The mainline church-supported U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation claims to support non-violent resistance to Israel by Palestinians. How then does one explain their latest posting, seeking to enlist the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in their support for terrorists? Felicia Eaves and David Wildman (the latter a staffer for the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries) write:
As we approach Dr. King’s birthday, at a moment when Palestinians and many Israelis are mourning the Israeli military’s killing of Jawaher Abu Rahmah with U.S.-made tear gas during a nonviolent West Bank protest conducted in the spirit of MLK…
…and also commemorating the 1,400 dead after the Israeli military’s attrocities in Gaza two years ago…
…and while our own country is mourning the dead and injured in Tucson…
We remember the lessons of Dr. King. [Emphasis added.]
Funny thing about those 1400 dead (the Israeli military put the figure at 1166, but let’s grant them Hamas’ number). Turns out that the majority of them were legitimate targets. From Agence France Presse:
A senior Hamas official admitted on Monday [November 1, 2010] that up to 300 fighters were killed in the 2008-2009 Gaza war after the Islamist group initially put the toll at 48.
Hamas interior minister Fathi Hammad told the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat that between 200 and 300 Hamas fighters were killed during the 22-day onslaught in addition to hundreds of civilians.
“They say the people suffered from this war, but is Hamas not part of the people? On the first day of the war Israel targeted police stations and 250 martyrs were killed, from Hamas and other factions,” he told the paper.
“In addition to them, between 200 and 300 fighters from the Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas’s armed wing) and another 150 security forces were martyred.”
His numbers roughly match the 709 “terror operatives” the Israeli military said it had killed during the fighting, which included members of the Hamas-run police force that has patrolled Gaza since the group seized power in 2007.
So, Israel killed hundreds of armed individuals–members of the terror wing of Hamas proper, as well as police who are also part of Hamas’ armed forces and another 150 “security forces”–who under pretty much any definition would be called “combatants,” at the very least. (This, by the way, gives the lie to the Goldstone Report that has become the touchstone of the religious left’s case against Israel in Gaza, which bought the initial propaganda figures from Hamas, which claimed the vast majority of deaths were civilians, hook, line and stinker.) Many of those combatants, moreover, were killed as they were in the process of using genuine civilians as human shields, taking refuge in apartment buildings, schools, mosques, and the like.
So the long and the short of it is that Wildman and Eaves want to “commemorate” the dead of Gaza, the majority of whom were armed combatants engaged in violent resistance to a military operation that was, itself, in response to daily mortar and rocket fire directed at civilians in southern Israel.
Despicable.
The PCUSA’s Israel Palestine Mission Network has linked to a Friends of Sabeel-North America page that in turn connects to a petition that seeks to defend Archbishop Desmond Tutu from the truth. A little background:
Apparently there have been calls in South Africa for Tutu to resign or be forced out as a patron of the Cape Town Holocaust Centre and the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre. According to David Hersch, vice-chairman of the South African Zionist Federation, Tutu is a “bigot” and an “anti-Semite,” harsh terms indeed for a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He has also been referred to that way by Alan Dershowitz, well-known American liberal and Harvard law professor. In response, some members of the hate-Israel crowd in South Africa has gotten together a petition defending Tutu, and calling for signatures. The petition, which I would assume IPMN endorses, states:
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has publicly criticised Israeli policy towards Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank. He has also criticised Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians. These criticisms are well-known.
This makes it sound as though Tutu has been even-handed in his criticism, but nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, he has:
•Exaggerated the truth regarding conditions in the Palestinian territories in order to justify “resistance”;
•Claimed that Israeli military actions in Gaza constituted “war crimes,” without ever addressing except in the most perfunctory terms the daily bombardment of southern Israel by Hamas;
•Repeatedly compared Israel to South Africa as an “apartheid state,” despite the utter lack of similarities between the two;
•Advocated divestment from Israel, but not from any other dictatorship, oppressive regime, or nation threatening a neighbor (he was against sanctions levied against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1990s, and opposed military action to release Kuwait from the conqueror’s grip in 1991);
•Referred to Israel as based on “racial exclusivity,” despite the presence of over a million Palestinians as full citizens of the state, even as he calls for a Judenrein West Bank.
Recently, his criticisms of Israeli policy have elicited bitter personal attacks. Amidst calls for him to be removed as Patron of the Cape Town and Johannesburg Holocaust Centres of the South African Holocaust Foundation, Tutu has been attacked and labelled an anti-Semite and a bigot
Disagreements should be debated openly, but these personal attacks are totally unacceptable.
One can argue whether Tutu is a bigot and an anti-Semite. On the other hand, Tutu’s numerous anti-Israel statements–which hold Israel to a moral standard he is unwilling to hold any other nation to, single Israel out for special treatment in the face of far greater human rights abuses elsewhere, and that distort the facts of the conflict for the sake of scoring political points–constitute an undeniable record of anti-Israel rhetoric that is so unbalanced as to fall under the heading of anti-Semitic. Pointing that out is a “personal attack” only to the extent that it speaks the truth in the face of Tutu’s public remarks.
During the Second World War, which killed 60 million people, Nazi Germany killed socialists, gay men and lesbians, Roma people, and resistance fighters, but its most systematic destruction was of the Jewish people. Six million Jews were transferred to ghettos and concentration camps before being murdered.
This grotesque crime against humanity must never be forgotten. Its legacy and lessons belong to and must be guarded by all of humanity. Racism including anti-Semitism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and inhumanity must be resisted wherever they occur. As stated in the Mission Statement of the South African Holocaust Foundation, we must build “a more caring and just society in which human rights and diversity are respected and valued.”
This is precisely the cause to which Tutu has dedicated his life. He represents the finest tradition of resistance to all forms of oppression. He has taught us that understanding the Holocaust begins with appreciating that the only way for each of us to be safe is for all of us to be safe. He embodies the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document born of the horrors of the Second World War, the rights contained in which pertain equally to Israelis and Palestinians.
Tutu embodies the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the same way that the UN Human Rights Council does. That is to say, there the UDHR is a universal statement that applies equally to just one nation, Israel. The sentiment expressed in the first two paragraphs is noble and right, but it has little to do with what Tutu has said over the years.
To use the Holocaust in an attempt to delegitimise Tutu is to undermine its legacy and insult the memory of its victims. To call him an anti-Semite, because he has attacked the policies of the Israeli government, is outrageous, renders the term meaningless, and enfeebles the necessary efforts to defeat real anti-Semites and racists.
No one is “using the Holocaust” to delegitimize Tutu. He’s done a fine job over the years of doing that himself.
