Azzam Pasha quotation The Azzam Pasha quotation refers to a statement made by Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam , the Secretary - General of the Arab League from 1945 to 1952 , in which he declared in 1947 that , were a war to take place with the proposed establishment of a Jewish state , it would lead to " a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades . " The quote was universally cited for decades as having been uttered on the eve of the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and the Arab states several months later . The source of the quote was traced by the Computer Scientist Brendan McKay to an October 11 , 1947 article in the Egyptian newspaper Akhbar al - Yom , titled " A War of Extermination " , which included the quote , with the added words " Personally , I hope the Jews do not force us into this war , because it would be a war of extermination and momentous massacre . . . " . The historian Efraim Karsh considers this quote a " Genocidal threat " . The Israeli historian Tom Segev has disputed Karsh ' s interpretation , saying that " Azzam used to talk a lot " and pointing to another statement from May 21 , 1948 , in which Azzam Pasha declared his desire for " equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine " . The quotation in historical context . The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine was set up in May 1947 to develop proposals for the partition of Palestine . Recommendations to this effect were made in September of that year . The majority plan proposed a distinct two - state solution , the minority plan foresaw a federal state . The Arab countries were unanimous in their negative reactions to both plans , and openly spoke of taking up arms were either of these proposals enacted . For Ernest Bevin , the British Foreign Secretary , the majority plan would only lead to an outbreak of generalised violence , as clearly unjust to the Arabs , whilst the minority plan was inapplicable since it assumed a prior accord between Jews and Arabs . On September 15 , Azzam Pasha , who was held in high esteem by David Ben - Gurion , met a Zionist delegation in London , consisting of Abba Eban , David Horowitz , both liaison officers with the Jewish Agency who were accompanied by the journalist Jon Kimche . The emissaries stated that there was no doubt that a Jewish state would be established and requested that the Arab states accept the consequences and cooperate . They were willing to give cast - iron guarantees against any form of Jewish expansionism . Azzam Pasha , in his capacity as Secretary General of the Arab League , suggested that the Zionist project be abandoned , and that the Jews could integrate themselves into Arab society on the basis of autonomous entities . He argued that it was pointless to appeal to political realism when the whole Zionist project demonstrated the efficacy of will - power . There was no option but war . The Zionists , he argued , would be thrown out in the future , just as the Crusaders had been . His Zionist interlocutors read this statement as a fascist declaration , unable , according to Henry Laurens , to see that , as with the Jews of Europe , emancipation from enslavement for the Arabs was seen as requiring recourse to force . In Horowitz ' s account , Azzam declared , " We shall try to defeat you . I am not sure we ' ll succeed , but we ' ll try . We were able to drive out the Crusaders , but on the other hand we lost Spain and Persia . It may be that we shall lose Palestine . But it ' s too late to talk of peaceful solutions . " On being informed of the content of Azzam ' s declaration , Ben - Gurion , who considered Azzam the " most honest and humane among Arab leaders " , and who had earlier , on June 18 , 1947 , ordered the Haganah to prepare for a war he himself thought inevitable , synthesized Azzam ' s position in the following words : - " As we fought against the Crusaders , we will fight against you , and we will erase you from the earth . " At the pan - Arab summit of the 19th September 1947 , which convened at Saoufar in Lebanon , the League decided to employ all available means to ensure the independence of Palestine as an Arab state . On October 11 , the editor of Akhbar al - Yom , Mustafa Amin , ran an interview he had obtained from Azzam Pasha to report on the outcome of the summit . The article was entitled , " A War of Extermination , " ( Arabic transliteration required ) , and in one passage contained the following words . In early December 1947 Azzam told a rally of students in Cairo that " The Arabs conquered the Tartars and the Crusaders and they are now ready to defeat the new enemy , " echoing sentiments he had expressed to a journalist the previous day . Jewish Agency Memorandum . A Jewish Agency memorandum , submitted on February 2 , 1948 , to the U . N . Palestine Commission , tasked with the implementation of the partition resolution , and yet again to the U . N . secretary - general on March 29 , 1948 , referred to the Azzam Pasha quotation , citing the October 11 , 1947 article in Akhbar al - Yom . The uses to which the quotation was put . At the time of the utterance , according to Segev , the Arab - Israeli conflict was raging also in the media of the day , as either side sought to show the other side was agitating for war . Azzam had , he concludes , ' supplied the Zionists with a sound bite that serves Israeli propaganda to this very day , ' and some 395 books , and roughly 13 , 000 websites cite this excerpt to this day . Azzam ' s quoted first sentence , without its initial caveat , appeared in English in a Jewish Agency memorandum to the United Nations Palestine Commission in February 1948 . During the next few years , the same partial sentence appeared in its correct 1947 setting in several books . However , by 1952 , many publications , including one published by the Israeli government , had moved its date to 1948 , specifically to May 15 , 1948 , shortly after the outbreak of the 1948 Arab – Israeli War . As the war got underway , the Jerusalem Post quoted a further declaration from him : - Quotation source and authenticity debate . Until 2010 , the source of the quotation has been commonly claimed to be a press conference in Cairo in May 15 , 1948 , one day before the first day of Israeli independence , which some versions say was broadcast by the BBC . An Egyptian writer in 1961 maintained that the quotation was " completely out of context " . He wrote that " Azzam actually said that he feared that if the people of Palestine were to be forcibly and against all right dispossessed , a tragedy comparable to the Mongol invasions and the Crusades might not be avoidable . . . . The reference to the Crusaders and the Mongols aptly describes the view of the foreign Zionist invaders shared by most Arabs . " In 2010 , doubt over the provenance of the quotation was voiced by Joffe and Romirowsky and by Morris . In 2010 , the source of the quote was traced by the Computer Scientist Brendan McKay to an October 11 , 1947 article in the Egyptian newspaper Akhbar al - Yom , titled " A War of Extermination " , which included the quote , with the added words " Personally , I hope the Jews do not force us into this war , because it would be a war of extermination and momentous massacre . . . " . McKay shared his discovery with a pro - Israeli researcher David Barnett , who then published a paper on his discovery together with Karsh . Karsh nonetheless accuses McKay of failing to share it ' with the general public ' on Wikipedia , ' so as to keep Arab genocidal designs on the nascent Jewish state under wraps ' , which McKay called ' quite a distortion ' . Interpretation debate . Karsh , together with his co - author , the researcher David Barnett , consider the Azzam Pasha quotation a " Genocidal threat " . Tom Segev , also an historian , disputes this interpretation , saying that " Azzam used to talk a lot " and pointing to another statement from May 21 , 1948 , in which Azzam Pasha declared his desire for " equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine " . In response to Segev , Karsh wrote that while it is true that Azzam was prepared to allow survivors of the destroyed Jewish state to live as Dhimmi s , in his view " this can hardly be considered an indication of moderation " . Akhbar el - Yom interview . In the interview to Akhbar el - Yom , Azzam predicted Palestine would be entered by large numbers of Muslim volunteers from many countries . He said that the fight would have three dimensions : faith , looting , and unstoppability , and argued that the Arabs knew how to carry on after a defeat , whereas , according to the interview , the Jews did not . He concluded ,