Archbishop E. Desmond Tutu: Israel Must Learn...

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Feb 12, 2007
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Tutu to Haaretz: Arabs paying the price of the Holocaust

By Akiva Eldar
Haaretz Correspondent


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Haaretz"


"The lesson that Israel must learn from the Holocaust is that it can never get security through fences, walls and guns," Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa told Haaretz Thursday.

Commenting on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement in Germany Thursday that the lesson of the Holocaust is that Israel should always defend itself, Tutu noted that "in South Africa, they tried to get security from the barrel of a gun. They never got it. They got security when the human rights of all were recognized and respected."

The Nobel Prize laureate spoke to Haaretz in Jerusalem as the organization The Elders concluded its tour of Israel and the West Bank. He said the West was consumed with guilt and regret toward Israel because of the Holocaust, "as it should be."

"But who pays the penance? The penance is being paid by the Arabs, by the Palestinians. I once met a German ambassador who said Germany is guilty of two wrongs. One was what they did to the Jews. And now the suffering of the Palestinians."

He also slammed Jewish organizations in the United States, saying they intimidate anyone who criticizes the occupation and rush to accuse these critics of anti-Semitism. Tutu recalled how such organizations pressured U.S. universities to cancel his appearances on their campuses.

"That is unfortunate, because my own positions are actually derived from the Torah. You know God created you in God's image. And we have a God who is always biased in favor of the oppressed."

Tutu also commented on the call by Ben-Gurion University professor Neve Gordon to apply selective sanctions on Israel.

"I always say to people that sanctions were important in the South African case for several reasons. We had a sports boycott, and since we are a sports-mad country, it hit ordinary people. It was one of the most psychologically powerful instruments.

"Secondly, it actually did hit the pocket of the South African government. I mean, when we had the arms embargo and the economic boycott."


He said that when F.W. de Klerk became president he telephoned congratulations. "The very first thing he said to me was 'well now will you call off sanctions?' Although they kept saying, oh well, these things don't affect us at all. That was not true.

"And another important reason was that it gave hope to our people that the world cared. You know. That this was a form of identification."


Earlier in the day, Tutu and the rest of the delegation visited the village of Bil'in, where protests against the separation fence, built in part on the village's land, take place every week.

"We used to take our children in Swaziland and had to go through border checkpoints in South Africa and face almost the same conduct, where you're at the mercy of a police officer. They can decide when they're going to process you and they can turn you back for something inconsequential. But on the other hand, we didn't have collective punishment. We didn't have the demolition of homes because of the suspicion that one of the members of the household might or might not be a terrorist."

He said the activists in Bil'in reminded him of Ghandi, who managed to overthrow British rule in India by nonviolent means, and Martin Luther King, Jr., who took up the struggle of a black woman who was too tired to go to the back of a segregated bus.

He stressed his belief that no situation was hopeless, praising the success of the Northern Irish peace process. The process was mediated by Senator George Mitchell, who now serves as the special U.S. envoy to the Middle East.

Asked about the controversy in Petah Tikva, where several elementary schools have refused to receive Ethiopian school children, Tutu said that "I hope that your society will evolve."



Haaretz
 
Desmond Tutu kama kweli anasoma Torah angeelewa hiyo ardhi originally ilikuwa ya nani na Mungu aliwaahidi Waisraeli nini baada kupelekwa utumwani Babeli na Ashuru. Au anasoma Torah ipi? Pia ajiulize huo ukuta kuizunguka Israeli pamoja na kuwepo kwa checkpoints vilikuja baada ya nini?
 
Desmond Tutu kama kweli anasoma Torah angeelewa hiyo ardhi originally ilikuwa ya nani na Mungu aliwaahidi Waisraeli nini baada kupelekwa utumwani Babeli na Ashuru. Au anasoma Torah ipi? Pia ajiulize huo ukuta kuizunguka Israeli pamoja na kuwepo kwa checkpoints vilikuja baada ya nini?

Nahisi wewe unaijuwa Torah kuliko Askofu Desmond Tutu. Unaweza kuwasiliana naye ukampa darsa kuhusu Torah.
 
Tutu anamanisha hawa jamaa AIPAC.

AIPAC becomes foreign agent dominating American foreign policy while disguised as domestic lobby.

In the early 1960s, Senator William J. Fulbright fought to force the American Zionist Council to register as agents of a foreign government. The Council eluded registration by reorganizing as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC has since become what Fulbright most feared: a foreign agent dominating American foreign policy while disguised as a domestic lobby.

Israelis and pro-Israelis object when they hear that charge. How, they ask, can we so few wield such influence over so many? Answer: it’s all in the math. And in the single-issue advocacy brought to bear on US policy-making by dozens of ‘domestic’ organizations that now compose the Israel lobby, with AIPAC its most visible force.

The political math was enabled by Senator John McCain whose support for all things Israeli ensured him the GOP nomination to succeed Christian-Zionist G.W. Bush. McCain’s style of campaign finance reform proved a perfect fit for the Diaspora-based fundraising on which the lobby relies. Co-sponsored by Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, this change in federal election law typifies how Israeli influence became systemic.

‘McCain-Feingold’ raised the amount (from $1,000 to $2,300) that candidates can receive from individuals in primary and general elections. A couple can now contribute a combined $9,200 to federal candidates: $4,600 in each of the primary and general elections. Primary elections, usuall low-budget, are particularly easy to sway.

Importantly for the Diaspora, this change also doubled the funds candidates can receive without regard to where those contributors reside. A candidate in Iowa, say, may have only a few pro-Israeli constituents. When campaign support is provided by a nationwide network of pro-Israelis, that candidate can more easily be persuaded to support policies sought by Tel Aviv.

