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DESMOND TUTU and IAN URBINA speak out against Israeli Apartheid national |
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 Friday July 05, 2002 03:10 by TruePeace - True Peace in Palestine
 The United States has a distinct responsibility to intervene in atrocities committed by Israel the single largest recipient of US arms and foreign aid. Israel occupation's end should be TOP concern for ALL Americans. DESMOND TUTU & IAN URBINA speak out against Israeli Apartheid The Nation http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020715&s=tutu COMMENT | July 5, 2002 DESMOND TUTU & IAN URBINA speak The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure--in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s. Over the past six months a similar movement has taken shape, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation. Divestment from apartheid South Africa was fought by ordinary people at the grassroots. Faith-based leaders informed their followers, union members pressured their companies' stockholders and consumers questioned their store owners. Similar moral and financial pressures on Israel are being mustered one person at a time. Students on more than forty US campuses are demanding a review of university investments in Israeli companies as well as in firms doing major business in Israel. From Berkeley to Ann Arbor, city councils have debated municipal divestment measures. These tactics are not the only parallels to the struggle against apartheid. Yesterday's South African township dwellers can tell you about today's life in the occupied territories. To travel only blocks in his own homeland, a grandfather waits on the whim of a teenage soldier. Mark Mathabane and Nelson Mandela have also pointed out the relevance of the South African experience. To criticize the occupation is not to overlook Israel's unique strengths, just as protesting the Vietnam War did not imply ignoring the distinct freedoms and humanitarian accomplishments of the United States. In a region where repressive governments and unjust policies are the norm, Israel is certainly more democratic than its neighbors. This does not make dismantling the settlements any less a priority. Divestment from apartheid South Africa was certainly no less justified because there was repression elsewhere on the African continent. Aggression is no more palatable in the hands of a democratic power. Territorial ambition is equally illegal whether it occurs in slow motion, as with the Israeli settlers in the occupied territories, or in blitzkrieg fashion, as with the Iraqi tanks in Kuwait. The United States has a distinct responsibility to intervene in atrocities committed by its client states, and since Israel is the single largest recipient of US arms and foreign aid, an end to the occupation should be a top concern of all Americans. Almost instinctively, the Jewish people have always been on the side of the voiceless. In their history, there is painful memory of massive roundups, house demolitions and collective punishment. In their scripture, there is acute empathy for the disfranchised. The occupation represents a dangerous and selective amnesia of the persecution from which these traditions were born. Not everyone has forgotten, including some within the military. The growing Israeli refusenik movement evokes the small anticonscription drive that helped turn the tide in apartheid South Africa. Several hundred decorated Israeli officers have refused to perform military service in the occupied territories. Those not already in prison have taken their message on the road to US synagogues and campuses, rightly arguing that Israel needs security, but that it will never have it as an occupying power. More than thirty-five new settlements have been constructed in the past year. Each one is a step away from the safety deserved by the Israelis, and two steps away from the justice owed to the Palestinians. If apartheid ended, so can the occupation, but the moral force and international pressure will have to be just as determined. The current divestment effort is the first, though certainly not the only, necessary move in that direction. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020715&s=tutu © 2002 The Nightmare Ends by Yesterday we had a never-ending coming and going of tanks and armored personnel carriers (APC). The sound and diesel smell got on all of our nerves by nightfall. We were just starting to recognize the faces of the soldiers. We started classifying them, he is good, he is mean, he is stupid, he hates us, he looks disgusted, and on. We would have liked to put names to the faces but that's not possible under occupation. Areen even had a few of the white printed identification numbers on the tanks memorized (Areen stands behind me as I write and wants everyone to know that the least disturbing group of soldiers came in a tank numbered 756689). One new armored personnel carrier joined the group early yesterday morning and had a group of soldiers that took joy in being part of the occupation. They were loud and one of them that had guard duty came out in the middle of the street in full daylight and urinated in full view of all. I was in another room at the time but my family had to witness this sophisticated form of humiliation. I'm