Israel Matzav: What an anti-Semite!

Monday, March 10, 2014

What an anti-Semite!

No, this post is not about Jimmy Carter or Barack Hussein Obama. It's about their good friend Desmond Tutu, who once again proves that his unbridled hate of Israel and Jews overcomes anything - including supporting his own people.

"I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces," he said in a statement. "Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government."

The former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town made the statement as the 10th annual Israel Apartheid Week opened Sunday in South Africa. The initiative, part of the international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement’s campaign against Israel, is being marked in 87 cities this year. Tutu visited Israel in 1989.

International pressure similar to the BDS movement led to the end of apartheid in South Africa, the statement said.

"In South Africa, we could not have achieved our democracy without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the apartheid regime.

The same issues of inequality and injustice today motivate the divestment movement trying to end Israel's decades long occupation of Palestinian territory and the unfair and prejudicial treatment of the Palestinian people by the Israeli government ruling over them."

Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for standing up against white-minority rule in South Africa, added that people who don't act against injustice are complicit in it.

''Those who turn a blind eye to injustice actually perpetuate injustice. If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor," he said. "It doesn't matter where we worship or live. We are members of one family, the human family, God's family."

Tutu has apparently forgotten what real apartheid is like. Let's remind him. Recall that I linked to a post from a South African blog here. Here's some of what Steve - who grew up with it - had to say about apartheid:

There were two components to Apartheid – grand apartheid with its goal of political separation, and petty apartheid which sought to segregate whites from non whites. Both components were equally important and intertwined for one could not succeed without the other.

Grand apartheid was to be achieved by creating separate political realities for whites and non whites. This was done by revoking the citizenship from non-white South Africans reducing the ‘legal’ population of South Africa so that the whites would be the demographic majority. Homelands called Bantustans were created and these were eventually to become separate independent states. Blacks were to either be physically moved into these homelands, or nationally tied to them (i.e. they would become a citizen of the homeland that they might have never set foot in; and not a citizen of South Africa). Naturally, even blacks that were not yet assigned a Bantustan, were denied suffrage (i.e. they were denied the right to vote).

Legislation was passed to legally separate blacks from whites in all aspects of daily life. The separate public amenities act ruled that blacks and whites would receive separate public services. Blacks and whites were to have separate education, medical care, transport and beaches. The legislation even pervaded to the use of parks – blacks could not sit on the same benches as whites and they could not even use the same water fountains used by whites.

Laws were also passed prohibiting blacks and whites from having sexual relations. This was policed to the extent that a white could be incarcerated for allowing a black of the opposite sex to sit on the front seat in their car.

Apartheid ensured the domination by a white minority over a black majority in every apsect of their daily lives. Blacks could not participate in the political process, they were forced to study in languages selected by the government and their education was geared towards making them useful labourers for their white ‘bosses’.

It is thus easy to see that Israel is not an apartheid state. All citizens of Israel (whether Muslim or Jewish, Arab or European) have equality before the law. There is nothing close to resembling the separate provision of amenities – Muslims and Jews use the same hospitals, Muslims and Jews use the same public transport, Muslims and Jews all vote in Israeli elections, Muslims and Jews can run for election etc etc. Muslims in Israel can choose to study in the language of their preference and Arabic is even one of the national languages of Israel. In apartheid South Africa, although blacks made up over 80% of the population, not a single African language was recognised by the state.

Tutu is cheapening what his own people endured out of hatred for Jews and Israel. He went through the entire experience of apartheid and learned nothing.

Labels: anti-Semitism, apartheid state, Desmond Tutu, Israeli apartheid, Israeli apartheid week, South Africa