Desmond Tutu's letter to the Israelis

Gamba la Nyoka · 2014-09-04T15:59:59+00:00

A child next to a picture of Nelson Mandela at a pro-Palestinian rally in Cape Town. August 9, 2014 Photo by AP The past weeks have witnessed unprecedented action by members of civil society across the world against the injustice of Israel's disproportionately brutal response to the firing of missiles from Palestine. If you add together all the people who gathered over the past weekend to demand justice in Israel and Palestine – in Cape Town, Washington, D.C., New York, New Delhi, London, Dublin and Sydney, and all the other cities – this was arguably the largest active outcry by citizens around a single cause ever in the history of the world. A quarter of a century ago, I participated in some well-attended demonstrations against apartheid. I never imagined we'd see demonstrations of that size again, but last Saturday's turnout in Cape Town was as big if not bigger. Participants included young and old, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, blacks, whites, reds and greens ... as one would expect from a vibrant, tolerant, multicultural nation. I asked the crowd to chant with me: "We are opposed to the injustice of the illegal occupation of Palestine. We are opposed to the indiscriminate killing in Gaza. We are opposed to the indignity meted out to Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks. We are opposed to violence perpetrated by all parties. But we are not opposed to Jews." Earlier in the week, I called for the suspension of Israel from the International Union of Architects, which was meeting in South Africa. I appealed to Israeli sisters and brothers present at the conference to actively disassociate themselves and their profession from the design and construction of infrastructure related to perpetuating injustice, including the separation barrier, the security terminals and checkpoints, and the settlements built on occupied Palestinian land. "I implore you to take this message home: Please turn the tide against violence and hatred by joining the nonviolent movement for justice for all people of the region," I said. Over the past few weeks, more than 1.6 million people across the world have signed onto this movement by joining an Avaaz campaign calling on corporations profiting from the Israeli occupation and/or implicated in the abuse and repression of Palestinians to pull out. The campaign specifically targets Dutch pension fund ABP; Barclays Bank; security systems supplier G4S; French transport company Veolia; computer company Hewlett-Packard; and bulldozer supplier Caterpillar. Last month, 17 EU governments urged their citizens to avoid doing business in or investing in illegal Israeli settlements. Social Banners - Twitter We have also recently witnessed the withdrawal by Dutch pension fund PGGM of tens of millions of euros from Israeli banks; the divestment from G4S by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the U.S. Presbyterian Church divested an estimated $21 million from HP, Motorola Solutions and Caterpillar. It is a movement that is gathering pace. Violence begets violence and hatred, that only begets more violence and hatred. We South Africans know about violence and hatred. We understand the pain of being the polecat of the world; when it seems nobody understands or is even willing to listen to our perspective. It is where we come from. We also know the benefits that dialogue between our leaders eventually brought us; when organizations labeled "terrorist" were unbanned and their leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were released from imprisonment, banishment and exile. We know that when our leaders began to speak to each other, the rationale for the violence that had wracked our society dissipated and disappeared. Acts of terrorism perpetrated after the talks began – such as attacks on a church and a pub – were almost universally condemned, and the party held responsible snubbed at the ballot box. The exhilaration that followed our voting together for the first time was not the preserve of black South Africans alone. The real triumph of our peaceful settlement was that all felt included. And later, when we unveiled a constitution so tolerant, compassionate and inclusive that it would make God proud, we all felt liberated. Of course, it helped that we had a cadre of extraordinary leaders. But what ultimately forced these leaders together around the negotiating table was the cocktail of persuasive, nonviolent tools that had been developed to isolate South Africa, economically, academically, culturally and psychologically. At a certain point – the tipping point – the then-government realized that the cost of attempting to preserve apartheid outweighed the benefits. The withdrawal of trade with South Africa by multinational corporations with a conscience in the 1980s was ultimately one of the key levers that brought the apartheid state – bloodlessly – to its knees. Those corporations understood that by contributing to South Africa's economy, they were contributing to the retention of an unjust status quo. Those who continue to do business with Israel, who contribute to a sense of "normalcy" in Israeli society, are doing the people of Israel and Palestine a disservice. They are contributing to the perpetuation of a profoundly unjust status quo. Those who contribute to Israel's temporary isolation are saying that Israelis and Palestinians are equally entitled to dignity and peace. Ultimately, events in Gaza over the past month or