Apartheid in the Holy Land
- From: Surfer <no@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:11:58 +1030
Desmond Tutu
The Guardian, UK
29 April 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/29/comment
In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish
people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the
disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression
and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron
of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to
secure borders.
What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to
another people to guarantee its existence. I've been very deeply
distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of
what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the
humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks,
suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from
moving about.
On one of my visits to the Holy Land I drove to a church with the
Anglican bishop in Jerusalem. I could hear tears in his voice as he
pointed to Jewish settlements. I thought of the desire of Israelis for
security. But what of the Palestinians who have lost their land and
homes?
I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now
occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the
head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and
said: "Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is
now occupied by Israeli Jews."
My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish
sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten
the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history
so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble
religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about
the downtrodden?
Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing
another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice.
We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the
corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the
violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the
inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured.
The military action of recent days, I predict with certainty, will not
provide the security and peace Israelis want; it will only intensify
the hatred.
Israel has three options: revert to the previous stalemated situation;
exterminate all Palestinians; or - I hope - to strive for peace based
on justice, based on withdrawal from all the occupied territories, and
the establishment of a viable Palestinian state on those territories
side by side with Israel, both with secure borders.
We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our
madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same
everywhere else in the world. If peace could come to South Africa,
surely it can come to the Holy Land?
My brother Naim Ateek has said what we used to say: "I am not pro-
this people or that. I am pro-justice, pro-freedom. I am anti-
injustice, anti-oppression."
But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is
placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticise it is to be
immediately dubbed anti-semitic, as if the Palestinians were not
semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group.
And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with the
apartheid government on security measures?
People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong
because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what?
For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe.
The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer
exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin
were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.
Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful
have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what
is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the
basis of that, God passes judgment.
We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of
Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace
based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to
achieve this peace, because it is God's dream, and you will be able to
live amicably together as sisters and brothers.
==============================
Desmond Tutu is the former Archbishop of Cape Town and chairman of
South Africa's truth and reconciliation commission. This address was
given at a conference on Ending the Occupation held in Boston,
Massachusetts, earlier this month. A longer version appears in the
current edition of Church Times.
.
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