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Democracy Now - Nov 27, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl?issue=20071127
Chomsky + Tutu: The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine-Israel
(Chomsky below and Tutu further down)
Not Through Annapolis
Noam Chomsky Says Path to Mideast Peace Lies in Popular Organizing
Against U.S.-Israeli "Rejectionism"
As the U.S. convenes a Mideast summit in Annapolis, Maryland today, we
spend the hour on the Israeli-Palestine conflict with two of the
world's leading thinkers: former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu
and world-renowned linguist Noam Chomsky. Chomsky says U.S. backing of
continued Israeli occupation and annexation of Palestinian land is the
biggest obstacle to peace. He says: "The crimes against Palestinians.
are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a
call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in
fact, it's likely to harm them. We have to face the reality that our
actions have consequences, and they have to be adapted to real-world
cir***stances, difficult as it may be to stay calm in the face of
shameful crimes in which we are directly and crucially
implicated." [includes rush transcript]
- ----------
Leaders from around the world are gathering in Annapolis, Maryland
today to take part in a U.S.-sponsored summit on the Middle East.
President Bush met separately with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House on
Monday. More than 40 organisations and countries, including Saudi
Arabia and Syria, are attending the conference today. Hamas was not
invited. A final agenda has not yet been drawn up, but a draft of a
joint do***ent was leaked to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. It makes no
mention of the situation in Gaza or of core issues like the status of
Jerusalem, settlements, borders, the separation wall and Palestinian
refugees.
Today, we spend the hour on the Israeli-Palestine conflict with two of
the world's leading thinkers: former South African Archbishop Desmond
Tutu and world-renowned linguist Noam Chomsky. They recently spoke at a
conference in Boston, sponsored by Sabeel, a Palestinian Christian
organization. The conference was titled "The Apartheid Paradigm in
Palestine-Israel: Highlighting Issues of Justice and Equality."
We begin with Noam Chomsky. A professor of linguistics at MIT for over
half a century, Chomsky is the author of dozens of books on US foreign
policy. His most recent is called "Failed States: The Abuse of Power
and the Assault on Democracy." Chomsky spoke before a packed audience
at Boston's historic Old South Church.
Noam Chomsky. Professor of linguistics at MIT for over half a century,
Chomsky is the author of dozens of books on US foreign policy. His most
recent is called "Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on
Democracy."
- --------------------------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: Leaders from around the world are gathering in Annapolis,
Maryland today to take part in a US-sponsored summit on the Middle East.
President Bush met separately with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House
Monday. More than forty organizations and countries, including Saudi
Arabia and Syria, are attending the conference today. Hamas was not
invited.
A final agenda has not yet been drawn up, but a draft of a joint
do***ent was leaked to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. It makes no
mention of the situation in Gaza or of core issues like the status of
Jerusalem, settlements, borders, the separation wall and Palestinian
refugees.
Today, we spend the hour on the Israel-Palestine conflict with two of
the world's leading thinkers: former South African Archbishop Desmond
Tutu and world-renowned linguist and author Noam Chomsky. They recently
spoke at a conference in Boston sponsored by Sabeel, a Palestinian
Christian organization. The conference was called "The Apartheid
Paradigm in Palestine-Israel: Highlighting Issues of Justice and
Equality."
We begin today with Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over a half-century. Chomsky
is the author of dozens of books on US foreign policy. His most recent
is called Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on
Democracy. Noam Chomsky spoke before a packed audience at Boston's
historic Old South Church.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Before saying a word, I'd like to express some severe
personal discomfort, because anything I say will be abstract and dry
and restrained. The crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories and elsewhere, particularly Lebanon, are so shocking that
the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme
actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it's likely
to harm them. We have to face the reality that our actions have
consequences, and they have to be adapted to real-world cir***stances,
difficult as it may be to stay calm in the face of shameful crimes in
which we are directly and crucially implicated.
