The Third Way: A Different View of the Middle East

Click here to read this piece at JVP’s Muzzlewatch blog.

For those interested, I appeared on a radio show today for one hour with Steven Walt, one of the authors of “The Israel Lobby.” You can listen to the show online by clicking here. If you have a problem with that direct connection, you can go to the page for the show by clicking here

Muzzlewatch, the sister blog to this one, run by Cecilie Surasky, has reported that Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been snubbed by the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota because of his sometimes harsh comments condemning Israeli policies. You can find the details here. You can also take action on this issue by clicking here.

The entire issue around Desmond Tutu bears close examination. No doubt, those who justify and support the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza are upset with the way Tutu has spoken about conditions there. And, I would add, some of Tutu’s rhetoric is misguided. But to leap from there to calling one of the foremost champions of human rights and social justice of our age anti-Semitic is frankly reprehensible. And the accusations against him fall apart upon examination.

Beginning with current events, Tutu has been an advocate of boycotts against Israel and has said that the conditions in the Occupied Territories are “worse than apartheid.” I’m not particularly interested in breaking down whether the Israeli occupation is better or worse; the fact that a reasonable person (Tutu or anyone else) can make the comparison is quite enough. No one who has actually observed a checkpoint, has been in a Palestinian town under curfew, has been in Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza or has seen the effect of the constant military presence and the wall (all of which I’ve seen first-hand) could possibly say there’s not at least a basis for comparison in terms of the conditions people are living in. I disagree with Tutu’s stance on boycotts, but it is perfectly legitimate for anyone, having seen people living in such conditions, to advocate such non-violent means to relieve that condition. In any case, such advocacy is neither tantamount to anti-Semitism nor even to opposition to Israel’s existence.

But the primary charges against Tutu are older and stem from a slanderous attack on him by the extremist Zionist Organization of America, under the leadership of radical zealot, Morton Klein. The ZOA reacted to a speech that Tutu gave in 2002. Here are the passages from Tutu’s speech just as the ZOA selectively quoted them:

““I’ve been 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 … I say why are our memories so short? Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? … The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust. Injustice and oppression will never prevail.”

Klein headlines this quote thusly: “Israel is like Hitler and apartheid.” Even the selective quoting Klein employs does not lend itself to that reading. Yet in their paper reporting on Tutu’s speech, the ZOA put that headline in quotes, right before the actual quote from Tutu. This was an intentional attempt (and often a successful one) to imply that Tutu had actually compared Israel to Hitler, which he obviously did not do. The effect of this was exemplified just today. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency put out a quick blurb about this issue and said that Tutu had made this statement regarding Israel and Hitler. When we at JVP pointed them to the ZOA’s distortion, they corrected the story.

But in the very same speech, Tutu also said: “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…We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred.” These words and similar ones have been heard from Tutu quite frequently, and are a clear declaration not only of friendliness to Jews but for support for Israel’s existence. The ZOA does not bother to share such facts with its readers, however.

In that same speech, Tutu said some things that are certainly objectionable. He referred to a “powerful Jewish lobby” which makes people afraid to speak out against injustice in Israel/Palestine. It’s not an accurate way to put it, as there is much more to the lobby than Jews (and this is quite different from the Walt/Mearsheimer claim that “the Lobby” actually determines US policy), but I’ve encountered the shutdown of talks and events personally and seen it happen to others far too often to deny that Tutu is speaking about a real phenomenon, no matter how many people like to deny it. If it were simply about “what the public wants”, such events would not be set up in the first place.

I’ll say again that Desmond Tutu is a harsh critic of the occupation and I believe his criticism has at times gone too far in its bellicosity. Yet when this issue of his speaking came up, the president of the University of St. Thomas was told that there was a “Jewish consensus” that would find Tutu’s appearance objectionable. If Israel and/or her supporting activists here are going to claim to speak for all Jews, they cannot then turn around and criticize Tutu for believing what they have said. In my view, both are wrong. And in my view both should be heard fully and without impediment.

Desmond Tutu is no anti-Semite, but he is a passionate opponent of Israel’s occupation regime. He is not anti-Israel as he has said many times that he supports Israel’s right to exist within secure borders. Perhaps indeed he goes too far on occasion. But after 40 years of ongoing occupation, an occupation that makes Israel less secure while causing death, injury and destitution for millions of Palestinians, perhaps hearing a man of Tutu’s stature going overboard should be making people listen instead of lash out.