“A Jerusalem rabbinical court condemned to death by stoning a dog it suspects is the reincarnation of a secular lawyer who insulted the court’s judges 20 years ago, Ynet website reported Friday.
According to Ynet, the large dog made its way into the Monetary Affairs Court in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, frightening judges and plaintiffs.
One of the judges sentenced the animal to death by stoning by local children.” — AFP
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Proof one million and one that all organized religions are an affront to decency, commonsense and morality.
Religions should protect the tender sensibilities of children, but this rabbinical court is desensitizing children to violence by ordering them to stone a pooch to death. It’s a shame that these superstitious idiots have authority and influence over adults and children.
It’s remarkable how much in common ultra-Orthodox Jews have in common with Islam, both of these religions consider dogs impure, and both of these traditions have a penchant for stoning to death defenseless creatures.
Judaism is perceived by most people as an enlightened religion (oxymoron?); I was astonished to learn that certain schools of thought within the ancient faith believe in the superstition of reincarnation.
God protect us from radical Muslims, orthodox Jews, and fundamentalist Christians who if they had their druthers, would stone to death everybody who isn’t enslaved to their respective religions.
In our world, a world that resisted Apartheid South Africa so impressively, recognition of the right of the Jewish state to exist is a litmus test for moderation and pragmatism. The demand is that Palestinians recognise Israel’s entitlement to constitutionally entrench a system of racist basic laws and policies, differential immigration criteria for Jews and non-Jews, differential ownership and settlements rights, differential capital investments, differential investment in education, formal rules and informal conventions that differentiate the potential stakes of political participation, lame-duck academic freedom and debate.
Yet again, the Annapolis meeting between Olmert and Abbas is preconditioned upon the recognition by the Palestinian side of the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. Indeed the “road map” should lead to, and legitimate, once and for all, the right of such a Jewish state to exist in definitive borders and in peace with its neighbours. The vision of justice, both past and future, simply has to be that of two states, one Palestinian, one Jewish, which would coexist side by side in peace and stability. Finding a formula for a reasonably just partition and separation is still the essence of what is considered to be moderate, pragmatic and fair ethos.
Thus, the really deep issues–the “core”–are conceived as the status of Jerusalem, the fate and future of the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories and the viability of the future Palestinian state beside the Jewish one. The fate of the descendants of those 750000 Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed in 1948 from what is now, and would continue to be under a two-state solutions, the State of Israel, constitutes a “problem” but never an “issue” because, God forbid, to make it an issue on the table would be to threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. The existence of Israel as a Jewish state must never become a core issue. That premise unites political opinion in the Jewish state, left and right and also persists as a pragmatic view of many Palestinians who would prefer some improvement to no improvement at all. Only “extremists” such as Hamas, anti-Semites, and Self-Hating Jews–terribly disturbed, misguided and detached lot–can make Israel’s existence into a core problem and in turn into a necessary issue to be debated and addressed.
The Jewish state, a supposedly potential haven for all the Jews in the world in the case a second Holocaust comes about, should be recognised as a fact on the ground blackmailed into the “never again” rhetoric. All considerations of pragmatism and reasonableness in envisioning a “peace process” to settle the ‘Israeli/Palestinian’ conflict must never destabilise the sacred status of that premise that a Jewish state has a right to exist.
Notice, however, that Palestinian are not asked merely to recognise the perfectly true fact and with it, the absolutely feasible moral claim, that millions of Jewish people are now living in the State of Israel and that their physical existence, liberty and equality should be protected in any future settlement. They are not asked merely to recognise the assurance that any future arrangement would recognise historic Palestine as a home for the Jewish People.What Palestinians are asked to subscribe to recognition the right of an ideology that informs the make-up of a state to exist as Jewish one. They are asked to recognise that ethno-nationalistic premise of statehood.
The fallacy is clear: the recognition of the right of Jews who are there–however unjustly many of their Parents or Grandparents came to acquire what they own–to remain there under liberty and equality in a post-colonial political settlement, is perfectly compatible with the non-recognition of the state whose constitution gives those Jews a preferential stake in the polity.
