Disappearance of Bishop Tutu

Deconstructing the False Equation
The term 'apartheid' originated in South Africa to describe a policy that institutionalized separation and differential status of racially defined groups in order to maintain the White minority's domination of South Africa's non-white majority. Those who attack Israel as a so-called 'apartheid' state, give that term a meaning so broad that it is deprived of its original significance. This enables them to label as apartheid any controversial policy or action of Israel rather than comprehending it in the context of conflict situations and legitimate security needs.
A foundational element of the false equation is the disingenuous transforming of the term 'apartheid' from the description of a singular historical phenomenon in a particular time and place - South Africa from about 1948 to 1994 - into a generic concept. This deceptive device functions much like use of the term 'holocaust' to describe any and all human disasters. It obscures apartheid's constitutive core, racism, as well as its actual historical context, South Africa.
Unfortunately, also some Israeli journalists, who are otherwise legitimately critical of certain policies, throw the word in loosely, generally as a warning as to what could become the reality if the areas under occupation remain permanently so without granting the vote to their Palestinian residents. Such loose usage of the term 'apartheid' thus provides a great service to those who are unconscionably hostile to Israel and use the apartheid charge to delegitimize her very existence.

Former American President Jimmy Carter is one of those who use the word apartheid in an over-generic sense. In his book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid Carter in fact admits that he is not claiming that Israel practices apartheid but only that what is happening in the West Bank looks like it. Yet he chose to give the book a title that trumpets the stigmatic apartheid code-word. This attests to prejudice. As Alan Dershowitz commented, 'Sometimes you can tell a book by its cover.'

In deconstructing and refuting the application of the term apartheid to Israel one has primarily to address the criticism that comes from persons who constitute the liberal-minded public, many of whom are probably naïve, misinformed and misguided. There is a vast range of such people who are neither anti-Semites nor inveterately hostile to Israel.

Mr. Deng is righ. Spot on!

!.000.000 dead and 2 million refugees. Compare the commotion about Gaza and the indifference about Darfur. Where Arab moslems cleanse brutally ethnic Africans. Ban Kee Moon speaks of a humanitarian disaster and does next to nothing.

The government of Sudan is responsible for "ethnic cleansing" and crimes against humanity in Darfur, one of the world's poorest and most inaccessible regions, on Sudan's western border with Chad. The Sudanese government and the Arab "Janjaweed" militias it arms and supports have committed numerous attacks on the civilian populations of the African Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups. Government forces oversaw and directly participated in massacres, summary executions of civilians-including women and children—burnings of towns and villages, and the forcible depopulation of wide swathes of land long inhabited by the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. The Janjaweed militias, Muslim like the African groups they attack, have destroyed mosques, killed Muslim religious leaders, and desecrated Qorans belonging to their enemies.

The government and its Janjaweed allies have killed thousands of Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa-- often in cold blood, raped women, and destroyed villages, food stocks and other supplies essential to the civilian population. They have driven more than one million civilians, mostly farmers, into camps and settlements in Darfur where they live on the very edge of survival, hostage to Janjaweed abuses. More than 110,000 others have fled to neighbouring Chad but the vast majority of war victims remain trapped in Darfur.

This conflict has historical roots but escalated in February 2003, when two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) drawn from members of the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups, demanded an end to chronic economic marginalization and sought power-sharing within the Arab-ruled Sudanese state. They also sought government action to end the abuses of their rivals, Arab pastoralists who were driven onto African farmlands by drought and desertification—and who had a nomadic tradition of armed militias.

The government has responded to this armed and political threat by targeting the civilian populations from which the rebels were drawn. It brazenly engaged in ethnic manipulation by organizing a military and political partnership with some Arab nomads comprising the Janjaweed; armed, trained, and organized them; and provided effective impunity for all crimes committed.

The government-Janjaweed partnership is characterized by joint attacks on civilians rather than on the rebel forces. These attacks are carried out by members of the Sudanese military and by Janjaweed wearing uniforms that are virtually indistinguishable from those of the army.

Although Janjaweed always outnumber regular soldiers, during attacks the government forces usually arrive first and leave last. In the words of one displaced villager, "They [the soldiers] see everything" that the Janjaweed are doing. "They come with them, they fight with them and they leave with them."

