Desmond Tutu, after a visit to Israel: "If I were to change the names, a description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could describe events in South Africa [under apartheid]"; and in April 2002: "I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at roadblocks. It reminded me of what happened to us in South Africa, where they battered us and heckled us, and took joy in humiliating us." The apartheid prime minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, said: "Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state." A UN convention of 1973 defined apartheid as "inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination of one racial group of persons over another racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them". This clearly applies to Israeli domination over the Palestinians.
Hilary Rose and Steven Rose Monday July 15, 2002 The Guardian The carnage in the Middle East continues; today a suicide bomber, tomorrow an Israeli strike on Palestinians with helicopters, missiles and tanks. The Israelis continue to invade Palestinian towns and expand illegal settlements in the occupied territories. Ariel Sharon refuses to negotiate while "violence" (ie Palestinian resistance) continues. Our own government sheds crocodile tears at the loss of life while inviting a prime minister accused of war crimes to lunch and providing his military with F16 spare parts. Yet every rational person knows that the only prospect of a just and lasting peace lies in Israel's recognition of the legitimacy of a Palestinian state and the Arab world's acceptance of a secure Israel behind its 1967 borders. That is what every peace plan proposes. But how to get from here to there? Is there anything that ordinary citizens, that is civil society, can do to bring pressure to bear to compel our governments and international institutions to move the peace process forward? One of the nonviolent weapons open to civil society to express its moral outrage is the boycott. Internationally this has been most successful against apartheid South Africa. It took many years but ultimately shamed governments and multinational corporations into isolating this iniquitous regime. The boycott called last year by Palestinian solidarity movements was against Israeli products. This too moves slowly, but only a couple of weeks ago it secured a ban on the sale of settlement-produced goods illegally labelled "made in Israel". The international academic, cultural and sporting communities had played a major part in isolating South Africa and we have increasingly learned of individuals who thought that cooperating with Israeli institutions was like collaborating with the apartheid regime. A writer refused to have her play acted in Israel, a musician turns down an invitation to perform or an academic to attend a conference. It was these individual ethical refusals which led us to make the restricted call for a moratorium on European research and academic collaboration with Israeli institutions until the Israeli government opened serious peace negotiations. We noted that Israel, a Middle Eastern state, was accepted as an integral part of the European scientific community while its neighbours were not. We canvassed a draft of the letter among colleagues in the UK and other European countries, and within days signatures of support came flowing in. When the letter was published in the Guardian in April, it had over 120 names on it. A matching letter was published in France; its website now carries more than a thousand names. Another call was published in Italy, another in Australia. The Association of University Teachers adopted the moratorium call; the lecturers' union, Natfhe, an even stronger resolution. In similar vein an advertisement signed by Jewish Americans appeared in the New York Times calling for US disinvestment from Israel until peace negotiations were opened. What is self-evident is that a cultural and economic boycott is slowly assembling. It is not one monolithic entity. It varies from the very modest resistance suggested in our initial letter, such as personally refusing to take part in collaborative research with Israeli institutions, to more public gestures of opposition. Such acts are painful, even though the target is institutional, actions often mean a breach with longstanding colleagues. It is thus important that the boycott is coupled with positive support for those Israeli refuseniks who continue to oppose the actions of their elected government. It is this that makes suggestions, such as that by Jonathan Freedland in last week's Guardian, that the boycott is in some way comparable to that imposed by Nazi Germany on Jewish shops, so grotesquely hyperbolic. It matches the many hate emails that those who have endorsed the boycott have received, accusing them of anti-semitism or even Holocaust denial. If the supporters of the Israeli government cannot distinguish between being opposed to Israeli state policy and being anti-semitic, it is scarcely surprising that real anti-semites conflate the two. Faced with this growing international movement, some have cried foul. Does the boycott not risk endangering those fragile academic links between Israelis and Palestinians that do exist? Yet these are in far greater danger as a result of the restrictions on movement which the Israeli government places on Palestinian researchers, and the repeated attempts to close down Palestinian universities. And no Palestinian has voiced this concern; on the contrary many among their academic community, such as those at the University at Bir Zeit, have endorsed the boycott call as helping to draw attention to the brutal restrictions on their academic freedom to teach, study and research. The exaggerated attention to the "academic freedom" issues raised by the unilateral removal from an editorial board of two Israeli academics by one signatory to the boycott call is like focusing on a potential local mote to avoid the flagrantinternational beam. This sudden institutional preoccupation with academic freedom is not without historical interest. During the height of the student movement of the late 1960s, university lecturer Robin Blackburn was sacked for a post-hoc endorsement of students who removed the London School of Economics gates. There was a resounding silence at this breach of his right to free speech. But it is strange to hear academic freedom invoked as an abstraction in a university world where much research is funded by corporate industrial interests, and where a biological research topic can be closed by a patent agreement. Only a couple of weeks ago two Harvard post-doctoral researchers were threatened with jail for sending cloned material from the lab in which they were working to one to which they were moving. Unlike some of those whistle blowers who have called attention to the hazards of genetic engineering, no one is likely to lose their jobs as a result of being boycotted. At worst they risk isolation from the international academic research community. Those who have been threatened with dismissal, and worse, for supporting the boycott are those few courageous Israelis who have endorsed the call. The choice today for civil society - and academics and researchers are part of civil society - is to remain silent and do nothing or to try to bring pressure to bear. Archbishop Desmond Tutu's statement of support for the boycott closed with this quote from Martin Luther King: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." · Hilary Rose is professor of social policy at Bradford University; Steven Rose is professor of biology at the Open University. They codrafted the Israel academic moratorium call.