It is an abuse of the notion of pragmatism to conceive its effort as putting the very notion of Jewish state beyond the possible and desirable implementation of egalitarian moral scrutiny. To so abuse pragmatism would be to put it at the service of the continuation of colonialism. A pragmatic and reasonable solution ought to centre on the problem of how to address past, present, and future injustices to non-Jew-Arabs without thereby cause other injustices to Jews. This would be a very complex pragmatic issue which would call for much imagination and generosity. But reasonableness and pragmatism should not determine whether the cause for such injustices be included or excluded from debates or negotiations. To pragmatically exclude moral claims and to pragmatically protect immoral assertions by fiat must in fact hide some form of extremism. The causes of colonial injustice and the causes that constitutionally prevent their full articulation and address should not be excluded from the debate. Pragmatism can not become the very tool that legitimate constitutional structures that hinder de-colonisation and the establishment of egalitarian constitution.
So let us boldly ask: What exactly is entailed by the requirement to recognise Israel as a Jewish state? What do we recognise and support when we purchase a delightful avocado or a date from Israel or when we invite Israel to take part in an international football event? What does it mean to be a friend of Israel? What precisely is that Jewish state whose status as such would be once and for all legitimised by such a two-state solution?
A Jewish state is a state which exists more for the sake of whoever is considered Jewish according to various ethnic, tribal, religious, criteria, than for the sake of those who do not pass this test. What precisely are the criteria of the test for Jewishness is not important and at any rate the feeble consensus around them is constantly reinvented in Israel. Instigating violence provides them with the impetus for doing that. What is significant, thought, is that a test of Jewishness is being used in order to constitutionally protect differential stakes in, that is the differential ownership of, a polity. A recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is a recognition of the Jews special entitlement, as eternal victims, to have a Jewish state. Such a test of supreme stake for Jews is the supreme criterion not only for racist policy making by the legislature but also for a racist constitutional interpretation by the Supreme Court.The idea of a state that is first and foremost for the sake of Jews trumps even that basic law of Human Freedom and Dignity to which the Israeli Supreme Court pays so much lip service. Such constitutional interpretation would have to make the egalitarian principle equality of citizenship compatible with, and thus subservient to, the need to maintain the Jewish majority and character of the state. This of course constitutes a serious compromise of equality, translated into many individual manifestations of oppression and domination of those victims of such compromise–non-Jews-Arabs citizens of Israel.
In our world, a world that resisted Apartheid South Africa so impressively, recognition of the right of the Jewish state to exist is a litmus test for moderation and pragmatism. The demand is that Palestinians recognise Israel’s entitlement to constitutionally entrench a system of racist basic laws and policies, differential immigration criteria for Jews and non-Jews, differential ownership and settlements rights, differential capital investments, differential investment in education, formal rules and informal conventions that differentiate the potential stakes of political participation, lame-duck academic freedom and debate.
In the Jewish state of Israel non-Jews-Arabs citizens are just “bad luck” and are considered an ticking demographic bomb of “enemy within”. They can be given the right to vote–indeed one member one vote–but the potential of their political power, even their birth rate, should be kept at bay by visible and invisible, instrumental and symbolic, discrimination. But now they are asked to put up with their inferior stake and recognise the right of Israel to continue to legitimate the non-egalitarian premise of its statehood.
We must not forget that the two state “solution” would open a further possibility to non-Jew-Arabs citizens of Israel: “put up and shut up or go to a viable neighbouring Palestinian state where you can have your full equality of stake”.Such an option, we must never forget, is just a part of a pragmatic and reasonable package.
The Jewish state could only come into being in May 1948 by ethnically cleansing most of the indigenous population–750000 of them. The judaisation of the state could only be effectively implemented by constantly internally displacing the population of many villages within the Israel state.
It would be unbearable and unreasonable to demand Jews to allow for the Right of Return of those descendants of the expelled. Presumably, those descendants too could go to a viable Palestinian state rather than, for example, rebuild their ruined village in the Galilee. On the other hand, a Jewish young couple from Toronto who never set their foot in Palestine has a right to settle in the Galilee. Jews and their descendants hold this right in perpetuity. You see, that right “liberates” them as people. Jews must never be put under the pressure to live as a substantial minority in the Holy Land under egalitarian arrangement. Their past justifies their preferential stake and the preservation of their numerical majority in Palestine.
So the non-egalitarian hits us again. It is clear that part of the realisation of that right of return would not only be a just the actual return, but also the assurance of equal stake and citizenship of all, Jews and non-Jews-Arabs after the return. A return would make the egalitarian claim by those who return even more difficult to conceal than currently with regard to Israel Arab second class citizens. What unites Israelis and many world Jews behind the call for the recognition of the right of a Jewish state to exist is their aversion for the possibility of living, as a minority, under conditions of equality of stake to all. But if Jews enjoys this equality in Canada why can not they support such equality in Palestine through giving full effect to the right of Return of Palestinians?