Well, I've been asked to talk about the apartheid paradigm and the
proper response here, so I'll do that, though not without some
additional reservations. We have to recognize that there will be no
clear answer as to the question of whether the apartheid paradigm
applies in Israel or in Boston, right here, or elsewhere. The genre
has, after all, only one example: South Africa. And there are
similarities elsewhere in many dimensions, and it's fair enough to
bring them up, but there's very little point debating whether they are
close enough in one or another case to count as apartheid, because that
will never be settled, we know that in advance.
I've brought up similarities in the past, when I thought that they were
appropriate. Actually, the one time I recall clearly was exactly ten
years ago. That was at a conference at Ben Gurion University in Be'er
Sheva. It was on the anniversary of the thirtieth year of the military
occupation. And in the talk there, I quoted from a standard history of
South Africa on elections in the Bantustans, which I'll read; and just
change a few words, and you'll know what it's about.
"South African retention of effective power, through its officials in
the Bantustans, its overwhelming economic influence and security
arrangements, gave to this initiative of elections elements of a farce.
However, unlikely candidates as were the Bantustans for any meaningful
independent existence, their expanding bureaucracies provided jobs for
new strata of educated Africans tied to the system in a new way and a
basis for ac***ulation for a small number of Africans with access to
loans and political influence. Repression, too, could be indigenized
through developing homeland policy and army personnel. On the fringe of
the Bantustans, border industry growth centers were planned as a means
of freeing capital from some of the restraints imposed on industrial
expansion elsewhere and to take advantage of virtually captive and
particularly cheap labor. Within the homelands, economic development
was more a matter of advertising brochures than actual practical
activity, though some officials in South Africa understood the needs
from their own perspective for some kind of revitalization of the
homelands to prevent their economies from collapsing even further."
Well, I won't waste time expressing the similarities to the Occupied
Territories, but you can do that quite easily. Ten years ago, that was
the optimistic prospect for the Occupied Territories. By now, even
that's remote, and reality is far more grim than it was then. There's
no time and, I presume, no need to review the harrowing details.
We're now approaching George Bush's historic Annapolis conference, as
it's called, on Israel-Palestine, so we can anticipate a flood of
deceit and distortions to set the proper framework. And we should be
prepared to counter the propaganda assault, which has already begun.
Just to pick a couple of examples, Bostonians could read in the Boston
Globe a few days ago that at the Taba Conference in January 2001 -- now
quoting -- "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak accepted ideas floated by
President Bill Clinton that would have produced a Palestinian state in
97 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of Gaza," but these
forthcoming gestures failed. The evil Palestinians refused Israel's
generous offers, keeping to their time-honored insistence on seizing
defeat from the jaws of victory and proving they're not partners for
negotiation.
Well, there's one fragment of truth in this conventional fabrication:
there was a conference in Taba. And, in fact, it did come close to a
possible settlement, but the rest is pure invention. In particular, the
conference was terminated abruptly by Prime Minister Barak. The truth
is completely unacceptable, so the facts are either suppressed, as they
generally are, or, as in this case, just inverted. And we can expect a
good deal more of that. Actually, the truth about the Taba Conference
merits attention. That week, in one week in January 2001, that was the
one moment in thirty years when the United States and Israel abandoned
the rejectionist stance that they have maintained in virtual isolation
until the present.
And that may suggest some thoughts about another familiar fairytale
that you could read about a couple of days earlier in the New York
Times, where the respected policy analyst and former high government
official, Leslie Gelb, wrote that every US administration since 1967
has privately favored returning almost all of the territory to the
Palestinians for the purposes of creating a separate Palestinian state.
Note the word "privately." Crucial. We know what the administrations
have said publicly. Publicly they have rejected adamantly anything
remotely of the sort ever since 1967 -- '76, when the United States
vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement
on the international border, incor****ating all the relevant wording of
UN 242 -- it's the basic diplomatic do***ent to which Wa****ngton
appeals when it's convenient. The US veto -- it's worth bearing in mind
- -- is a double veto. One part of the veto is that the actions are
barred, of course. And it's also vetoed from history, as in this case,
so you'll work really hard to find it, even in the scholarly
literature.
