Ramzy Baroud, who writes obsessively anti-Israel pieces in many left-wing publications, just wrote another screed, and I noticed it contained this quote:
When Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time, compared Palestinians in a Jerusalem Post interview (August 2000) to “crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more,” he was hardly diverting from a consistent Zionist tradition that equated Palestinians with animals and vermin.Sure enough, throughout the Internet one will find this quote by Barak in a supposed August 2000 interview with the Jerusalem Post. See, for example, Wikiquote on Ehud Barak.
So, did Barak really say that?
Two minutes of research in the Jerusalem Post archives finds this:
Tibi is acting like the scorpion on the turtle's back, in the well- known story: The scorpion promises the turtle not to sting him if he carries him over the river. In the middle of the river, the scorpion stings the turtle, and says proudly: "It's a matter of character. "Jews are the turtle that brought Tibi to the Knesset, to Kol Yisrael, and to television. A high-ranking source close to [Ehud Barak] has said that if an agreement is not reached, the Palestinians will be like crocodiles: "the more you feed them, the hungrier they get."This is quite different than the quote that supposed Palestinian Arab "scholars" bandy about as fact. In fact, this quote - not by Barak - was meant to push Israel towards compromise with Palestinian Arabs, not to insult them.
It is not worth fisking someone like Baroud, as he is simply not that important. But this just shows, yet again, that the truth is not on the Arab side, and they know that if they make stuff up that their audience will willingly believe it anyway.