Let us look precisely at what the pragmatic challenge consists of: not pragmatism that entrenches inequality but pragmatism that responds to the challenge of equality.
The Right of Return of Palestinians means that Israel acknowledges and apologises for what it did in 1948. It does mean that Palestinian memory of the 1948 catastrophe, the Nakbah, is publicly revived in the Geography and collective memory of the polity. It does mean that Palestinians descendants would be allowed to come back to their villages. If this is not possible because there is a Jewish settlement there, they should be given the choice to found an alternative settlement nearby. This may mean some painful compulsory state purchase of agricultural lands that should be handed back to those who return. In cases when this is impossible they ought to be allowed the choice to settle in another place in the larger area or if not possible in another area in Palestine. Compensation would be the last resort and would always be offered as a choice. This kind of moral claim of return would encompass all Palestine including Tel Aviv.
At no time, however, it would be on the cards to throw Israeli Jews from their land.An egalitarian and pragmatic realisation of the Right of Return constitutes an egalitarian legal revolution. As such it would be paramount to address Jews’ worries about security and equality in any future arrangement in which they, or any other group, may become a minority. Jews national symbols and importance would be preserved. Equality of stake involves equality of symbolic ownership.
But it is important to emphasis that the Palestinian Right of Return would mean that what would cease to exist is the premise of a Jewish as well as indeed a Muslim state. A return without the removal of the constitutionally enshrined preferential stake is return to serfdom.
The upshot is that only by individuating cases of injustice, by extending claims for injustice to all historic Palestine, by fair address of them without creating another injustice for Jews and finally by ensuring the elimination of all racist laws that stems from the Jewish nature of the state including that nature itself, would justice be, and with it peace, possible. What we need is a spirit of generosity that is pragmatic but also morally uncompromising in terms of geographic ambit of the moral claims for repatriation and equality. This vision would propel the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But for all this to happen we must start by ceasing to recognize the right Israel to exist as a Jewish state. No spirit of generosity would be established without an egalitarian call for jettisoning the ethno-nationalistic notion upon which the Jewish state is based.
The path of two states is the path of separation.Its realisation would mean the entrenchment of exclusionary nationalism for many years. It would mean that the return of the dispossessed and the equality of those who return and those non-Jew-Arabs who are now there would have to be deferred indefinitely consigned to the dusty shelved of historical injustices.Such a scenario is sure to provoke more violence as it would establish the realisation and legitimisation of Zionist racism and imperialism.
Also, any bi-national arrangement ought to be subjected to a principle of equality of citizenship and not vice versa. The notion of separation and partition that can infect bi-nationalism, should be done away with and should not be tinkered with or rationalised in any way. Both spiritually and materially Jews and non-Jews can find national expression in a single egalitarian and non-sectarian state.
The non-recognition of the Jewish state is an egalitarian imperative that looks both at the past and to the future. It is the uncritical recognition of the right of Israel to exist at a Jewish state which is the core hindrance for this egalitarian premise to shape the ethical challenge that Palestine poses. A recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state means the silencing that would breed more and more violence and bloodshed.
The same moral intuition that brought so many people to condemn and sanction Apartheid South Africa ought also to prompt them to stop seeing a threat to existence of the Jewish state as the effect caused by the refugee ‘problem” or by the “demographic threat” from the non-Jew-Arabs within it. It is rather the other way round. It is the non-egalitarian premise of a Jewish state and the lack of empathy and corruption of all those who make us uncritically accept the right of such a state to exist that is both the cause of the refugee problem and cause for the inability to implement their return and treating them as equals thereafter.
We must see that the uncritically accepted recognition of Israel right to exist is, as Joseph Massad so well puts it in Al-Ahram, to accept Israel claim to have the right to be racist or, to develop Massad’s brilliant formulation, Israel’s claim to have the right to occupy to dispossess and to discriminate. What is it, I wonder, that prevent Israelis and so many of world Jews to respond to the egalitarian challenge? What is it, I wonder, that oppresses the whole world to sing the song of a “peace process” that is destined to legitimise racism in Palestine?
To claim such a right to be racist must come from a being whose victim’s face must hide very dark primordial aggression and hatred of all others.How can we find a connective tissue to that mentality that claims the legitimate right to harm other human beings? How can this aggression that is embedded in victim mentality be perturbed?
