Gaza Crisis Like Apartheid - Desmond Tutu

[Purveyor]

AFP

Two South African winners of the Nobel Peace Prize urged Israel and the Palestinians on Friday to negotiate peace, with former archbishop Desmond Tutu comparing the regional crisis to apartheid.

Tutu was speaking alongside fellow laureate and former president FW de Klerk at a news conference on this year's annual summit of peace prize winners to be held in Cape Town in October.

The feisty cleric, who won the prize in 1984 and has in the past compared the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the racist apartheid system, said the latest flare-up in the Middle East crisis was the result of a void in global leadership.

"It is not a Muslim or Jewish crisis. It is a human rights crisis with roots to what amounts to an apartheid system of land ownership and control," he said.

"Yes, we condemn those who fan the flames, who launch the missiles against Israel, but missiles do not justify Israel's excessive response," he said.

"As an old man, my appeal to my fellow laureates and peacemakers is to step into the leadership void, to make your voices heard from all corners of the globe, to advocate or pressure your government and institutions to cajole, to persuade," Tutu said.

more...

http://news.iafrica.com/sa/950193.html

[mazzarro]

1. Well Archbishop - I guess you forgot something....

The world PTB have determined that only one party to the conflict deserves condemnations. The other, it has been determined, can do whatever the heck it wants and its actions are sacrosanct

[cprise]

2. And the reason for that is...

There is always money or power to be gained from a conflict.

[JayhawkSD]

3. Increasingly not true.

The US government and media still holds that position, but the American public and all of Europe is beginning to lose sympathy for Israel and beginning to lose tolerance for its actions. Not in a big way yet, but cracks are showing.

I once drove from Atlanta, where I lived at the time, to Washington DC specifically to hear Desmond Tutu speak at National Cathedral. It was worth the trip, and more than 30 years later still stands clearly in my memory.

[JayhawkSD]

4. I would take some small issue with the cited article's headline.

and would say that the Gaza crisis is not "like" apartheid, but rather that it is the result of apartheid policies, which is what Tutu actually said. The writer repeatedly wrote that Tutu was "comparing the regional crisis to apartheid." That was an imprecise and rather vague paraphrase of what Tutu said.

What he did say was later quoted. "It is a human rights crisis with roots to what amounts to an apartheid system of land ownership and control." Emphasis mine. The apartheid brutality is not something which began with this latest Gaza conflict, it has bee going on for more than thirty years.

Jimmy Carter spoke truth to this subject in his 2006 book which was titled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, for which he was widely excoriated.