Gość: Abp.Tutu
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29.04.02, 15:58
Apartheid in the Holy Land
by Desmond Tutu • Monday April 29, 2002 at 06:40 AM
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 [i
www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,706911,00.html
www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,706911,00.html
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