Asia and Africa will themselves help to expose the fraud that Israel is. They will understand that in the Arab world today, Zionism represents a force far more evil and dangerous than apartheid, an expansionist and aggressive force, bent upon dominating our lands and arresting the progress of our people." (p. 207)

- Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "With the exception of Eisenhower's noble stand against the Anglo-Franco-Israeli aggression in 1956, United States policies in the Arab Near East have been an unmitigated disaster for the Arabs." (p. 12)

- Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "As a result of my consistently anti-colonialist stand at the United Nations, I have often been accused of being anti-Western. This is an unjust accusation. In their handling of colonial questions, the Western powers have often violated their own principles and values. The ideals of justice, freedom and equality, which they loudly proclaimed, were frequently ignored when it came to the colonies." (p. 9)

- Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "I have always retained a soft spot for Khrushchev because of his wholehearted support for the Arab position in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Algerian war of independence." (p. 11)

- Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "Shorn of its pseudo-political and spiritual claims and pretensions, Zionism can be seen for what it really is: nothing more than an aggressive minority movement aiming at the subjugation of the majority and the usurpation of their country. In this, Zionism goes even further than similar movements of the European colons in Algeria and the white Boers in South Africa. In this connection, it is quite striking, perhaps revealing, that the Zionists in Palestine, the French colons in Algeria and the Afrikaners in South Africa use the same methods and profess the same false beliefs of racial superiority. Zionism did not lay claim to an empty wasteland; it laid claim to a country which for more than thirteen centuries, had been inhabited by an overwhelming Arab majority, by a people who shared a great common heritage with millions of others throughout Asia and Africa. Confronted with this claim, what was the Arab majority in Palestine expected to do? Were they - who constituted over 90 percent of the population - expected to surrender their homeland and accept meekly that the gates of their country be opened to unlimited immigration by aliens from all over the world until such time as those foreign immigrants became the majority of the population? What other peoples in the world have been asked to accept such a sacrifice? I beg you search your conscience and decide whether it is just for any people to be asked that they should in their country voluntarily become a minority and surrender their destiny to others. For thirty years the Arabs of Palestine waged a heroic but unequal fight against Britain. In 1936 they revolted, and their rebellion went on with undiminishing fury and intensity for three years and was only stopped by the outbreak of the Second World War. This revolt is one of the most stirring and heroic chapters in the history of Palestine. The Arab people of Palestine were unified as never before in their desperate struggle against the British colonialists and their Zionist allies. The Zionists, as always, have proved themselves in time of need as trusted and loyal friends of colonialism; they shall forever remain so because they would not be able to stand on their own feet for one minute without the constant help and support of the colonial powers." (p. 29-30)

- Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "My country, like many other Arab countries, has long suffered from foreign interference in its internal affairs. Moreover, as is well known, there are few areas in the world which have been afflicted as much by foreign military bases. These bases have been, and are still being, used to prevent parts of our Arab homeland from attaining freedom and independence. These bases are primarily used to maintain unequal relationships and protect positions of influence." (p. 77)

- Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• On the establishment of Israel: "This conflict arose because Zionists planned to establish a state in a country overwhelmingly Arab in population, in land-ownership, in language and in culture. Such intent was bound to be opposed by the Arabs. What nation in the world gives up its homeland to accommodate another? But according to Zionist mythology, Arab resistance against the Zionist intent to take away their country is itself aggression.The Zionists want to act against the Arabs and, at the same time, prevent the Arabs from reacting in the only way in which, given the divine dignity of the human soul, the Arabs can react in response to the Zionist action against them. War did not start in the Middle East when President Nasser recovered Arab sovereign rights at Sharm el Sheikh, thus wiping out the last vestiges of the tripartite aggression of 1956. Nor did it start with the desperate and heroic attempts of the people of Palestine to resist the Zionist occupation of their ancestral homeland. War was first declared in Palestine by the Zionists in 1897 at the first Zionist Congress meeting in Basle, at which it was decided to establish a Jewish state in a country which was 99 per cent Arab in population and land-tenure. The Zionist declaration of war against the Arabs was repeated more blatantly in the great collusion with the British government in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. For thirty years, under Zionist direction and behind the might of the British Empire, the infrastructure of the Jewish state was established in Palestine in the teeth of Arab resistance. Every Jew who entered Palestine between 1918 and 1939 did so at the points of British bayonets. The Palestine Arab rebellion of that period was directed against British imperialism for its forcible sponsorship of Zionism." (p. 124)

-Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "It will be recalled that the conflict between the late Patrice Lumumba and the colonialists arose primarily because of the effects of Belgium and its trusted tool, Tshombe, to dismember the Congo and violate its territorial integrity. Lumumba saw very clearly from the beginning that there would be no hope for the Congo unless its unity was preserved. He wanted to create from the diverse ethnic groups in the Congo a unified nation which would take its rightful place in Africa and the world at large. But that was a prospect that did not suit the Belgians and their friends. They wanted to see a weak and divided Congo deprived of the source of its wealth in Katanga, which as President Nkrumah said, was developed by the blood, sweat and sacrifice of the Congolese people. It is for this reason that our people and so many other peoples in Asia, Africa and elsewhere saw in Lumumba the eloquent and true representative of the progressive force of dynamic African nationalism which, despite temporary set backs, is forging ahead with a strong Africa united by the common heritage of its people and sustained by its determination to ensure for itself and its descendants a life of freedom and dignity, to which they have fervently aspired and which has been denied to them for so long." (p. 326)

-Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "The press of many Western countries abound with news commentaries and photographs extolling Israel's achievements and exploits, and scarcely hiding the perverse and malicious pleasure felt at the new tragedy that has befallen the people of Palestine. What can the meaning of all this be? Perhaps, in due course, some introspective and compassionate minds in the West might invest some time in soul-searching to analyse this curious phenomenon of Western, almost tribal, jubilation at Arab agony. Can it be that the temporary triumph of Zionist arms offers emotional compensation to some sections of the Western public for the post-Second World War retreat of Western colonialism before the advancing tide of Afro-Asian nationalism? Indeed, can we forget that Zionism is in fact chronologically the last wave of European demographic displacement at the expense of an Afro-Asian people?" (p. 118)

-Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "The Arab Americans, now much better organised than formerly, could influence the course of US policy in the Middle East. They would be well advised to strengthen their ties and coordinate with Black Americans. Both are victims of discrimination and stereotyping; together they can create a powerful pressure group equal in influence to the Zionist lobby in America." (p. 170)

- Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "The tragedy of the people of Palestine stands out, unique and unparalleled, in the annals of this or any other century. The Zionist aggression was not merely an armed invasion of a country and the imposition of alien rule on its inhabitants. Its aim was to destroy the Arab community of Palestine and permanently detach from the rest of the Arab world a country that had been an integral part of it for more than fourteen centuries." (p. 77)

- Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "With the exception of the United States, the entire world now accepts the Palestinian position as fair and realistic. The intifada was decisive in bringing about this new situation. The Arab nation owes a debt of gratitude to the young boys and girls who defied the brutal apparatus of Israeli oppression and restored to the people of Palestine their national honour." (p. 169)

-Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "The Iraqi people welcomed with great enthusiasm and joy the victory of the Cuban revolution, which came only months after our own great national revolution in Iraq. We sympathized with the people of Cuba because we fully understood and appreciated their problems and aspirations, which were strikingly similar to our own. A small country, rich in resources, yet its people toiling under the crushing burden of poverty and ignorance, a scandalous land-tenure system with a corrupt and despotic government subservient and tolerant to foreign interests but harsh and exacting on its own people. This was the Cuba of Batista. This was Iraq before 14 July 1958." (p. 333)

-Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "The United States, like every other great power, is not out to reform the world or make it safe for democracy. Its actions are designed to secure its own interests. The United States government, therefore, is ready to deal with dictators and liberals alike." (p. 334)

-Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "The British have left nothing to chance; so that even in the unlikely event that the tribal sheikhs of the Federation should one day ask for real independence or demand the withdrawal of nuclear weapons and other military installations from Aden, the British government can veto such demands. Here then is a case of a Territory which the British government does not even pretend to be preparing for independence. It is a military base and will remain a military base whether its inhabitants or the people of the other Arab countries who are directly threatened by the base like it or not. In other words Aden is to remain forever a colony. This is a description of colonialism at its worst, colonialism which is based purely and simply on greed. I may say, in passing, that at least in this instance we are mercifully spared the hypocrisy of the white man's burden and civilising mission. Aden is to be maintained as a base to protect this system of exploitation and greed." (p. 206)

-Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "My strong sense of identification with every Arab country struggling for its freedom, and especially with Palestine, and my belief in Arab unity has become stronger over the years. Without unity I see no future for the Arabs, and I am proud to call myself a fervent Arab nationalist."(p. 19)

-Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)

• "I was against the invasion of Iraq. But after the war I thought I would go back to Iraq in order to help establish a sector of democracy in the country which I think Iraq needed at the time. But unfortunately the United States government came with the firm belief that Iraq’s society by its nature is divided along sectarian lines and therefore the political system which was established had to reflect those differences. I think that was a grave error in my opinion and it opened the way for the sectarian parties to gain power. But they proved to be unequal to the task of governing and the government of the last four years or five years can be characterized in two words. Corrupt and incompetent."

• "The relations of the Arab people with Western Europe have been influenced by two major factors: religion and colonialism. The rise of Islam in the Mediterranean region coincided with the consolidation of the power of the Christian Church in Western Europe. The inevitable clash between the two great movements was climaxed in the Crusades. After this first European incursion into the Arab world, there elapsed 500 years during which Western Europe vastly increased its power while the Arab world lived through a long period of stagnation and decay under foreign rule. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Arab countries fell under European domination in rapid succession: Algeria in 1830, Tunisia in 1881, Egypt in 1882, the Sudan in 1898, Morocco in 1907-12, Libya in 1911, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria in 1918. The history of the Arab world during the past hundred years has been dominated by the struggle against European domination. The tragic experience and bitter memories of the numerous conflicts that arose between the Arabs and their colonizers could not but influence the Arabs' thinking and their approach to international relations when they finally emerged after the Second World War as fully independent nations responsible for the management of their own affairs."(p. 400)

-Iraq's Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record (Quartet Books, 1991)