Golda Meir

==="There was no such thing as Palestinians"===
{{Main|There was no such thing as Palestinians}}
[[File:Golda Meir 03265u.jpg|thumb|upright|Meir in 1973]]
In June 1969, on the two-year anniversary of the [[Six-Day War]], Meir stated in an interview that "[[there was no such thing as Palestinians]]", a comment later described by [[Al Jazeera Arabic|Al Jazeera]] as "one of her defining – and most damning – legacies."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Said |first=Edward |date=1998 |title=Fifty years of dispossession |url=http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/03064229808536356 |journal=Index on Censorship |language=en |volume=27 |issue=3 |pages=76–82 |doi=10.1080/03064229808536356 |issn=0306-4220}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Soussi |first=Alasdair |date=2019-03-18 |title=The mixed legacy of Golda Meir, Israel's first woman PM |url=https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2019/3/18/the-mixed-legacy-of-golda-meir-israels-first-female-pm |access-date=2024-02-17 |website=Al Jazeera |language=en}}</ref> This phrase is considered to be the most famous example of Israeli denial of [[Palestinians|Palestinian identity]].<ref name=Waxman>{{cite book |last= Waxman |first= D. |title= The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending/Defining the Nation |page= 50 |publisher= Palgrave Macmillan US |year= 2006 |isbn= 978-1-4039-8347-3 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=oUHIAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA50 |access-date= 2021-11-22}}</ref>

The interview entitled ''Who can blame Israel'' was published in ''[[The Sunday Times]]'' on June 15, 1969, and included the following exchange:
* Frank Giles: Do you think the emergence of the Palestinian fighting forces, the [[Palestinian fedayeen|Fedayeen]], is an important new factor in the Middle East?
* Golda Meir: Important, no. A new factor, yes. There was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either [[southern Syria]] before the First World War and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist.<ref>{{cite news|author=Frank Giles|title = Golda Meir: 'Who can blame Israel'|newspaper=Sunday Times|date=June 15, 1969|page=12}}</ref>