The Annapolis meeting is a con. As an egalitarian argument we should say loud and clear that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state.
Only a single egalitarian and non sectrarian state over all the whole of historic Palestine will achieve justice and peace.
About The Author: Oren Ben-Dor grew up in Israel. He teaches Legal and Political Philosophy at the School of Law, University of Southampton, UK. He can be reached at: okbendor@yahoo.com
—————————————————————————– Reference: Was Helen Thomas Right?
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Helen Thomas Resigned After Saying This:
One View: Helen Thomas Was Right — While I can’t say I loathe this Administration (I make the distinction that one panders just to get along with everyone while the other was essentially heartless and selfish), I will agree that if the pundits held everyone who made such comments to the same standard that they held Thomas, Fox News would have been gone years ago. By [ Pryme ]
When the Jews rebelled against the occupying Romans, they knew full well what might be the consequences of their actions: exile followed by the eventual loss of their land.
After all, the peoples that later coalesced into the Jewish nation have conquered the territory that was to become the Land of Israel from its erstwhile inhabitants, committing multiple, divinely-sanctioned genocides in the process.
By choosing mutiny, have they, therefore, relinquished their right to Palestine?
Have they given up on Eretz Israel?
Have they disastrously gambled with their future and that of their off-spring – and lost?
And, if the answers to all these questions are in the affirmative, do the Palestinians possess this right now making them the rightful owners of this disputed Middle-Eastern patch?
Israel has annexed some of the territories it has conquered in the 1967 Six-Day War. It claims historical rights to big chunks of Jerusalem and the West Bank. It, therefore, regards and treats Palestinian militants as either insurgents or terrorists. This point of view is rejected by the international community. Why so?
Insurgents in International Law
Traditionally, the international community has been reluctant to treat civil strife the same way it does international armed conflict. No one thinks that encouraging an endless succession of tribal or ethnic secessions is a good idea. In their home territories, insurgents are initially invariably labeled as and treated by the “lawful” government as criminals or terrorists.
Paradoxically, though, the longer and more all-pervasive the conflict and the tighter the control of the rebels on people residing in the territories in which the insurgents habitually operate, the better their chances to acquire some international recognition and standing. Thus, international law actually eggs on rebels to prolong and escalate conflicts rather than resolve them peacefully.
By definition, insurgents are temporary, transient, or provisional international subjects. As Antonio Cassese puts it (in his tome, “International Law”, published by Oxford University Press in 2001):
“…(I)nsurgents are quelled by the government, and disappear; or they seize power, and install themselves in the place of the government; or they secede and join another State, or become a new international subject.”
In other words, being an intermediate phenomenon, rebels can never claim sovereign rights over territory. Sovereign states can contract with insurrectionary parties and demand that they afford protection and succor to foreigners within the territories affected by their activities. However, this is not a symmetrical relationship. The rebellious party cannot make any reciprocal demands on states. Still, once entered into, agreements can be enforced, using all lawful sanctions
Third party states are allowed to provide assistance – even of a military nature – to governments, but not to insurgents (with the exception of humanitarian aid). Not so when it comes to national liberation movements.
National Liberation Movements in International Law
According to the First Geneva Protocol of 1977 and subsequent conventions, what is the difference between a group of “freedom fighters” and a national liberation movement?
A National Liberation Movement represents a collective – nation, or people – in its fight to liberate itself from foreign or colonial domination or from an inequitable (for example: racist) regime. National Liberation Movements maintain an organizational structure although they may or may not be in control of a territory (many operate in exile) but they must aspire to gain domination of the land and the oppressed population thereon. They uphold the principle of self-determination and are, thus, instantaneously deemed to be internationally legitimate.
Though less important from the point of view of international law, the instant recognition by other States that follows the establishment of a National Liberation Movement has enormous practical consequences: States are allowed to extend help, including economic and military assistance (short of armed troops) and are “duty-bound to refrain from assisting a State denying self-determination to a people or a group entitled to it” (Cassesse).
As opposed to mere insurgents, National Liberation Movements can claim and assume the right to self-determination; the rights and obligations of ius in bello (the legal principles pertaining to the conduct of hostilities); the rights and obligations pertaining to treaty making; diplomatic immunity.
Yet, even National Liberation Movements are not allowed to act as sovereigns. For instance, they cannot dispose of land or natural resources within the disputed territory. In this case, though, the “lawful” government or colonial power are similarly barred from such dispositions.
