"Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid."

Begin's own recount of the exchange, at "acerbic" visit to the US Congress in 1982 (during the Lebanon War, to which Reagan himself reportedly referred to as "holocaust" [Ottawa Citizen, Aug 30, 1982]), as found in the official statement (June 03, 1982), wildly differs in not remotely being as combative | "Sir, do not threaten us with cutting aid. First of all, you should know that this is not a one-way street. You help us, and we are very grateful for your help; but this is a two-way street: We do a lot for you. And also in recent battles we did a lot for the United States; and I gave some examples, but this is not the place to go into them. Therefore, do not threaten us with cuts in aid, but take note: That if at any time you demand of us to yield on a principle in which we believe, while threatening to cut aid, we will not abandon the principle in which we believe - and propose cutting aid. The argument went approximately thus." | On the other hand, contemporary reports give the true quote as also being far less verbose. As found in Time Magazine's contemporary report (George J. Church, July 05, 1982) | "Don't threaten us with cutting off aid to give up our principles!"