On November 17, according to the daily Haaretz, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai said of Gaza: The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for forty years. » (« The purpose of this operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will we be quiet for forty years. ")
This is a statement " humanist of a democratic state. In general, the civilized threaten to bring the barbarians back to the stone age (one would have thought that they were already there) ; here, the Israeli minister turns out to be more moderate: after all, the Middle Ages are better than prehistory...
General Curtis LeMay, head of the US Army's Strategic Air Command, said of the Vietnam he was bombarding in the 1960s: My solution to the problem would be to tell [the North Vietnamese Communists] frankly that they've got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression or we're going to bomb them into the Stone Age. And we would shove them back into the Stone Age with Air power or Naval power—not with ground forces. » (« My solution to the problem is to bluntly tell the North Vietnamese Communists to be careful and stop their aggression, or we will bomb them enough to take them back to the Stone Age. And we will do it with our air and naval forces, not with our ground troops) Mission With LeMay: My Story (1965), p. 565.) LeMay later claimed that he simply meant that the United States had the ability to return Vietnam to the Stone Age, not that it would.
In an article on American cinema and the war, published in Le Monde diplomatique in April 2002 (“ Filming the Vietnam conflict », available on the DVD-rom of Le Monde diplomatique), Ignacio Ramonet writes:
" An American officer tells the children of a school his impressions of Indochina: "The Vietnamese, he says, are very backward, very primitive ; they mess up everything. Without them, Vietnam would be a beautiful country.” We see very clearly the regret of a radical solution ("no people, no problem") of the "Indian solution" type that General William Westmoreland, head of the expeditionary force, must have been tempted to apply without scruples because, affirms he, “Eastern people attach less value to life than Western people”. »
In an interview, he was to say: The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient. » (« The Oriental does not place the same value as a Westerner on life. Life is abundant. Life is cheap in the East. “) One would think to hear certain Israeli officials talking about the cost of living among Palestinians.
On the eve of the offensive against Iraq, after the invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, President Bush senior also declared " We'll take them back to the Stone Age (we find this quote in many texts, but I did not find precise references – date, origin, etc.: if a reader finds them, please forward them).
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— Daytona Times Fri Mar 20 15:01:49 +0000 2020
Addition and thanks to Zulficar Al-Ansari for these precisions: It is in fact the American Secretary of State James Baker who pronounced these words during the meeting of January 8, 1991 which he had held with his Iraqi counterpart in Geneva in the day before the war.
In another article in Le Monde diplomatique, (“ win the peace February 1991), Ignacio Ramonet writes: As early as January 19 [1991], Washington estimated that Iraq " must be destroyed militarily, regardless of whether it withdraws from Kuwait ". And François Mitterrand admitted: “It is necessary naturally [sic !] destroy the military-industrial potential of Iraq.” »
In April 2010, an Israeli minister declared, in an interview with the British Sunday Times, that if a Hezbollah missile hit his country, Israel“ will destroy[it] the infrastructure of Syria and bring[it] back to the stone age (quoted by Y-Net, “ Report: Israel threatens to send Syria back to Stone Age », April 18, 2010).
In September 2012, the press revealed that the Israeli army had plans to " take iran back to the stone age » (« Israel could send Iran 'back to the stone age' with electromagnetic bomb », The Times of Israel, September 9, 2012).
And if you are wondering about international law, ponder this sentence from a late 19th century German expert:
" International law becomes mere phrases if we also want to apply its principles to barbarian peoples. To punish a Negro tribe, it is necessary to burn its villages, nothing will be accomplished without setting an example of the sort. If, in such cases, the German Empire applied international law, it would not be humanity or justice, but shameful weakness. (quoted in Alain Gresh, Of what is Palestine the name ?)
