7.10.13

 

Tutu, Apartheid, and Israel

Charging Israel with 'apartheid' against Palestinians is controversial, so I was interested to discover this speech by Desmond Tutu from April 2002, reprinted in the Guardian under the title Apartheid in the Holy Land.
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.

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