not talking about a solider that just had to do it and hid his act. I'm talking about walking out in middle of street, point to houses and let it all hang out. I guess it was only a Palestinian street and neighborhood! Disgusting, like the orders that sent him here. Today (and yesterday), the Israeli army lifted the curfew from 9am to 2pm so people could shop and students could try to make up their year-end exams. I can't even imagine how students are expected to concentrate. My cousin Ammar used the curfew lifting to make it to Bir Zeit University where he will stay for 20 days with the professors, at the request of the University, in order for college to finish the semester. I have no idea where the University will house a few thousand people. Ammar lives less than 10 minutes from the campus but can't travel every day due to closures and checkpoints. Today, my father and I used the lifting to head to Tel Aviv to renew our visas to Jordan. I use to go to Tel Aviv, for business or pleasure, at least 3 times a week prior to the Intifada. Today was my third time in almost 2 years. We were lucky that the infamous Kalandia checkpoint was not packed and the delay was minimal, unlike the humiliation, which has reached a climax with every Palestinian. The whole trip took 4.5 hours. It should take less than 2.5. As I said, today was a "good" day at the checkpoint and we have US passports that allowed us to go in the first place. It could easily take 6-8. Non- foreign passport holders are not allowed out of Kalandia, i.e. my wife and girls. Driving to the Jordanian embassy today I noticed things I never noticed before in Tel Aviv. First, the number of times Areen called my mobile to make sure we were ok. In normal times I spend a lot of time out of the house and she never was so worried. On the way to Tel Aviv we saw tens of bulldozers. Not the dark green, bulletproofed bulldozers destroying building in Palestinian cities, were bright yellowish-orange construction bulldozers building Jewish-only settlements everywhere you turn your head. From Kalandia to the 1967 border (Latrun intersection), mountaintops and valleys alike were being cut up, diced up, dug up, and every other up you can think of. New illegal construction is proceeding as if nothing was wrong. My father went into a minor trance…with every passing settlement he kept rhetorically asking the taxi driver and me if the Israelis thought they would get away with this. I was in my own little trance and just kept shaking my head in puzzlement. The taxi driver, working on earning his tip, popped in a patriotic cassette thinking it would help. It didn't. In Tel Aviv I saw people working and going about the business in a natural manner. For the last several months we rush during curfew liftings to by bread, food and medicines, like animals let out of our cages. We forgot what normalcy is. People sat in restaurants and were relaxed. I was someone who would eat out for whatever reason 3-4 times a week. Worst of all I saw a population that is operating, albeit with an increased security presence, as nothing is wrong. Mothers shopping, not seemingly worried that their countries boys are humiliating an entire foreign nation. I looked in the eyes of each man in the street wondering how he will act when he pts on the uniform of occupation. Anyway, the trip went ok and we were back at the Kalandia checkpoint at 1PM, with an hour to spare before being confined to our homes once again, for the umpteenth time. At around 5pm Areen came running into my computer room and elatedly informed me "they are leaving!" Her sister Nadine, hardly able to speak full sentences, repeated the breaking news in the absolutely cutest manner possible. When I asked Areen why she was taking so much interest, she said "I know I said I'm not scared of them anymore and that's true but I'm glad they are leaving." I understood all too well. We proceeded to watch as over 20 soldiers slowly exited our neighbors home, each carrying boxes, mattresses, bags and the like. I went back to my computer and was working away when I heard Areen and my wife, Abeer, yell out, "They started a fire." I jumped to find that about 10-15 Israeli soldiers were standing around the boxes they were bringing down and a small fire was gushing out of the pile. I thought one of the flares they had might have gone off, but later found that it was a box of tear gas canisters. As my wife closed all our windows, I had to smile as these occupation soldiers chocked on their own tear gas. It was all out in a few minutes and no one was hurt, physically at least. My smile soon dropped away when two more soldiers came out of the house with a Palestinian, handcuffed with a plastic strip and blindfolded with a white piece of cloth with blue stripes. We had not seen this person being brought to the house and seeing him emerge made this saga all to real – we were watching an illegal occupation, live in our front yard. A few minutes later, like the Indy-500, they all started their engines, 8 monster machines in all, and rolled down our street over the already torn up pavement. One APC quietly stayed behind on the side of the street. As I stood at the window, all of my neighbors opened their windows and yelled out, "Are they gone?" I gestured that it was not over yet. People were itching to step