The government-Janjaweed attacks are frequently supported by the Sudanese air force. Many assaults have decimated small farming communities, with death tolls sometimes approaching one hundred people. Most are unrecorded.

Human Rights Watch spent twenty-five days in and on the edges of West Darfur, documenting abuses in rural areas that were previously well-populated with Masalit and Fur farmers. Since August 2003, wide swathes of their homelands, among the most fertile in the region, have been burned and depopulated. With rare exceptions, the countryside is now emptied of its original Masalit and Fur inhabitants. Everything that can sustain and succour life – livestock, food stores, wells and pumps, blankets and clothing – has been looted or destroyed. Villages have been torched not randomly, but systematically – often not once, but twice.

The uncontrolled presence of Janjaweed in the burned countryside, and in burned and abandoned villages, has driven civilians into camps and settlements outside the larger towns, where the Janjaweed kill, rape, and pillage—even stealing emergency relief items--with impunity.

Despite international calls for investigations into allegations of gross human rights abuses, the government has responded by denying any abuses while attempting to manipulate and stem information leaks. It has limited reports from Darfur in the national press, restricted international media access, and has tried to obstruct the flow of refugees into Chad. Only after significant delays and international pressure, were two high-level UN assessment teams permitted to enter Darfur. The government has promised unhindered humanitarian access, but has failed to deliver. Instead, recent reports of government tampering with mass graves and other evidence suggest the government is fully aware of the immensity of its crimes and is now attempting to cover up any record.

With the rainy season starting in late May and the ensuing logistical difficulties exacerbated by Darfur's poor roads and infrastructure, any international monitoring of the shaky April ceasefire and continuing human rights abuses, as well as access to humanitarian assistance, will become more difficult. The United States Agency for International Development has warned that unless the Sudanese government breaks with past practice and grants full and immediate humanitarian access, at least 100,000 war-affected civilians could die in Darfur from lack of food and from disease within the next twelve months.

The international community, which so far has been slow to exert all possible pressure on the Sudanese government to reverse the ethnic cleansing and end the associated crimes against humanity it has carried out, must act now. The UN Security Council, in particular, should take urgent measures to ensure the protection of civilians, provide for the unrestricted delivery of humanitarian assistance and reverse ethnic cleansing in Darfur. It will soon be too late.

I compare his lack of enthusiasm on this issue with his misguided hyper activity and extraordinary zeal, in maligning Israel and the Jewish people bordering on rabid anti Semitism of the worst kind. Running in campuses in the U.S. to compare Israel with an apartheid state demonstrating his ethnic hate for the Jewish State. Writing articles in the leftist leaning British press ( The Guardian, The Independent) denouncing Israel.

How many articles did he write about Darfur? About the persecution of Christian Copts in Egypt? About the prohibition to build Christian churches for millions of Christian Philippine workers in Saudi Arabia? What about the ban by the Saudi government to import bibles into Saudi Arabia even for individuals equating the status of the Holy Bible and Pornography!

His misguided and outrageous comments about Israel in the past, Speaking in a Connecticut church, Tutu said that "the Jews thought they had a monopoly on God; Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings." In the same speech, he compared the features of the ancient Holy Temple in Jerusalem to the features of the apartheid system in South Africa. (Hartford Courant, Oct. 29, 1984) Tutu has also asserted that "the Jewish people with their traditions, religion and long history of persecution sometimes appear to have caused a refugee problem among others." (South African Zionist Record, July 26, 1985)



Bishop Tutu's statements about the Holocaust have been equally troubling. He has publicly complained about what he calls "the Jewish monopoly of the Holocaust."(Jerusalem Post, July 26, 1985)

During his 1989 visit to Israel, Tutu "urged Israelis to forgive the Nazis for the Holocaust" A statement which the Simon Wiesenthal Center correctly called "a gratuitous insult to Jews and victims of Nazism everywhere." (Jerusalem Post, Dec. 31, 1989)



As for Israel, Tutu is not merely a critic of Israeli government policies. His statements have repeatedly crossed from the boundary dividing reasonable discourse from harsh and hate-filled attacks that challenge Israel's very existence. In conversations during the 1980s with the Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Eliahu Lankin, Tutu refused to call Israel by its name, he kept referring to it as Palestine.? (Response magazine, January 1990) The American Jewish Committee?s American Jewish Year Book reported in 1988 that Tutu has claimed that Zionism has "very many parallels with racism."