AMY GOODMAN: We'll come back to Professor Noam Chomsky's address in
Boston, and then we'll go on to South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
They were both speaking at the Sabeel conference.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We return to MIT professor and author Noam Chomsky speaking
recently in Boston at the Old South Church at a conference called the
Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine-Israel.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Sometimes the public rejection of a separate Palestinian
state is more articulate and considerably more extreme, so it takes a
George Bush no. 1, who is reputed to be the most hostile to Israel of
US presidents. In 1988, as you know, the Palestinian National Council
formally accepted a two-state settlement, and the Israeli government
responded. This was the coalition government of ****mon Peres and
Yitzhak Shamir. They responded by issuing a formal declaration that
there can be no additional Palestinian state between Jordan and
Palestine -- "additional" because for ****mon Peres and his Labor
coalition, Jordan already was a Palestinian state. It's a view that's
attributed to the right wing, but that's mistaken. This is ****mon
Peres. The United States reacted to that with what was called the Baker
Plan -- James Baker, Secretary of State. The Bush Baker Plan endorsed
Israel's position without qualification and went on to add that any
Palestinian negotiators would have to accept that framework, namely no
second Palestinian state in addition to Jordan. That's Bush no. 1, the
alleged critic of Israel, and the respected diplomat James Baker.
Again, the truth is inconvenient, so virtually none of this was
re****ted, and you'll have to work -- search hard to extricate it from
the web of self-serving propaganda that dominates commentary and
re****ting, of which Leslie Gelb's article in the New York Times is a
typical, but not unusual, example.
Well, I'm not going to go on with that, but the diplomatic record is
one of uniform rejectionism, apart from the week in Taba, and unilateral
rejectionism, increasingly so. By now, virtually the entire world
agrees on the two-state international consensus of the past thirty
years, pretty much along the lines that were almost agreed upon at
Taba. That includes all the Arab States, who actually go beyond to call
for full normalization of relations with Israel. It includes Iran,
although you won't find that published here, which accepts the Arab
League position. It includes Hamas; its leaders have repeatedly
endorsed, called for a two-state settlement, even in articles in the US
press. That also includes Hamas's most militant figure, Khaled Meshaal,
who's in exile in Syria. And it includes the rest of the world. Israel
rejects it, and the United States backs that rejection fully, not in
words just, but in actions.
Bush no. 2 has gone to new extremes in rejectionism. He's declared the
illegal West Bank settlements must remain part of Israel. That's in
accord with the Clinton position, expressed by his negotiator Dennis
Ross, who explained that what he called "Israel's needs" take
precedence over Palestinian wants. That's Clinton. But the party line
remains undisturbed. Facts don't matter. Bush, Rice and the rest are
yearning to realize Bush's vision of a Palestinian state -- somewhere,
someplace -- persisting in the noble endeavor of the longtime honest
broker.
Well, what's happened in the past is -- of course, rejectionism goes far
beyond words. It includes settlement programs, the annexation wall,
closures, checkpoints, and so on. Settlements increased steadily right
through the Oslo years, peaking actually in Clinton's last year, the
year 2000, right before the Camp David Accords. And the story is now
being repeated before our eyes -- shouldn't surprise us.
So to take just one example, with the Annapolis conference approaching,
Israel has just confiscated more Arab land to build a bypass road from
Palestinians -- I'm quoting now -- "in order to push the Palestinian
traffic between Bethlehem and Ramallah deep into the desert and
effectively bar Palestinians from the central part of the West Bank."
That's part of the so-called E1 project, which is designed to
incor****ate the town of Ma'ale Adumim within Israel and effectively to
bisect the West Bank. "With such policies" -- continuing to quote --
"With such policies enacted by the government, the famous Annapolis
conference is emptied of all meaning long before it convenes." This is
quotes from the Israeli peace organization Gush Shalom. All of this is
backed by the honest brokers in Wa****ngton and paid for by US
taxpayers, who, incidentally, overwhelmingly join the international
consensus, in opposition to their own government. But that's not what
we're going to hear.
Well, in fairness, it should be added that there is occasional public
criticism of the settlement programs. So in the New York Times a couple
of weeks ago, there was a favorable review of a very im****tant study,
which has just been translated into English, Lords of the Land by Idith
Zertal and Akiva Eldar, which bitterly condemns the US-backed Israeli
programs in the West Bank and the takeover of Israeli political life by
their advocates. It's a strong and im****tant book.
