Desmond
Tutu: Apartheid in the Holy Land
Desmond Tutu
The Guardian
April 29, 2002
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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