Tutu knows all too well, that the historical context of the Jewish-Arab conflict in the Middle East is fundamentally different from that between the whites' Afrikaner ideology of apartheid and the blacks in South Africa. The latter was a system of discrimination and inequality based upon racial criteria; a system of domination by a minority over a majority and refusal to negotiate a bilaterally agreed solution. Furthermore, for Palestinians, violence aimed primarily at civilians has been the first choice for many decades, for the African National Congress it was the last resort and never aimed intentionally at the murder of civilians.

The accusation that Israel is an apartheid state is an insidious tool in the hands of those who deny the entitlement of Jews to a viable national home. The tool is so effective because it contains within it the precedent of the use of boycotts as a method of attack as was the case against apartheid South Africa.

Those who use the apartheid accusation employ the old anti-Zionist arguments. These constitute a multi-layered construct of fundamental ideological positions and analytical constructs, one of which is the purposeful displacement of the real nationalist context for historical comprehension of Zionism with the vilifying label of colonialism. Many anti-Zionists, but not necessary all of them, apply identifiable double standards of judgment to Israel traceable to the characteristic anti-Semitic premise that all things Jews do are inherently evil, including their nationalism.



Even Israel's relinquishment of all of the occupied West Bank would not dispel the fallacious Israel=apartheid accusation because it is rooted in a priori denial of Jewish nationalist need and entitlement, proscription of the entire Zionist enterprise as loathsome colonialism, and false equation of the Jewish national purposes and symbols of the State of Israel with racism.





What is TUTU's position regarding Ahmdinejads threat to wipe Israel off the map of the world and kill the Jewish people with an atom bomb. Suddenly this verbose man is silent mute. No word.



When the Palestinians burn Christian libraries, villages, murder Christians, force the Christians to emigrate from the Holy Land- Tutu is not there to voice the Christian chagrin. For he supports the Palestinian murderers of Jews and Christians.



Reverse apartheid against whites in Zimbabwe. Unspeakable atrocities as Robert Mugabe's militias rampaged through Zimbabwe's last productive farms and threatened to drive the country to starvation with a campaign of ethnic cleansing was met with Tutu's stark indifference even though this happens close to home, in his backyard... Maybe because these are whites.



Today one-third of Zimbabweans depend on international food handouts, 80 percent are jobless and the country suffers chronic shortages of medication, food, fuel, water and electricity. A third of the population has become economic and political refugees abroad





People like myself who have supported South Africa's fight against apartheid during decades and militated on the behalf of it's indigenous majority, who spoke up and demonstrated, are ashamed of Desmond Tutu, and now we even lost any respect for him and his selective morality and unpardonable anti Semitism as pointed out by Mr. Deng.



Shame! Shame and nothing but shame!

In this article, I like the analogy between personal security and state security. Where most people protect themselves with locks and doors, so to, states also protect their citizens with border measures. I believe the path of the wall has caused horrible hardship for Palestinians in some areas (and these particulars consequences require acknowledgement and addressing); however, these impacts have to be weighed against the hardship caused to Israelis by suicide bombers and snipers. For those who advocate the apartheid wall campaign, they only consider one side of the conflict, and as such, lack any credibility.

Last year I visited Desmon Tutu's house which is located in Soweto, South Africa. I was shocked to find that his home was one of the most fortified in his neighbourhood. Its huge wall and electric fencing suggest that Desmond believes walls and electric fencing are fine for his personal security, but not for the state of Israel. I have a few photos and if the editors of this website would like a copy, just email me.

So True My Brother! So True! & You don't have to be Jewish to speak and applaud truth. Truth is eternal and nothing can change that. It is not popular. It is not always palatable, and It is not convenient.

Wonderful article! Well put.

Great words of truth....
You are right,Mr. Deng
when your people called,the whole world turned a deaf hear...and are still procrastinating over your people's pleas.