The review, however, goes on with conventional fairytales. Among them,
it tells us that within the Green Line in Israel itself, Israel is what
it calls a "vibrant democracy" in which non-Jews have equal rights and,
unlike the West Bank, there are no Arab villages made inaccessible,
because their roads have been dug up by army bulldozers. Well, again,
there's a fragment of truth in the description. So take, for example,
the village Dar al-Hanoun in the so-called Triangle, Wadi Ara, it's
older than the state of Israel, but it's one of the innumerable
unrecognized villages in Israel. So it's true that there's no road dug
up by bulldozers, and the reason is that there's no road. No road is
permitted by the state authorities, and no construction is permitted.
No services are provided. That's not an unusual situation for
Palestinian citizens, who are also effectively barred from over 90% of
the land by a complex and intricate web of laws and administrative
arrangements. Technically, that was overruled by the high court seven
years ago, but, as far as I can determine, only technically. And we may
recall that in the United States it took over a century for even formal
implementation of the Fourteenth Amendment, guaranteeing equal rights
to all persons, and actual implementation of it is still remote a
century-and-a-half later.
Well, let's turn briefly to the im****tant question, the most im****tant
question: what can we do about it? Here, it's useful to think about the
apartheid analogy, and it's useful to remember a little history.
In 1963, the UN Security Council declared a voluntary arms embargo on
South Africa. That was extended to a mandatory embargo in 1977. And
that was followed by economic sanctions and other measures -- sometimes
officials, countries, cities, towns -- some organized by popular
movements. Now, not all countries participated. In the United States,
the US Congress did impose sanctions over Reagan's veto, but US trade
with South Africa then increased by various evasions, along with
concealed sup****t for South African terrorist atrocities in Mozambique
and Angola, which took a horrendous toll. It's about 1.5 million killed
and over $60 billion in damage during the Reagan years, the Reagan
years of constructive engagement, according to UN analysis. In 1988,
the Reagan administration declared Mandela's African National Congress
to be one of the world's most notorious terrorist groups -- that's 1988
- -- while it described RENAMO in Mozambique merely as an indigenous
insurgent group. That was after it had just killed about 100,000
people, according to the State Department, with, of course, US-backed
African sup****t. Thatcher's record was similar or maybe worse. But most
of this was in secret. There was just too much popular opposition.
And the popular opposition made a difference. There was a very
significant anti-apartheid movement decades after the global decision
of the Security Council to bring apartheid to an end. In 1965, boycotts
and other measures would not have been effective. Twenty years later,
they were effective, but that was after the groundwork had been laid by
activist, educational and organizing efforts, including within the
powerful states, which is what matters in an ugly world.
Well, in the case of Israel-Palestine, the groundwork has not been
laid. The quotes that I just gave are perfectly representative
examples; you can fill them out in books, yeah. The kind of popular
measures that were effective against apartheid by the late 1980s are
not only ineffective in the case of Israel-Palestine today, but in fact
sometimes backfire in harming the victims. We've seen that over and
over. It's going to continue until the organizing and educational
efforts make real progress. It's not just the United States; the
European Union is hardly different. So, for example, the European Union
does not bar arms deliveries to Israel. It joined the United States in
vicious punishment of Palestinians, because they committed the grave
crime of voting the wrong way in a free election. And there was very
little internal protest in Europe. Populations sup****t the
international consensus, but they don't react when their governments
undermine any hope for its realization.
Well, in the coming weeks and the longer term, there's plenty of
educational and organizational activity that will have to be carried
out among an American population that happens to be largely receptive,
though deluged with propaganda and deceit. And it's not going to be
easy. It's never been easy. But much harder tasks have been
accomplished with dedicated and persistent effort.
AMY GOODMAN: MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, speaking recently in Boston at
a conference called "The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine-Israel,"
sponsored by the Palestinian Christian organization Sabeel.
