Speaking of non-controversial people …

Posted by DAVID ADESNIK in International, Politics, Religion.
Aug 2nd, 2009 | 4 responses

As noted below, the WaPo described President Obama’s candidates for the Presidential Medal of Freedom as not “particularly controversial”. Aside from the points MK raised about Ted Kennedy, it’s worth noting that Desmond Tutu isn’t exactly a stranger to controversy either.

Wikipedia reports that Tutu has persistently compared Israel to apartheid South Africa, called on Jews to forgive the Nazis, and suggested in 2002 that “the Jewish lobby” suppresses justified criticism of Israel. As Tutu memorably put it,

People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a moral universe. 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.

Sounds to me like someone who deserves America’s highest honor.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

4 Responses to “Speaking of non-controversial people …”

1. mlhradio says:

   August 2, 2009 at 10:34 am

   >>Wikipedia reports that Tutu has persistently compared Israel to apartheid South Africa…

   What's so controversial about that? It happens to be true.
2. ThurmanHart says:

   August 2, 2009 at 11:12 am

   I agree wholeheartedly. Desmond Tutu does deserve to be recognized for speaking the truth to power. the speech given by Tutu demonstrates what is in his heart (the original author provided the original link):
   

   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 an anti-semite – supporting the Holocaust center and saying that Israel has a right to exist!
   Or maybe the hysteria has gotten the better of someone.

   What Tutu said about apartheid in Israel:
   

   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.

   On one of my visits to the Holy Land I drove to a church with the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem. I could hear tears in his voice as he pointed to Jewish settlements. I thought of the desire of Israelis for security. But what of the Palestinians who have lost their land and homes?

   I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and said: “Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is now occupied by Israeli Jews.”

   Roadblocks and checkpoints, being driven out of your home…because you are Palestinian Arab instead of Jew. Well, “apartheid” means to single out people due to their race or caste. Seems like it fits.

   Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured.

   Seems like he's condemning violence, not Israel specifically.

   But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticise it is to be immediately dubbed anti-semitic, as if the Palestinians were not semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group. And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with the apartheid government on security measures?

   People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. 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. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment.

   I don't really like the term “Jewish lobby,” because it kind of makes it seem like there's some sort of over-riding control group among the various lobbying groups (I think they simply operate independently in their own interest). But the groups that are normally considered in this group include AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and Hadassah, among others. Such groups do not exist because they are ineffective.

   As The Washington Post reported:
   

   On Capitol Hill the Israel lobby commands large majorities in both the House and Senate. Polls show strong public support for Israel — a connection that has grown even deeper after the September 11 attacks. The popular equation goes like this: Israelis equal good guys, Arabs equal terrorists. Working the Hill these days, says Josh Block, spokesman for the premier Israeli lobbying group known as AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, “is like pushing at an open door.”

   Not everyone believes this is a good thing. In March two distinguished political scientists — Stephen Walt from Harvard and John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago — published a 42-page, heavily footnoted essay arguing that the Bush administration's support for Israel and its related effort to spread democracy throughout the Middle East have “inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security.”

   The professors claim that our intimate partnership with Israel is both dangerous and unprecedented. “Other special interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest,” they argue. They go on to say that the war in Iraq “was due in large part to the Lobby's influence,” and that the same combine is “using all of the strategies in its playbook” to pressure the administration into being aggressive and belligerent with Iran. The bottom line: “Israel's enemies get weakened or overthrown, Israel gets a free hand with the Palestinians, and the United States does most of the fighting, dying, rebuilding and paying.”

   A sweet deal for Israel, in other words, but a very bad one for America.

   Some of the lobby's critics hailed the essay as a much-needed breath of fresh air and praised Walt and Mearsheimer for their courage and — dare we say it — chutzpah. Their paper, wrote antiwar activist and media critic Norman Solomon in the Baltimore Sun, “is prying the lid off a debate that has been bottled up for decades.”

   But the two professors knew they were treading on delicate ground. For generations, the idea of a cabal of powerful Jews hijacking the national interest for its own purposes has fueled anti-Semitism around the world. Supporters of Israel argued that the essay echoed those claims.

   Alan Dershowitz, author, lawyer, celebrity and Harvard professor, said the essay is rife with “bigoted comments” and “the smell of singling out Jews and singling out Israel.” Abraham Foxman, longtime director of the Anti-Defamation League, told me the paper

   essentially, and erroneously, blames the Jews for the war in Iraq. Daniel Ayalon, Israel's ambassador to the United States, who hadn't commented publicly until our interview, called it “tainted, shallow and sloppy . . . just a compilation of old nonsense and garbage that should be rendered into oblivion, where it belongs.”

   Walt and Mearsheimer in response insist their facts and arguments remain valid and say the vituperative critical reaction merely affirms one of their key points: that the Israel lobby is a sacred cow and anyone who dares criticize it runs the risk of being branded an anti-Semite. “In effect, the Lobby boasts of its own power and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it,” they complain in the essay.

   As I said, I don't think there is a “cabal” of anyone. But I do know that many American Jews are particularly sensitive to any criticism of Israel, no matter how small, and will cry out “anti-semitism” at the drop of a hat. (Note: I'd say this is similar to how any identity group reacts, from the NAACP to LULAC to the NRA.) It's typical of how American politics has become a reactionary game – someone says something (“Sarah Palin's daughter got knocked up” or “Hillary Clinton tends to sound shrill and paranoid”) and someone else blows it so far out of proportion that it bears little or no resemblance to the truth (“Letterman laughed about Palin's daughter being raped” or “Opposition to Clinton is based entirely on anti-feminism”).

   No one in American political life wants to be labeled a racist/bigot. So our politicians have learned not to criticize anyone anywhere – and then we wonder why they seem so spineless.

   But back to the subject – Desmond Tutu is not controversial if one understands that he has condemned violence and oppression with an even hand. If, however, one wants to view one side or the other as completely without blame, well, then he has likely stepped on some toes. But that doesn't mean it's controversial.
3. pacatrue says:

   August 2, 2009 at 3:12 pm

   Thurman does a pretty decent job of adding the Israel comments into context. To add that to the even greater context of his life, I will just grab the first paragraph from wikipedia:

   “Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born 7 October 1931) is a South African cleric and activist who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. In 1984, Tutu became the second South African to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Tutu was the first black South African Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, and primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa). Tutu chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and is currently the chairman of The Elders. Tutu is vocal in his defence of human rights and uses his high profile to campaign for the oppressed. Tutu also campaigns to fight AIDS, homophobia, poverty and racism. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism,the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2005 [1] and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Tutu has also compiled several books of his speeches and saying.”

   Fighting South African Apartheid, battling AIDS, homophobia, racism, poverty, chairing reconciliation committees…. Do controversial comments about Israel invalidate everything else he has done in his life?
4. adesnik says:

   August 2, 2009 at 11:13 pm

   I've never argued for invalidation. It's just hard to agree with the WaPo's preferred label, “non-controvesial”.