I have lived and worked in Darfur with frequent visits to the south.....i really know how it's like in Darfur and South of Sudan...

Let us all join efforts and help our brothers and sisters out there..

Attention, MR. annonymous,
IF YOU WOULD READ HIS BIO, YOU WOULD KNOW THAT MR. DENG IS NOT NECESSARILY JEWISH, JUST A HUMANITARIAN WITH HIS EYE ON THE TRUTH. I applaud his courage for speaking and writing the truthful reality which portrays the hypocrisy of so called world leaders!

Well said! To push it further I think the 'Bishop' has lost touch with himself. I am a believer and I disgusted. Tutu needs to know his salvation depends on the wellbeing of Israel. When Israel is RESTORED the nations are a peace.

Thank you for your excellent article. You make your points so well. Has your article been submitted to the newspapers (ie, the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal)? The disinformation that is constantly given so much print space has to be countered with pieces like this (New York Times - Op Ed?)

We shouldnt expect answers from any man. Is our mighty God who will help us in this world.

If I am not mistaken, a Jew is forbidden
to enter a church!!!!!!!!

Tutu is a cunning, manipulative and bigotted man , as proven by all the above comments. If it were politically popular to side with Israel, if he could gain mileage from doing so, he`d have done so.

Your article is very true, except for the opening statement about the Rev. Desmond Tutu as a man of G-d and reconciliation. If you read his political rhetoric from the 1970's, 1980's and beyond, it is filled with hate mongering. He was, and remains, an opportunist who will use falsehood for his own political gain. He was despised by both the Whites and Blacks in South Africa for many decades.

Desmond Tutu is merely joining the world bandwagon in badmouthing Israel. Israel is not perfect nor does it claim to be but it does treat people as equally as it can. Which Arab country actually have a Jew in government or as a senior member of the army? As I understand apartheid such a thing cannot happen, the Arabs should be downtrodden, uneducated and unable to access quality medical care. I should love to read Tutu's definition and then apply it to what really happens in Israel.

Maybe Bishop Tutu doesn't find it as fashionable to speak out for Sudan, as he does for the "Palestinians." This is true for many who place Israel under an unyielding microscope. To paraphrase from the "Wizard of Oz," "and Tutu too!"

Not all who say they are christian are, in fact, christian. Those who love the Lord do take care of their neighbors -- they make effort to feed, clothe, house and physical needs first, then they can talk and the people will hear and apt to receive the good news about The Almighty -- but rarely not until they get their needs met. Where is Jimmy Carter? There is a long list of profession of knowing The Almighty, but few can claim possession. They have gone after the error of ancient Babylonia.

Tutu, like the rest of the African leaders do what suit them. They speak of atrocities from their thrones. As a South African I hear and see this all the time. Africa is slowly dying and these well paid "rulers" do nothing to give back. There is no commitment and no honesty. Tutu must experience life in Israel before he can make his comments. His comments should be treated with the contempt that they deserve. He should not be given any credibility. Only once you have experienced and understood the true situation in Israel are you able to make comment.

Finally, someone has spoken regarding this terrible conference in Boston, the cradle of liberty. I was shocked when I learned of this travesty and I called and left a message on the recording these people had to enlist others against the Jewish people. When there are other countries that are truly suffering, I think Bishop Tutu should use his voice and prestige where it counts, but perhaps he is counting his money. He should return his peace prize.

Israel is not against anyone.

Israel is not interested in the politics of other nations either. What Israel interested is only in protecting Israel, ensuring freedom of co-existence.

Israel is a responsible country and will ever be; is not for destroying other nations, at its premise. I am amazed at the ignorance of Iranian leader in calling for the destruction of Israel (wiping out from the world map). If Israel practices aparthied, what does:
a) the arab countries do with their expatriate labor force? - no religious freedom, no right to change jobs, no right to exit the country without the sponsor's written approval, torturing of maids - all these can be vididly ead in the Newspapers.

The more they ridicule Israel, the more the strength it gains - not because of our righteousness but because of the G-d's promise to Abraham, Issac and Jacob.

