‘Gilad Schalit, you look fine. How are you?’

– and 30 other year-defining quotes.

By RICKY BEN-DAVID
Gilad Schalit, Barak, Netanyahu, Gantz (photo credit: Reuters)
Gilad Schalit, Barak, Netanyahu, Gantz
(photo credit: Reuters)
Here are some of this year’s most memorable quotes...
A. “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire- friendly Congress.”
B. “...It’s very precise, it’s almost never an emergency, and there is very little blood.”
C. “Let’s talk ‘dugri’”
D. “We are the 99 percent.”
E. “Oops.”
F. “I’ve hugged and kissed women, but not in an inappropriate way. We’ve become like Saudi Arabia. A hug is a sex offense.”
G. “Go away helicopter – before I take out my giant swatter :-/”
H. “I am on a drug.... It’s not available because if you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.”
I. “We have to spit on a girl who does not behave according to the laws of the Torah.”
J. “I can’t say with certitude.”
K. “This guy has a lot of money. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.”
L. “The people demand social justice.”
M. “All my people love me. They would die to protect me.”
N. “We have invented the Palestinian people.”
O. “...It’s the first time in my entire life that I’m proud to be Egyptian.”
P. “Some of the protesters in Russia are not exactly our friends.”
Q. “An aerial attack against Iran’s nuclear reactors would be foolish.”
R. “I have understood you. I have understood you well.”
S. “If anything happens to me, I request that the announcement be made to my parents in person, not over the phone.”
T. “What are we supposed to do when protesters break the law? Should we invite people from abroad to govern our nation?”
U. “In 30 years of service, I’ve never seen Jews express such hatred toward our soldiers.”
V. “The status quo is unsustainable.”
W. “Hillary, I’m still waiting for my money.”
X. “It’s very hard for me to see all the people who came here. If I could, I would have them all leave and hug you and whisper in your ear, ‘Let’s go play soccer one last time.’”
Y. “[He died of]... physical and mental overwork... [on his way to give] ‘field guidance.’”
Z. “Gilad Schalit, you look fine. How are you?”
aa. “Let us urgently build together a future for our children where they can enjoy freedom, security and prosperity.”
bb. “I just wanted to find her with my own hands.”
cc. “Error 404, Democracy was not found.”
dd. “It’s great to be part of the end. There’s closure.”
ee. “Jews that support multi-culturalism today are as much of a threat to Israel and Zionism as they are to us.”
White House situation room, bin Laden assassination
White House situation room, bin Laden assassination
...and who said them?
1. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry after unsuccessfully attempting to remember the third federal agency he would eliminate during a debate on November 9. The blunder is said to have effectively ended his campaign.
2. Charlie Sheen in a February interview with ABC News, in the midst of a very public meltdown following reports of substance abuse and domestic violence. After a two-month public spat with the creator of Two and a Half Men, Sheen was fired from the popular American show. Subsequently, he took to venting his frustrations on Twitter, which earned him more than one million followers in a matter of hours.
3. Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian man who in July detonated several car bombs in central Oslo, killing eight people, then went on a shooting rampage at an island summer camp, killing 69 teenagers. The statement is part of his 1,500-word manifesto, published online.
4. Late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, to several news organizations including the BBC, in March. Gaddafi’s 41-year rule came to a bloody end on October 20, after he was found hiding in a drain in Sirte, the city of his birth. His capture and death were recorded via mobile phone some eight months after the uprising against his rule began.
5. Nafissatou Diallo, 32, a hotel maid from Guinea who alleged that then-IMF head and once French presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn emerged naked from the bathroom of his luxury suite in New York on May 14 and sexually assaulted her.
6. “Moshe,” a haredi man from Beit Shemesh to a Channel 2 reporter who asked him about the incident involving eight-year-old Na’ama Margolis, who was spit on by haredi men on her way to school because she was “immodest.” The growing issue of discrimination against women in public domains (segregated bus lines, prohibiting women from singing in the IDF and so on) has gained wide media exposure over the past few months, inviting condemnation by both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres.
7. Naomi Hiraska, a Japanese tsunami and earthquake survivor who searched for her 12-year-old daughter’s body for six months after the devastating natural disaster claimed the lives of 21,000 people, displaced thousands of others and destroyed miles upon miles of land. After the authorities stopped searching, the mother earned a license to operate heavy machinery so she could use a digger to keep searching among the rubble. Her daughter’s body was found seven miles away from where she was last seen alive.
