Monday, October 18, 2010

Desmond Tutu Retires-some passing thoughts

I thank him for his work in South Africa-he helped many who finally shut down apartheid. For this he should be commended. However, for those who are willing to understand the totality of a man, for those willing to examine the man's true chracter, I present to you a piece by Mort Klein some years ago.

Do you remember Tutu saying:
* "Israel is like Hitler and apartheid" "I've been 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... "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? ... The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust. Injustice and oppression will never prevail."

* "The Jewish lobby is very powerful": "People are scared in this country [the U.S.], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful--very powerful."
"Critics of Israel are being smeared": "You know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the U.S.] and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic, as if Palestinians were not Semitic."

"Jewish Arrogance" Tutu accused Jews of exhibiting "an arrogance--the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support,"(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily News Bulletin, Nov. 29, 1984)

"Jewish Monopoly of the Holocaust Tutu complained about the Jewish monopoly of the Holocaust." (Jerusalem Post, July 26, 1985)

"Forgive the Nazis" During his 1989 visit to Israel, Tutu "urged Israelis to forgive the Nazis for the
Holocaust" (Jerusalem Post, Dec. 31, 1989), a statement which the Simon Wiesenthal Center called "a gratuitous insult to Jews and victims of Nazism everywhere." During the visit, Tutu remarked "If I'm accused of being antisemitic, tough luck," and in response to questions about his anti-Jewish bias, Tutu replied, "My dentist's name is Dr. Cohen." (Simon Wiesenthal Center's Response magazine, January 1990)

"Zionism Is Racism" Tutu has claimed that Zionism has "very many parallels with racism." (American Jewish Year Book 1988, p.50)

"Jews Thought They Had a Monopoly on God" Speaking in a Connecticut church in 1984, 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)

"Palestine, Not Israel": 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." (Simon Wiesenthal Center's Response magazine, January 1990)

"Jews Cause Refugees": Asked about the Zionism-is-racism resolution, Tutu complained 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)

Thanks to YidwithLid

2 comments:

Charles said...

That anyone would compare Israel to Hitler is disingenuous, at best. At worst, it is condemnation of the Jewish religion to the status of history’s most vicious criminals.

I’m so happy for Des Tutu that he was able to help participate in the reformation of South Africa. I abhor the persecution of any minority. But, when it comes to History, Tutu comes up empty.

Jews predate Islam in Israel by more than 1,000 years; and they predate Palestinians by more than 1,500 years. If anyone is "occupying" land, it is Palestinians, who took over Jewish land hundreds of years ago. Jews have been in the land called "Palestine" since they escaped slavery in Egypt, about 3,000 years ago. Palestinians arrived in historical terms just yesterday.

Nor has Israel inflicted genocide against Palestinians. The first act of the nascent Jewish State in 1948 was to beg Arabs to remain as free and equal citizens. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs remained in Israel as citizens while their neighbors fled to Jordan. Today, those Arabs enjoy jobs, homes and families as Israeli citizens, while those who fled live in squalor. Many Palestinians fled because they were told that the Jewish nation would swiftly be destroyed; they could return to their homes as soon as the Jews were murdered. Guess what! Israel survived the attack in 1948 and every other attack since then. How sad for the Palestinians occupying Jewish land that they were unable to return or to destroy the Jewish nation. When you occupy someone’s land, you take the risk that they will return and reclaim their home.

Israel is the ancestral home of the Jewish people. Jews were there dozens of centuries before there was Islam and dozens more before there were Palestinians. Yet, in their generosity, Israel gave Gaza to Palestinians in 2005. In return for that generosity, more than 4,000 rockets have been launched by Palestinians from Gaza into Israeli cities and towns, aimed at the most defenseless Jews – women and children.
Despite the suicide bombers, the snipers, and the violence, Israel still desires peace. Palestinians need to do only one thing to have peace. All that they must do is recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nation. The result will be two separate and equal nations – one Jewish and the other Palestinian. Yet the leadership of Palestinians (Fatah, Hamas and Hezbollah) refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. When your enemy will accept nothing less than your total destruction (described in the open charters of Hamas and Hezbollah), why negotiate? What would be the point? Should Israel negotiate for the death or removal of all Jews from their own legal land? Would you flee your legal home just because someone comes along with the desire to take it? This is Israel’s dilemma.

Worse yet, the one thing that Jews have learned from history is that when an enemy threatens to destroy you, they probably mean it. From Babylonians to Assyrians, to Egyptians; from Greeks and Romans to the English Expulsion and the Crusades; from the Crusades to the Spanish Inquisition to Hitler’s Third Reich; in every generation someone arises to destroy the Jewish people. Well, they have finally learned that such groups mean it when they threaten to destroy the Jewish people. Finally, after 3,000 years, Jews have reclaimed their ancestral homeland. Virtually every Jew around the world will give his or her life for the land called Israel. It was always Jewish land. So it will remain. Still, Israel desires peace. All that Palestinians need to do is to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Charles Weinblatt
Author, Jacob’s Courage
http://jacobscourage.wordpress.com/

Unknown said...

YidwithLid who found this information might thank him for fighting "Apartheid", but the Africans of South Africa are a violent tribal people who are now on a genocidal rage right now. More should of been done to set up Republics for the people of this land instead of the Leftist Socialism that forced everyone together. The reason borders are necessary is because some people just don't like each other... and while I don't like that if I do not recognize this then I'm a dead man.