===========
The South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a key leader in the South
African fight against apartheid. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in
1984 and today continues to speak around the globe for peace and
justice. Denouncing the U.S.-backed occupation of Palestinian land,
Tutu says Israel and its sup****ters should follow biblical tradition of
"forever taking the side of the weak, the oppressed, the downtrodden
against the kings and the powerful oppressors." [includes rush
transcript]
- ------------------
The keynote speaker at the conference was the former South African
Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu was an inspirational leader in the South
African fight against apartheid. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in
1984 and today continues to speak around the globe for peace and
justice. In 2006, the Israeli government blocked Tutu from leading a UN
delegation into Gaza. He was to investigate the killing of 19
Palestinians in Gaza. Tutu made headlines recently when the University
of Saint Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota canceled an invitation for him
to speak at the school next spring. The president of the university,
the Reverend Dennis Dease, revoked the invitation over Tutu's criticism
of Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories. Dease also fired Cris
Toffolo as head of the university's peace and justice program, though
she remains a professor at the university. Toffolo had written Tutu a
letter explaining to him what had happened and why he was disinvited.
After a vocal public outcry from students and faculty, Dease apologized
to Tutu and invited him back to speak at the university. Tutu began his
speech at the historic Old South Church by addressing the issue.
Desmond Tutu. Former Archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel Peace Prize
winner.
- --------------------------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: The keynote speaker at the conference was the former South
African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He was an inspirational leader in the
South African fight against apartheid, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in
1984, today continuing to speak out around the globe for peace and
justice. In 2006, the Israeli government blocked Tutu from leading a UN
delegation into Gaza. He was investigating the killing of nineteen
Palestinians in Gaza.
Tutu made headlines recently when the University of Saint Thomas in St.
Paul, Minnesota canceled an invitation for him to speak at the school
next spring. The president of the university, the Reverend Dennis
Dease, revoked the invitation over Tutu's criticism of Israeli policy
in the Occupied Territories. Dease also fired Cris Toffolo as head of
the university's peace and justice program, though she remains a
professor at the university. She had sup****ted the invitation to Tutu.
After a vocal public outcry from students and faculty, Dease apologized
to Tutu and invited him back to speak at the university. Tutu began his
speech at the historic Old South Church in Boston by addressing the
issue.
DESMOND TUTU: As you probably know, someone put out a rather distorted
version of what I said here in 2002, and on the basis of that, the
president of St. Thomas University decided I shouldn't visit his
campus. It is good that he has since reversed this decision, and I want
to commend him very warmly for his courage in admitting publicly that
he was wrong. It is never easy to do that. I have received the
president's invitation, in which he makes a very handsome apology,
which I have accepted. And I am happy to accept his invitation,
provided it can be fitted into my schedule and if Professor Toffolo is
reinstated with no adverse comments in her academic file arising from
this unfortunate episode.
I thank God for my Hebrew antecedents. I thank God that I, too, am a
descendant of Abraham. I give thanks to God for the gift of the Holy
Scriptures, made up substantially of the Hebrew Scriptures, forming
what we conventionally refer to as our Old Testament. Even our New
Testament, which would be distinctively Christian, is incomprehensible
without taking its Jewish setting seriously. For instance, the name
Jesus is Greek for Joshua, the one who led God's people into the
Promised Land, and the word Christ is Anointed One, in Hebrew, Messiah,
whose coming was predicted in the Jewish scriptures and who was longed
for so poignantly by the Jews. I tell you nothing you do not already
know. I refer to it only to assert that spiritually I am of Hebrew
descent. That legacy has been of crucial im****tance for me in our
struggle against apartheid.
At the height of the struggle, when apartheid's repression was at its
most vicious and it seemed indeed as if the apartheid rulers were firmly
ensconced in power, when they had all but knocked out the stuffing of
their opponents and they were strutting the stage as invincible cocks
of the walk, then we turned to the inspiration of our Hebrew tradition
and antecedents.
We were able to revive and sustain our people's hope for their
vindication and the ultimate triumph of good over evil, of freedom over
injustice and oppression, by our references to our biblical traditions.
