_(english).jpg)
Late last month, I went to hear Bishop Desmond Tutu speak at Boston's Old South Church at a conference on "Israel Apartheid." Tutu is a well respected man of God. He brought reconciliation between blacks and whites in South Africa. That he would lead a conference that damns the Jewish state is very disturbing to me.
The State of Israel is not an apartheid state. I know because I write this from Jerusalem where I have seen Arab mothers peacefully strolling with their families -- even though I also drove on Israeli roads protected by walls and fences from Arab bullets and stones. I know Arabs go to Israeli schools, and get the best medical care in the world. I know they vote and have elected representatives to the Israeli Parliament. I see street signs in Arabic, an official language here. None of this was true for blacks under Apartheid in Tutu's South Africa.
I also know countries that do deserve the apartheid label: My country, Sudan, is on the top of the list, but so are Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. What has happened to my people in Sudan is a thousand times worse than Apartheid in South Africa. And no matter how the Palestinians suffer, they suffer nothing compared to my people. Nothing. And most of the suffering is the fault of their leaders. Bishop Tutu, I see black Jews walking down the street here in Jerusalem. Black like us, free and proud.
Tutu said Israeli checkpoints are a nightmare. But checkpoints are there because Palestinians are sent into Israel to blow up and kill innocent women and children. Tutu wants checkpoints removed. Do you not have doors in your home, Bishop? Does that make your house an apartheid house? If someone, Heaven forbid, tried to enter with a bomb, we would want you to have security people "humiliating" your guests with searches, and we would not call you racist for doing so. We all go through checkpoints at every airport. Are the airlines being racist? No.
Yes, the Palestinians are inconvenienced at checkpoints. But why, Bishop Tutu, do you care more about that inconvenience than about Jewish lives?
Bishop, when you used to dance for Mandela's freedom, we Africans -- all over Africa -- joined in. Our support was key in your freedom. But when children in Burundi and Kinshasa, all the way to Liberia and Sierra Leone, and in particular in Sudan, cried and called for rescue, you heard but chose to be silent.
Today, black children are enslaved in Sudan, the last place in the continent of Africa where humans are owned by other humans -- I was part of the movement to stop slavery in Mauritania, which just now abolished the practice. But you were not with us, Bishop Tutu.
So where is Desmond Tutu when my people call out for freedom? Slaughter and genocide and slavery are lashing Africans right now. Where are you for Sudan, Bishop Tutu? You are busy attacking the Jewish state. Why?
(31) Claudia , July 9, 2009
Agreed
Veru good article. I am South African, and i will defend Israel from being called an apartheid state. The apartheid in South Africa was bad, degrading and a shame in History, and this does not happen in Israel. Also, i agree that what's happening in Sudan is an apartheid, and Saudi Arabia and Egypt should also be called an apartheid state. Where is your uotrage Desmond Tutu?!
(30) shelly , April 7, 2009
Mr. Deng, Thank you
Thank you for your accuracy.
(29) Moses , February 16, 2009
if only..
The war in Sudan has been going on for over 50 years. I remember refugees from Southern Sudan fleeing into Uganda in 1960's. There have been similar separatist wars in Eritrea against Ethiopia, and Biafra (yes, we forget that one!) Because Nigeria was oil rich, the super-powers stiffled Biafra at birth and with great brutallity. There is a huge western military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan because of their strategic importance to the western superpowers. So let us not delude ourselves about Southern Sudan. The arms dealers will keep on supplying both sides. Until a clear economic advantage has been identified, the people of southern Sudan will continue to suffer the plague of the arms trade agenda with no clear winners. Money is the only language these purveyors of death understand. For economic reasons, those with any "wealth" live on open prisons of their making. Desmond Tutu no exception. You only have to visit the affluent areas of Nairobi or any third world city with their massive inequality in the distribution of wealth. Come to think of it, many prominent people also live in these open prisons in Europe and US. It is easier to criticize than to be constructive. Simon has to ask who is sponsoring these wars over the years and in whose interest is it for them to carry on. If the powers who support "democracy" in Afghanistan and Iraq were prepared to do it, there will be an end to the 50 year war in Sudan by now. Same as there would be an end to the 60 year war between Israel and her Palestinian neighbours. It is easy for the US and UK to have their wars by proxy. It keeps the arms industry and their ecomomies going in the damage and subsequent reconstruction effort. Also to ensure that fossil fuel reaches their capitals unhindered. A state which claims to be composed of or ruled by a particular race cannot escape the word apartheid used to describe it. In the last Israeli election, there was an attempt to ban Israel Arab political parties from participating. Common sense prevailed, but the evidence of racist tendencies among some sectors in Israel is there. Let us be brutally honest, this is not unique to Israel. Many wars are fought on tribal lines in Africa and Asia. Both South and North America European immigrants commited genocide against the native indegenous population. Not one country is innocent of crimes against a section of its people at one time or another in history. Let us just pray and hope than one day, humanity will see each other as one and stop labelling the other as Jew, Muslim, Christian, or of any tribal grouping that is second class and does not deserve the same opportunities as the rest of us.
(28) Debbie , April 9, 2008
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.
(27) Delmotte , April 9, 2008
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.