Desmond Tutu Monday April 29, 2002 The Guardian 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.
traderfut2000, You are right, I am wrong. I have obviously been brainwashed. Arafat is a noble peace loving guy. The Israelis are practicing apartheid and are no better than Hitler and his Nazis. The Arab world is full of freedom and civil rights. There is no envy and no monetary basis for their behavior. The US citizens are foolish for believing anything we hear about the middle east. Sharon is a murderer and he has no conscience. I surrender. Thank you for setting me straight. The only thing I disagree with is the quote about Israel having to go back to the "green line". Why should they have anything at all? Arafat thinks they shouldn't, and he is a Pulitzer winner. So he must be right. And the billion dollars he accumulated and the money he gives to the families of the suicide bombers is all in my imagination. He is a wonderful man! And it is perfectly acceptable that the palestinians danced in the streets when New York was attacked. Peace, rs7
David Clark Thursday June 20, 2002 The Guardian The only exceptional thing about Cherie Blair's observations on the motives of Palestinian suicide bombers is that anyone should have considered them exceptional. The notion that the pursuit of martyrdom is the consequence of hatred born of despair is one that the vast majority of British people would accept. In its original phase, it was easy to dismiss suicide bombing as the handiwork of a few Islamist fanatics. But the atrocities are now so frequent, and the pool of volunteers so deep, that it has lost all analytical value, save for those who wish to stifle debate. Only a collective trauma outside our national experience could have brought an entire people to this point, and it serves no useful purpose to deny it. The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is impossible to understand within the framework of a simplistic victim/perpetrator dichotomy; each side belongs simultaneously in both categories. Those who want to find solutions, rather than take sides, have a responsibility to consider the fears and aspirations that animate both. Bush's judgment that Ariel Sharon is "a man of peace" when any reading of history would suggest exactly the opposite: a man who harbours ambitions to create a Greater Israel by force. Cynics might interpret American proposals to create a provisional Palestinian state on Gaza and 40% of the West Bank as a neat trick to advance that agenda. Once the Palestinians have accepted 40%, splitting the difference over the remaining 60% will be presented as another "generous offer". The mismatch between the theory and practice of Blair's Middle East policy stems from an unwillingness to confront Washington with the uncomfortable truth that a just peace will remain elusive while one side enjoys impunity. If Cherie Blair has performed one service this week, it has been to remind us that terrorism cannot be tackled while injustice is ignored. Many have long suspected that she would have made a more principled and courageous politician than her husband. Now we have proof. David Clark is a former Foreign Office adviser.
All what I wrote came from articles not my imagination. What you say about arafat billion dollar is just pure fiction like the money given to the family of terrorits... just stupid speculation.. Even Mrs Blair had the courage to talk about the humiliation of the palestinians... And I hope you read the very good article article of Desmond Tutu. He was there and he talked about a christian palestinian humiliated and also the whole country. this guy lived in an Apartheid regime and he knows much more than you or I what Humiliation means... Once again saying that palestinian are the agressors and Israel is the victim is not what I believe nor do 80% of planet earth. And it is injustice that brings more violence.... Israelis can live in peace with their neighbours. I am sure of that. Look at France and Germany, France and Great Britain Japan and the US.... But we need great men. and today we have a butcher called Sharon and not Rabin unfortunately.
Traderfut2000 Just one question...do you agree or disagree with this statement? I don't disagree with what you say is possible. I don't disagree with what you say is desirable. I just want to know what you think the reality is. Do you think this statement is in error? Do you disagree that the objectives of Arafat and the Arab world is to rid the planet of Israel? What was the STATED OBJECTIVE of the war against Israel in 1948? 1955? 1967? 1973?
What you say here is historically true. Up until the past hundred years or so. Why did things change? It is not true any more. Am I wrong? You know I am not. And you and I both know why this change has come about. It is not about religion. It is not about land. It is not about the people. It is about the politics and the power of a very very few. And the lack of freedom and education and dignity and civil rights of very very many.
This is pure speculation. First of all Israel is by far the most powerful country of the region thanks to the US ⦠No single country in the region and even in the world can do any harm to Israel. So the situation is clear on that matter. Even if they wanted, they could not.... Moreover, Israel was never asked to lay down their arms but to stop occupying illegally Palestinian land and stop humiliating and violating all the international agreements⦠Mrs Blair, The UK prime minister's wife, agreed the need for a political solution to the Middle East, before adding: "As long as young people feel they have no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress." Progress should be made and objectively Sharon is not willing to go further... What I am afraid of is that not only Sharon wants to kill and liquidate innocent civilians but he also wants more land to create the big Israel.. this is the real crazy and dangerous guy...
http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id={5B7A78BB-5D7C-45E3-A254-785F738DF8EA} I have held my tongue until now but I can no longer. My family and thousands of other adherents of the Baha'i Faith have been persecuted (read: murdered in cold blood, refused jobs, admission to university, etc.) all in the name of Islam. Right now, in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. they do not have the most basic freedoms. Yet no Muslim organization has spoken out against this heinous abuse of human rights. All Muslims that I speak to admit that this is wrong and that Islam does not condone such actions. However, no Muslim speaks out against it. No person says "Hey I'm a Muslim and I think you are wrong in killing Baha'is." And yet I and others are asked to believe that Islam is a faith of peace and love. By the way, as a Baha'i I do respect and accept Muhammad as a messenger of God (PBUH). Ironic, eh?