Diaspora-based fundraising has long been used by the lobby with force-multiplying success to shape US foreign policy. Under the guise of reform, John McCain doubled the financial resources that the lobby can deploy to elect and retain its supporters.

Fulbright was Right
----------------more at the link, see the math! You will be knocked off your seat when you see how the lobby was able to manipulate our government and raise much money for who they wanted in office as well as what foreign policy like wars would be passed.
--from the article:
This force-multiplier is now wielded in plain sight, with impunity and under cover of free speech, free elections, free press and even the freedom of religion. Therein lies the perils of an entangled alliance that induced the US to invade Iraq and now seeks war with Iran. By allowing foreign agents to operate as a domestic lobby, the US was induced to confuse Zionist interests with its own.
 
Dan Flesher against AIPAC

Something else Netanyahu should know

by Dan Flesher, Haaretz

[FONT=georgia,times new roman,times,serif]Even before President Barack Obama's Cairo speech last week, there were reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisers were surprised by the president's insistence that Israel stop all settlement construction. Now, as Netanyahu prepares his own speech on the Arab-Israeli conflict, he should be careful not to misjudge the situation yet again by misreading what stands behind Obama's Middle East policies. The American president's approach to the region is based on more than the lofty ideals and calculations of U.S. strategic interests that have been attributed to him by international media; it is also the product of shrewd political judgment.

Obama might sound like a thoughtful university professor, but he and his closest aides are pragmatists who were schooled in the hard-knuckled politics of Chicago. They have obviously decided that the president's quest for a new relationship with the Muslim world, along with his harsh criticism of Israeli settlement activity, offers potential political rewards that exceed the risks by a large margin.

As he plans his policy speech, Netanyahu would do well to also consider American voters, not just their president. According to a recent poll by Zogby International, 50 percent of those voters think that, given previous American calls for a halt to Israeli settlement construction, the U.S. should "get tough" with Israel. More importantly, 71 percent of Americans who voted for Obama feel that way and 89 percent of them say the conflict negatively affects U.S. interests. Obama's political base is losing patience with the settlement enterprise and thinks it harms the United States.

[/FONT][FONT=georgia,times new roman,times,serif]Those voters include most American Jews, and that is another reason why Obama's stance is politically astute.[/FONT][FONT=georgia,times new roman,times,serif] Netanyahu should not have been surprised by a survey published in March showing that six out of 10 American Jews were opposed to settlement expansion, or that most supported U.S. engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even if it meant publicly disagreeing with or pressuring both sides. Those responses were consistent with many earlier surveys. But there was a fascinating new statistic buried in the results of that March poll, which was sponsored by J Street, the left-leaning pro-Israel lobby group: Seventy-two percent of U.S. Jews who are active political donors oppose Israeli settlement construction. So, if Obama remains steadfast on the settlements, he is unlikely to lose many contributors and will in fact please quite a few.

[/FONT][FONT=georgia,times new roman,times,serif]The Obama team's calculations also include an accurate reading of Jewish organizational tea leaves. They understand that the president is unlikely to encounter massive American Jewish opposition if he keeps pressing hard for the settlement enterprise to stop, as long as he is clearly committed to meeting Israel's core security requirements and pushes the Palestinians to halt violence and incitement.

The most important group in the conventional pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is terrified of a confrontation with a wildly popular Democratic president whose party controls Congress. AIPAC's leaders only pick the fights they think they can win; they know they would lose if they found themselves trying to justify new apartment buildings in occupied territory.

[/FONT][FONT=georgia,times new roman,times,serif]It is unclear whether Netanyahu's Israeli advisors understood all this when he took office. What is clear is that he got good advice from American Jewish leaders and he ignored it. "Pro-Israel American Jews have been telling Netanyahu that he has to do something about the settlements, and that if he came out for a two-state solution, relations would be easier," Ron Kampeas, the well-connected Washington reporter for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency told me. Another source familiar with Netanyahu said, "His record shows that he believes he is the master of America-Israel relations and no one knows America better than he does."

[/FONT][FONT=georgia,times new roman,times,serif]If he does know America, he will realize that the days when Likud prime ministers could use American Jewish groups, Christian Zionists and Congress to subvert the wishes of U.S. presidents are long gone. [/FONT][FONT=georgia,times new roman,times,serif]As are the days when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seemed like a distant feud with little impact on the American people. Now, progress toward resolving it is clearly a national security imperative, and Obama's voters - and, indeed, most Americans - know it.

When describing Obama, the media adhere to the Great Man Theory of History, which gives individual leaders primary credit for transforming the world. They treat him like a rock star, or the herald of a new age. But Netanyahu should not rely on that theory as he tries to figure out how to respond to the American president.
[/FONT][FONT=georgia,times new roman,times,serif]Obama is a charismatic leader, but he is also expressing popular will. He is both the cause and the result of a widespread American yearning for peace and stability in the Middle East.

[/FONT][FONT=georgia,times new roman,times,serif]That is why Netanyahu should know that if he makes empty promises and tries to wriggle out of a profound disagreement with the U.S. over the settlements, he will risk insulting and angering not only the American president but also a large swath of the American people. It is hard to believe most Israelis - or American Jews - would want him to take that risk for the sake of unimpeded growth, "natural" or otherwise, in the West Bank.

Dan Fleshler, a New York media and public-affairs consultant, is the author of "Transforming America's Israel Lobby: The Limits of Its Power and the Potential for Change," published last month by Potomac Books.
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