Charging Israel with 'apartheid' against Palestinians is controversial, so I was interested to discover this speech by Desmond Tutu from April 2002, reprinted in the Guardian under the title
Apartheid in the Holy Land.
In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish
people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the
disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression
and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron
of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to
secure borders.
What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another
people to guarantee its existence. I've been very 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.
Labels: Israel, Politics
# posted by Philip Wadler @ 10:22 AM