so are going to test who believes in the worth of human beings. It is becoming more and more clear that politicians and diplomats are failing to come up with answers, and that responsibility for brokering a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land rests with civil society and the people of Israel and Palestine themselves. Besides the recent devastation of Gaza, decent human beings everywhere – including many in Israel – are profoundly disturbed by the daily violations of human dignity and freedom of movement Palestinians are subjected to at checkpoints and roadblocks. And Israel's policies of illegal occupation and the construction of buffer-zone settlements on occupied land compound the difficulty of achieving an agreementsettlement in the future that is acceptable for all. The State of Israel is behaving as if there is no tomorrow. Its people will not live the peaceful and secure lives they crave – and are entitled to – as long as their leaders perpetuate conditions that sustain the conflict. I have condemned those in Palestine responsible for firing missiles and rockets at Israel. They are fanning the flames of hatred. I am opposed to all manifestations of violence. But we must be very clear that the people of Palestine have every right to struggle for their dignity and freedom. It is a struggle that has the support of many around the world. No human-made problems are intractable when humans put their heads together with the earnest desire to overcome them. No peace is impossible when people are determined to achieve it. Peace requires the people of Israel and Palestine to recognize the human being in themselves and each other; to understand their interdependence. Missiles, bombs and crude invective are not part of the solution. There is no military solution. The solution is more likely to come from that nonviolent toolbox we developed in South Africa in the 1980s, to persuade the government of the necessity of altering its policies. The reason these tools – boycott, sanctions and divestment – ultimately proved effective was because they had a critical mass of support, both inside and outside the country. The kind of support we have witnessed across the world in recent weeks, in respect of Palestine. My plea to the people of Israel is to see beyond the moment, to see beyond the anger at feeling perpetually under siege, to see a world in which Israel and Palestine can coexist – a world in which mutual dignity and respect reign. It requires a mind-set shift. A mind-set shift that recognizes that attempting to perpetuate the current status quo is to damn future generations to violence and insecurity. A mind-set shift that stops regarding legitimate criticism of a state's policies as an attack on Judaism. A mind-set shift that begins at home and ripples out across communities and nations and regions – to the Diaspora scattered across the world we share. The only world we share. People united in pursuit of a righteous cause are unstoppable. God does not interfere in the affairs of people, hoping we will grow and learn through resolving our difficulties and differences ourselves. But God is not asleep. The Jewish scriptures tell us that God is biased on the side of the weak, the dispossessed, the widow, the orphan, the alien who set slaves free on an exodus to a Promised Land. It was the prophet Amos who said we should let righteousness flow like a river. Goodness prevails in the end. The pursuit of freedom for the people of Palestine from humiliation and persecution by the policies of Israel is a righteous cause. It is a cause that the people of Israel should support. Nelson Mandela famously said that South Africans would not feel free until Palestinians were free. He might have added that the liberation of Palestine will liberate Israel, too. Source: Haartez http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.610687 Kuna muisrael naye amemjibu hapo hapo Haaretz. Haya hapa chini ndio majibu yake : Dear Archbishop Tutu, Recently, you addressed the people of Israel in Haaretz explaining why the methods of boycott and divestment used in South Africa should be applied to the situation in Israel-Palestine. You offered your own impressive personal testimony, grounded in your substantial contribution in the fields of religion, peacemaking, society building and more – to validate the growing movement aimed at isolating Israel in the international community. I write to you as both an Israeli and as someone deeply involved with interfaith work, who engages with world religious leaders on an ongoing basis. And so I feel compelled to respond to your open letter. Your letter poses an implicit question: What is the dividing line between a local and a global vision or strategy? Can a successful religious vision, articulated in one particular context, be transplanted into another? When can wisdom be treated as having global relevance and when do local conditions require greater discernment? Another great figure, who also worked in South Africa, and who also addressed the Jews in Palestine, provides a cautionary tale for the movement to boycott Israel. In the late 1930s, Mahatma Gandhi wrote to the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, suggesting that Jews practice non-violence in the face of oppression by the Nazis. In a famous letter, Buber noted the futility of applying non-violence against a murderous totalitarian regime. Looking at that classic exchange, I see the same issue that your own open letter raises: What are the limits in applying a successful, and