outside, even though we are under full curfew. After the last APC finally rolled away like the rest, it wasn't 2 minutes, the kids were in the street and some adults, me included, converged on Um Khaled's house. The house had no physical damage other than a broken front door (and a stuffy odor). We will not know if the contents were toyed with until the owner, Um Khaled, returns from her vacation in Egypt. I took Areen's bicycle chain and lock and we secured the house as we joked with neighbors that this lock was going to do a lot of good in our situation. The reality of our personal and collective insecurity is so sad, it forces us to joke about it or explode. One of my neighbors whose porch looks down on the West side of the occupied house revealed something that made us all angry. That detained Palestinian that was taken away in the APC was there for 2 days and 2 nights! He was forced to stay outside in the walkway that led to the staircase of the occupied home. I could not see it from my vantage point, but my neighbor spoke to him from the window when soldiers were not around to give him strength. The solders gave him a cardboard box to sleep on and there he was, a prisoner of war in a world that cares less about political prisoners and defines war to fit its personal needs, as if it was buying a personal garment. As I close this sage on our street, I apologize of I overloaded your inbox with details of our situation. But I felt that this was a way to get past the word occupation that many use but few understand. Well, I know that Areen will sleep better tonight without the roar of tanks under her window. We will make it sound better for her than it is, for we know better. The occupation is alive and well and, as we still remain under curfew, the boiling point of a nation is long past…we pray the next boil over will be the last, for all our sakes. Still under curfew, The United States has a distinct responsibility to intervene in atrocities committed by Israel the single largest recipient of US arms and foreign aid. Israel occupation's end should be TOP concern for ALL Americans. DESMOND TUTU and IAN URBINA speak out against Israeli Apartheid |
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3Why is Desmund Tutu silent on Egyptian aparthied.
Jews, legacy almost extinct in Egyptian city Alexandria's families fled wars, politics of region By Ellen Hale
USA TODAY July 2, 2001
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020702/4240409s.htm
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt -- The wood cabinets in the records room at Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue sag under the weight of dozens of mammoth leatherbound logbooks.
At his desk, 62-year-old Victor Balassiano, the youngest Jew left in Alexandria, leafs through one of them.
Here, in 1888, he points out, was a marriage. There, the birth of a baby boy. This, a death. In spidery handwriting and fading ink, the pages tell the story of the life and history of a community.
But the recent books are mostly blank. A birth hasn't been recorded in nearly two decades; there are only deaths -- and of those, just a handful.
In antiquity, Alexandria was one of the greatest Jewish cultural capitals of the world, in modern times a vibrant home to 40,000. Today, the Jewish community is for all practical purposes extinct in this city of 3 million people.
Jews were driven out by the thousands in the decades after World War II. The few hundred left behind have dwindled to a minuscule community on the verge of dying off. The story of the logbooks is the story of the disappearing Jews of Alexandria.
''The number of pure Jews left today? You can count them on two hands,'' Balassiano says, and proceeds to do so. ''Me, my wife, Dr. Salame, Sarah Cohen . '' At eight, he stops.
As the last Jews of Egypt disappear, the legacy of their history here seems doomed to vanish, too. Jews who fled the country are claiming their right to the scrolls, documents and even the information in Balassiano's record books that they were forced to forfeit when they left. Egypt has refused the requests. It claims the artifacts belong to the country under its antiquities laws.
At least 100 old Torah scrolls remain in Egypt, about half of them stored in less than ideal conditions. One stash of artifacts remains in boxes at the airport in Cairo, where it was confiscated as a returning Egyptian Jew tried to take the artifacts out of the country.
''The government is holding these things hostage,'' says Desire Sakkal, president of the Historical Society of Jews from Egypt, headquartered in Brooklyn.
''We left so much behind,'' says Sakkal, who fled Egypt in 1962.
Up until the 10th century, 90% of the Jews in the world lived in what are now Arab countries. But perhaps no place had as distinctive and rich aJewish legacy as Alexandria. From the time the city was founded more than 2,300 years ago by Alexander the Great until 40 years ago, Jews played a prominent role in establishing it as a center of culture and enlightenment.
In ancient times, a third of its population was Jewish, and for centuries it served as the birthplace and home of many of the religion's leading thinkers, writers and poets. Philo, the first Jewish philosopher, was from Alexandria; the 12th-century sage Maimonides lived and wrote here for a time.