8. Syrian dictator Bashar Assad to Vogue magazine about studying eye surgery. The article came out in the March issue. In an interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters this month – 11 months after the first protests in his country started – Assad also said: “No government in the world kills its people, unless it’s led by a crazy person.” The UN is reporting that some 5,000 people have been killed so far in the unrest in Syria.
9. Egyptian reporter Shahira Amin in an “exclusive” interview with the not-quite-yet released soldier, who was held in Hamas captivity for five years. The ill-timed interview was sharply criticized for its insensitivity and apparent coerciveness.
10. Sohaib Athar, a.k.a. @ReallyVirtual, who was inadvertently tweeting the May 2 US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, as it was happening. Once the IT consultant realized that the most wanted terrorist in the world was dead, he tweeted: “Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.”
11. Ousted Tunisian President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in his last speech, a mere 24 hours before he and his family fled the country to Saudi Arabia, reportedly with a large amount of gold and money. Ben Ali ruled for 23 years and was only the second president since Tunisia gained independence from France in 1956. He stepped down on January 14 following weeks of unrest, sparked by the now famous incident of vegetable merchant Muhammad Bouazizi setting himself on fire after a humiliating encounter with a policewoman in Sidi Bouzid in December 2010.
12. SCAF General Adel Emara earlier this month, in a press conference to address the recurring unrest and the vicious beatings of protesters at the hands of armed Egyptian soldiers. Egyptian demonstrators have taken to the streets intermittently since the famous 26-day sit-in in Tahrir square which ended with the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.
13. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, in an interview with the Jewish Channel earlier this month. The comment caused an uproar and was widely condemned, not least by Palestinian leaders who called the statement “racist.”
14. Former president Moshe Katsav, in a statement he gave just before beginning to serve his seven-year prison term for rape, sexual abuse and sexual harassment, on December 6.
15. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a speech at the United Nations in September, as he submitted his formal application for recognition of Palestinian statehood.
16. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, at the United Nations in September, addressing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas after he launched his bid for Palestinian statehood that same day.
17. US President Barack Obama, during a Middle East speech on May 19 in which he expressed support for an Israel on the 1967 borders with mutually agreed land swaps, adding: “Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace.” The comment drew the ire of Netanyahu, with whom the president met just days later.
18. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, at a press conference on December 12 in Jerusalem.
Lieberman drew fire as he seemed to support the results of the parliamentary elections in Russia, which advanced Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s efforts for reelection to the presidency in 2012. The disputed results drove thousands of demonstrators into the Russian streets in protest of what they claim was election fraud.
19. A sign at an anti-Putin rally in Moscow on December 24 which drew tens of thousands of people. Putin had initially dismissed the demonstrators as “paid agents of the West.”
20. OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrahi, in a statement to the press, hours after settler extremists attacked an IDF base in the West Bank and hurled stones at an IDF officer earlier this month.
21. Motti Fogel, at the funeral of his brother Udi Fogel, his sister-in-law, Ruth, and three of their children, all of whom were brutally murdered in March on a Friday night in their home in Itamar.
22. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, at a Hebrew University gathering in May, in his first (of many) public remarks since leaving his post earlier this year. The comment(s) routinely anger Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak and tensions between Israel’s top officials and the former top spy have escalated steadily.
23. A tearful North Korean news presenter on national television announcing the death of “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il on December 19.
24. Billionaire Warren Buffett, in a New York Times op-ed on August 15.
25. US Col. Douglas Crissman, commander of the US army’s 3rd Brigade, the last brigade to leave Iraq this month, ending a war that claimed the lives of some 4,500 US soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqis, costing the US some $845 billion.
26. Yehonatan, the security officer for the Israeli embassy in Cairo, to the Jerusalem situation room during the storming of the embassy building by Egyptian protesters in September. The world watched and waited in horror as the crowd became more violent and entered the building where he and five other men barricaded themselves in a room. It was hours before they were rescued by Egyptian commandos.
27. Slogan of the US #Occupy movement.
28. Sharin, an Egyptian-American living in Brooklyn, to the website wnyc.com, in response to the million-man march in Egypt on February 1.
29. Slogan of the Israeli social justice movement which drew hundreds of thousands of people into the streets of Israeli cities this summer to demand change.
30. Then-US Rep. Anthony Weiner, when asked whether a lewd photograph was in fact him, on June 1.
31. A popular slogan at a May 25 protest in Greece against the austerity measures proposed by the government.
Find the answers here.