I am a white South African who lived in Johannesburg during the apartheid years. While Tutu damned apartheid, he never lived or worked among his own people, nor did he suffer with them--rather, he chose to live in the lap of luxury in one of Johannesburg's elite suburbs, enjoying the benefits of apartheid by employing black servants and sending his children to private schools. My black friends had no time for him.

In South Africa today, rampant violence continues. No-one is exempt. To fight that S. African evil, it is standard for every home to create 'security checkpoints' both at their front gates, and usually at access to their neighborhoods. The windows are barred, the private properties are surrounded by 8' walls with barbed wire, and electric fences against this baseless evil, that seeks to prey on any laxes of security which create an opportunity for themselves. Bishop Tutu is a good and respected figure. He should well know how one has to look after oneself to ensure one's physical survival, and one's family. and most importantly how not to allow the 'bad guys' to win out by allowing oneself to mentally crumble in fear and helplessness, how to stand tall in spite of the threat to your existance. This fight for survival and against physical and spiritual destruction, Bishop Tutu, is the parallel between South Africa and Israel today.
Let us know when you work out how to allow your family to face evil with no protection.

Well done for the article. It shows how one can see the speck in another's eye when they cannot see the beam in their own. If Desmond Tutu had a truly caring heart he would seek to help the suffering in his own Africa than being a champion in this Israel bashing. Israel has always tried to fulfill its part in accords to reach lasting peace with the Palestinians whose leaders have not fulfilled any of their obligations. It is not Israel's fault but rather those who do not really want peace but seek to destroy her and wipe her off the map.

Simon, well done for taking a critical look at Africa, it appears that oppression in Africa only receives attention when it appears to be Westerners against African, but in most cases African leaders themselves, are the worst oppressors, you could have mentioned Zimbabwe too.. there is no bigger capitalist than the African leaders who have little social equity or charity for those less fortunate.

Tutu´´s comments dont warrant a response, he has grown far to fond of seeing his name glorified in the media.

I am an African, South African and Tutu should focus on critical social injustices at home for example the unprecedented High rape stats of girls even babies, as well as grandmothers often at the hand of their own family members, in addition to violent and an extremely high crime rate against all citizens, for this is our new oppressor.

Do you think that Des Tutu has read this article. This article should be published in the west as a letter to the editors.

Tutu deserves the same sense of defilement that Carter brought upon his head. One one hand he praises Israel for its opposition to apartheid in South Africa while simultaneously damning Israel for BEING apartheid.

In 1988 he said, "Zionism has "very many parallels with racism", on the grounds that it "excludes people on ethnic or other grounds over which they have no control". In other words, he is as ignorant as he is hailed as a peacemaker (Nobel Peace Prize in '84).

Yet, In 1988, the American Jewish Committee noted that Tutu was strongly critical of Israel's military and other connections with apartheid-era South Africa, and quoted him as saying that Zionism has "very many parallels with racism", on the grounds that it "excludes people on ethnic or other grounds over which they have no control". While the AJC was critical of some of Tutu's views, it was dismissive of "insidious rumours" that he had made anti-Semitic statements.[11]

Tutu preached a message of forgiveness during a 1989 trip to Israel's Yad Vashem museum, saying "Our Lord would say that in the end the positive thing that can come is the spirit of forgiving, not forgetting, but the spirit of saying: God, this happened to us. We pray for those who made it happen, help us to forgive them and help us so that we in our turn will not make others suffer."[12] Some found this statement offensive, with Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center calling it "a gratuitous insult to Jews and victims of Nazism everywhere."

What Tutu needs is two or three more mouths so he can talk out of several mouths at the same time. He's a hypocrite of the first class and ought to be prohibited from ever setting foot in the Jewish State of Israel. Perhaps he and Jimmy Carter can share a leaking boat together.

Some of the material is found in Wikipedia.

Who would have thought that we are living in the 21st Century? While we teach our children about the dark ages or barbarian times it reminds us that we are still living in those dark times. We should be teaching our children what a world we live today rather than focusing on times long gone.
Thanks

Thank you so much for writing this clear and thoughtful article. If only some of our world leaders could see the reality as clearly and express is as honestly as you, there would be hope for peace in the world. Unfortunately, I think that they do see, but choose to close their eyes. I hope many people read your article and are moved by it.