spiritually oriented, strategy for coping with a problem, from one context to another? Buber's reply to Gandhi suggests that what is applicable in one context cannot always be translated to another. A non-violent testimony offered to Nazis (one that was being offered in any event by the powerless Jews), would not have been able to bring about change. The situation is different, the players are different, reality is different. In suggesting that the same methods that were successfully applied in South Africa should be applied to Israel, you ignore significant differences between the two realities. Insisting that "injustice" applies to both cases and therefore the cure for both can be identical, leads you to ignore complexity, history, context – and ultimately the chances of success of your strategy. All just struggles are fought for one or more of three goals: Survival, freedom, flourishing. The situation of Indians in South Africa, to take Gandhi's case, and that of Blacks in South Africa, to take your own, took for granted survival, and focused on the right of human beings to be free and to flourish. What you overlook is that, while the Israel-Palestine struggle certainly involves a struggle for freedom and flourishing, for Jews it is a struggle for survival. Whether or not you agree with this distinction, it is certainly uppermost in the minds of the people of Israel, whom you address in your letter but whose central concern you ignore. That is why your proposed strategy of bringing Israel's leadership to its knees through sanctions will never work. A battle for survival is different from a battle for freedom. It is a battle, perhaps, you have never experienced. You tell us that the result of the sanctions against apartheid in South Africa are that talks and dialogue ensued. You fail to take into account that the Israeli-Palestinian story is now at a point at which the agreements that grew from earlier dialogues have failed and where trust has been shattered. I will not rehearse the history of the past twenty years; you are familiar with its broad outline. But you may not realize the depth of trauma – not only for Palestinians but also for Israelis – that has been brought about through failed efforts, based on the kind of goodwill and openness you now seek to create through the boycott of Israel. Trust can never be created by force. In fact, it is force, put to bad use, that has shattered trust. We face a different kind of challenge also because of cultural gaps that may be much deeper than those you experienced in South Africa. You headed commissions that were tasked with "truth", as one of their key components. The problem with living in our part of the world is that it is next to impossible to retrieve truth, and as you know from your experience - without truth there will be no reconciliation. Having spent decades in dialogue with Palestinian Muslim partners, I realize how deep the gaps are in owning past and recent memory. In Palestinian society, and throughout the Arab world, Jewish historical memory is being systematically denied, effaced. There was no ancient Temple, the Holocaust is a Zionist myth or at best an exaggeration. On what basis can reconciliation happen if there isn't the most basic respect for the other's history and identity? I would also like to hope that you are able to provide a nuanced narrative of how we got to where we are today. I am highly suspicious of anyone who is able to reduce humanity's longest ongoing political battle (now in its third century) to a simple, black-and-white formulation, that allows one to point a finger at one side, laying the blame to their door only. In writing to us you are well aware of your standing as a global religious leader. Your being a Nobel Peace Prize laureate confers upon you a kind of global status of wisdom and vision that far exceeds whatever authority the episcopate can confer. You are, accordingly, a global voice for peace and justice, and your message to us is addressed with that voice. Which leads me to pose a very simple question: Have you ever proposed this strategy publicly as a solution to any other crisis on the planet? If, as I believe is the case, Israel is the only one to benefit from your religiously inspired vision, manifesting through an economic-political instrument of boycott and divestment, there is something deeply disturbing about being singled out in this way. Couldn't the plight of Syrians who are being slaughtered by their own regime, and who can suffer on a given day the same number of casualties that Gaza has seen in the space of a month, be alleviated through BDS? What about tackling the Chinese occupation of Tibet, full of injustices and human rights violations, with the same tools you propose for Israel? This double standard seriously undermines the credibility of your global religious voice. And so, dear Archbishop Tutu, I fear you have not brought healing to our desperate region. I urge you to deepen your listening to both sides, to understand the story in its full complexity. For the time being, we may not be able to do much better than to follow the advice of another global religious leader, Pope Francis, whose takeaway from his recent visit to the Holy Land amounted to a call for prayer. We are certainly in need of prayer - including yours.

Thread starter Gamba la Nyoka
Start date Sep 4, 2014

Gamba la Nyoka

JF-Expert Member

Sep 4, 2014

jebibay

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Sep 5, 2014

Echolima

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