It was often quite exhilarating. I remember once when there had been a
massacre in one of our town****ps, which had been instigated by a
sinister Third Force linked to the apartheid security apparatus, our
bishops quite unusually suspended a session of Episcopal Synod so that,
as in the case of an Ezekiel, who sat side by side with stunned exiles,
so we would be a ministry of presence, and we held a service in one of
our ghetto town****p churches. The people were stunned, devastated by
the ****d violence of that massacre. I preached, and I used Exodus
3:1-9, God's words which Yahweh asked Moses to announce to the children
of Israel. And I said to our people gathered there, "Our God is not
deaf. Our God has heard our cries. Our God is not stupid. Our God knows
our suffering. Our God is not blind. God has seen and sees our pain and
anguish. And, yes, our God will come down and set us free." Yes, our
God will come down to open the prison doors and lead our leaders from
prison and lead our leaders back from exile, for we had learned from
our Jewish tradition that God, our God, is notoriously biased, forever
taking the side of the weak, the oppressed, the downtrodden, against
the kings and the powerful oppressors.
Our God had been met first in the Bible story not in a sanctuary; our
God was met first in the mundane world of politics, our God taking the
side of a rabble of slaves against the mighty Pharaoh. God, we said to
our people, is not neutral. God sided with Uriah the Hittite against
his own favorite, King David, after David's adultery with Bathsheba and
the murder of Uriah. Thou art the man. Anywhere else, the king could
have got away with both actions, but not in Israel. It really seemed as
if the Jewish scriptures were written specifically for us. The story of
Naboth's vineyard and King Ahab and Jezebel being confronted on
Yahweh's behalf by Elijah seemed to have been written especially with
our situation in mind, where blacks -- not exclusively, but
overwhelmingly -- were ****pped in their millions, like so many pawns in
population removal schemes, and dumped in poverty-stricken Bantustan
homelands, hardly able to eke out a living, cut off from the more
affluent so-called white South Africa.
AMY GOODMAN: Former South African archbishop, Nobel laureate, Desmond
Tutu, giving a speech at the Old South Church in Boston. We'll return
to the conclusion of his address in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We return to the conclusion of the address of the former
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who's speaking at the Old South
Church in Boston, speaking at a conference sponsored by the Palestinian
Christian organization Sabeel. Nobel Peace laureate Tutu spoke about
his struggle against the apartheid government in South Africa as a
religious leader.
DESMOND TUTU: It was exhilarating preaching to the oppressed and
downtrodden. The well-to-do, the powerful, often complained that we were
mixing religion with politics, and we would declare that we were doing
no more, in fact, than just preaching the Gospel. That's -- they had
brought us the Bible from wherever, and we were taking it seriously. We
would be accused of being political, and I often retorted, "I don't
know which Bible you are reading." I must say I have never heard the
poor complain, "Bishop Tutu, now you're being political!" If anything,
they would possibly have said, "You are not political enough."
And God vindicated us. Apartheid's rulers bit the dust, as all
oppressors have done always, for this is a moral universe. Right and
wrong matter. It cannot happen that evil, injustice and oppression can
have the last word. No, ultimately goodness, justice, freedom -- these
will prevail.
What is this to the point? Now, I could have spent a great deal of time
rehearsing what we all know, how I experienced a deja-vu when I saw a
security checkpoint which Palestinians had to negotiate most of their
lives, that I was reminded so painfully of the same checkpoints in
apartheid South Africa, when arrogant white policemen treated almost
all blacks like dirt, or when someone pointed to a house in Jerusalem
and said, "That used to be our home, but now it has been taken over by
the Israelis," which would make me recall so painfully similar
statements in Cape Town by coloreds who had been thrown out of their
homes and relocated in ghetto town****ps some distance from the town
center. I could have bemoaned the illegal wall that has encroached on
Palestinian land, separated families, divided property and made what
used to be a short walk to school turn into an expensive nightmare
voyage running the gauntlet of checkpoints, etc., etc. I could have
said there were things that even you didn't find even in apartheid
South Africa, that we had things that you didn't see in an apartheid
South Africa, such as collective punishment.
