By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent
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."
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