Until the second half of the 20th century, as many as 40,000 Jews lived in Alexandria in a prosperous cosmopolitan community that, though not integrated with the Muslim population, lived peaceably with it. They set up hospitals, schools, homes for the aged and charity programs, and they ran many of the city's successful businesses. Even today, although ramshackle and rundown, the grand department stores still bear the names of their Jewish founders: Cicurel, Benizon, Chamla.
But after the creation of Israel in 1948, and in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli wars, thousands of Jews fled Egypt. Others were evicted, or arrested and interned. Bank accounts were frozen, businesses confiscated and property seized.
Ada Aharoni's family, whose roots stretch to the 16th century, was evicted in 1949, allowed to take the equivalent of $40 and a few personal belongings. ''I took my favorite doll, the one with a porcelain head, ''recalls Aharoni, a poet who now lives in Israel. ''They cracked it open to look for money.''
After King Farouk was toppled in 1952, Arab nationalism and anti-Jewish sentiment increased. New laws made it virtually impossible for Egyptian Jews to work in government or run their businesses. By 1975, the Jewish population in Egypt had shrunk to 200; small communities were left only in Cairo and Alexandria.
In Alexandria, where once there were 16 synagogues, only the Eliyahu Hanavi remains. The others were sold, torn down and built over, or locked under government guard. The mansions of the wealthy Jews were sold or seized, the Jewish schools taken over and now used for Muslim students.
No one knows what will happen to the remaining property when the last of Alexandria's Jews die, nor can they predict the fate of the antiquities that bear proof of a society that thrived for generations.
''Everything Jewish will disappear unless there is some kind of remarkable turnaround,'' says Charles Hill, professor of international relations at Yale University. ''Many Muslims want any memory of that society to just disappear.''
At Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue, Balassiano pauses among the carved wood pews that bear bronze plaques carrying the names of the city's old Jewish families. The marble synagogue, on Naby Daniel Street in the colorful Attarine district in old Alexandria, is said to be one of the most beautiful in the Middle East. It seats nearly 1,000. But in addition to Balassiano, there are only two other Jewish men left in Alexandria -- far short of the 10 needed to hold a minyan, or prayer group. For religious holidays, men are flown in from Israel to make up a minyan.
Though he has lived tranquilly with his Muslim neighbors for decades, there are so few Jews left here and political tensions run so high that Balassiano and the last of the city's Jews keep a quiet profile. He doesn't tell people he is Jewish; his children didn't either, when they lived here. Balassiano's son has moved to Israel. Last year, his daughters moved to Boston to attend Northeastern University. He doubts they will ever come home, because home, he says, no longer exists in Alexandria.
''They are happy there, and they will not find any work here. Besides, they will never be able to marry and raise a family in Egypt,'' Balassiano says.
''Who will be here after me? I have been asking myself this for years now. Only God knows.''
But then again, before and doubly so after the declaration of the new State of Israel, the zionist leadership was, for obvious political reasons, very forcibly encouraging Jews worldwide to immigrate to Palestine/Israel.
So, as to what extent the Jews of Alexandria were forced *by the Egyptians* to flee, there would remain in my mind a large amount of space for doubt.
I think it is scraping the bottom of the barrel somewhat to compare the situation of Jews in Egypt with a system of apartheid, and only demonstrates the desperate scrabbling to dredge up some kind of argument, of those who still wish to allow Israel to blatantly continue in defiance of International Law and public opinion worldwide.
Desmond Tutu's qualifications to draw such comparisons are, for me, beyond any doubt, and his assessment of the apartheid-like situation Israel seeks to impose permanently over the Palestinians is surely accurate, if perhaps somewhat understated.
He is supported by a good number of University students and (among others, Israeli!) professors worldwide, who have started a basis-democratic 'divest from Israel' movement, bypassing the corrupt 'Western' governments, in order to directly advance the cause of justice and peace for Palestine and Israel.
Example here: http://www.princetondivest.org/
Israeli professors supporting this and other progressive political movements are facing the threat of expulsion from their Universities, and urgently need support, as this case demonstrates:
http://www.zmag.org/content/Mideast/pappecase.cfm
For the latest Chomsky-interview containg some very pertinent thoughts on the middle-east situation, see: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=36&ItemID=2068
Time to get bizzy; BlackPope
The U.S.A. have "intervened" in the middle east conflice, they have sent billions to assist the zionist racists in their policy of ethnic cleansing re the Palestinian population. GBA.