I have not gone that route. I have not gone that route. No, I have
chosen a different approach. My address is really a cri de coeur, a cry
of anguish from the depth of my heart, an impassioned plea to my
spiritual relatives, the offspring of Abraham like me: please, please
hear the call, the noble call of your scriptures, of our scriptures, to
be with the God of the Exodus who took the side of a bunch of slaves
against the powerful Pharaoh. Be on the side of the God who intervened
through His prophet Elijah on behalf of Naboth. Hear the plea of your
scriptures and stand with the God who intervened through his prophet
Nathan on behalf of Uriah against King David. Be on the side of the God
who revealed a soft spot in his heart for the widow, the orphan and the
alien. Be on the side of the God whose "Spirit sends us out to preach
good news to the poor." Don't be found fighting against this God, your
God, our God, the God who hears the cry of the oppressed, the God who
sees their anguish, the God who will always come down to deliver them.
Be not opposed to the God whose Spirit, when it anoints you, makes you
concerned for the poor. This is your calling. If you disobey that
calling, if you do not heed it, then as sure as anything one day you
will come a cropper. You will probably not suc***b to an outside
assault militarily. With the unquestioning sup****t of the United States
of America, you are probably impregnable. But you who are called are
they who are called, asked to deal with the oppressed, the weak, the
despised, compassionately, caringly, remembering what happened to you
in Egypt and, much more recently, in Germany. Remember and act
appropriately. If you reject your calling, you may survive for a long
time, but you will find it is all corrosive inside, and one day, one
day, you will implode.
A recent re****t by a clinical psychologist who was himself a soldier in
the Israeli Defense Force, Nufan Yishai Katrim at the Hebrew
University, speaks of how Israeli soldiers were gratuitously cruel and
carried out acts of brutality to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. One of
the soldiers, he said, told of how a new commander went out with them
on patrol. Because the curfew, there were no Palestinians in sight,
except a four-year-old Palestinian boy who was playing with the sand in
the backyard of his home. And this commander went and broke the arm of
this four-year-old. And another soldier told of how, whilst they were
on patrol, they encountered one Palestinian, and, quite unprovoked, one
of the soldiers shot him in the stomach, and they left him writhing on
the ground dying as they drove off. When you uphold an unjust
dispensation, it corrodes your humanity. In South Africa, a former
cabinet minister in the apartheid dispensation showed this. When he was
told of the death of Steve Biko in detention, Jimmy Kruger said it left
him cold.
Thanks be to God for the many, many Jews who know what their divine
calling is and who want the Israeli government to live it out. We
believe in a two-state solution of two sovereign, viable states, each
with contiguous borders, guaranteed as secure by the international
community. We condemn all acts of terrorism by whoever they are
committed. The suicide bomber has to be condemned for targeting
innocent civilians. But equally, the Israelis are to be condemned for
their acts of indiscriminate reprisal that, too, target innocent
civilians. We say, we say: please, please, learn at least one positive
lesson from apartheid South Africa.
Under Mr. F.W. de Klerk, who must be commended for his outstanding
courage, the apartheid rulers decided to negotiate, to negotiate not
with those they liked, but with their sworn enemy, and they found the
security that had eluded them for so long and that had cost so much
suffering and blood. It came not from the barrel of a gun. No, it came
when the legitimate aspirations and human rights of all were recognized
and respected. That was thirteen years ago, and the peace is still
holding. Many had predicted that South Africa would be overwhelmed by a
catastrophic racial bloodbath. It did not happen. It did not happen,
because they negotiated in good faith with their enemies.
Somebody has said if something has happened once, then clearly it is
something possible. It happened in South Africa; why not in the Middle
East?
The world needs the Jews, Jews who are faithful to their vocation that
has meant so much for the world's morality, for its sense of what is
right and wrong, what is good and bad, what is just and unjust, what is
oppressive and what sets people free. Jews are indispensable for a good
compassionate, just and caring world.
And so are Palestinians.
Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speaking
recently at the Old South Church in Boston, along with Noam Chomsky and
others, at a conference sponsored by the Palestinian Christian
organization Sabeel.
*
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