"I can't understand why the Jews make such a fuss over a few dozen of their people killed in Palestine. As many are killed every week in London in traffic accidents, and no one pays any attention."-Beatrice Webb, wife (and active partner in all political activities) of the colonial secretary, Sidney Webb, upon meeting Chaim Weitzman in 1929 following the Arab massacre in Hevron, which left 60 Jews dead and 50 injured.
What is most revealing in this quote, besides the blatant disregard for human life exhibited by Webb, an educated and influential woman of her time, is the distinction made between the "fuss" that the Jew makes over the loss of one of its own vs. that made by the non-Jew over the loss of one of its own.
As anyone living in Israel knows too well, the loss of even one life, particularly under terrorist or other tragic circumstances, is mourned by thousands, no matter if that life was in this world for only one day or one hundred years.
The above quote can be understood from a different angle, when thinking about it in the terms that Golda Meir put it, "we will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us."
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