Internal Armed Conflict in International Law
Rebels and insurgents are not lawful combatants (or belligerents). Rather, they are held to be simple criminals by their own State and by the majority of other States. They do not enjoy the status of prisoner of war when captured. Ironically, only the lawful government can upgrade the status of the insurrectionists from bandits to lawful combatants (“recognition of belligerency”).
How the government chooses to fight rebels and insurgents is, therefore, not regulated. As long as it refrains from intentionally harming civilians, it can do very much as it pleases.
But international law is in flux and, increasingly, civil strife is being “internationalized” and treated as a run-of-the-mill bilateral or even multilateral armed conflict. The doctrine of “human rights intervention” on behalf of an oppressed people has gained traction. Hence Operation Allied Force in Kosovo in 1999.
Moreover, if a civil war expands and engulfs third party States and if the insurgents are well-organized, both as an armed force and as a civilian administration of the territory being fought over, it is today commonly accepted that the conflict should be regarded and treated as international.
As the Second Geneva Protocol of 1977 makes crystal clear, mere uprisings or riots (such as in Macedonia, 2001) are still not covered by the international rules of war, except for the general principles related to non-combatants and their protection (for instance, through Article 3 of the four 1949 Geneva Conventions) and customary law proscribing the use of chemical weapons, land and anti-personnel mines, booby traps, and such.
Both parties – the State and the insurrectionary group – are bound by these few rules. If they violate them, they may be committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Secession in International Law
The State of Israel has consistently mistreated its human charges in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. According to international law, this abuse gives them the right to secede, by force if need be.
Consider the case of Kosovo:
The new state of Kosovo has been immediately recognized by the USA, Germany, and other major European powers. The Canadian Supreme Court made clear in its ruling in the Quebec case in 1998 that the status of statehood is not conditioned upon such recognition, but that (p. 289):
“…(T)he viability of a would-be state in the international community depends, as a practical matter, upon recognition by other states.”
The constitutional law of some federal states provides for a mechanism of orderly secession. The constitutions of both the late USSR and SFRY (Yugoslavia, 1974) incorporated such provisions. In other cases – the USA, Canada, and the United Kingdom come to mind – the supreme echelons of the judicial system had to step in and rule regarding the right to secession, its procedures, and mechanisms.
Again, facts on the ground determine international legitimacy. As early as 1877, in the wake of the bloodiest secessionist war of all time, the American Civil War (1861-5), the Supreme Court of the USA wrote (in William vs. Bruffy):
“The validity of (the secessionists’) acts, both against the parent State and its citizens and subjects, depends entirely upon its ultimate success. If it fail (sic) to establish itself permanently, all such acts perish with it. If it succeed (sic), and become recognized, its acts from the commencement of its existence are upheld as those of an independent nation.”
In “The Creation of States in International Law” (Clarendon Press, 2nd ed., 2006), James Crawford suggests that there is no internationally recognized right to secede and that secession is a “legally neutral act”. Not so. As Aleksandar Pavkovic observes in his book (with contributions by Peter Radan), “Creating New States – Theory and Practice of Secession” (Ashgate, 2007), the universal legal right to self-determination encompasses the universal legal right to secede.
The Albanians in Kosovo are a “people” according to the Decisions of the Badinter Commission. But, though, they occupy a well-defined and demarcated territory, their land is within the borders of an existing State. In this strict sense, their unilateral secession does set a precedent: it goes against the territorial definition of a people as embedded in the United Nations Charter and subsequent Conventions.
Still, the general drift of international law (for instance, as interpreted by Canada’s Supreme Court) is to allow that a State can be composed of several “peoples” and that its cultural-ethnic constituents have a right to self-determination. This seems to uphold the 19th century concept of a homogenous nation-state over the French model (of a civil State of all its citizens, regardless of ethnicity or religious creed).
Pavkovic contends that, according to principle 5 of the United Nations’ General Assembly’s Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation Among States in Accordance With the Charter of the United Nations, the right to territorial integrity overrides the right to self-determination.
Thus, if a State is made up of several “peoples”, its right to maintain itself intact and to avoid being dismembered or impaired is paramount and prevails over the right of its constituent peoples to secede. But, the right to territorial integrity is limited to States:
“(C)onducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples … and thus possessed of a government representing the whole people belonging to the territory without distinction as to race, creed, or colour.”
The words “as to race, creed, or colour” in the text supra have been replaced with the words “of any kind” (in the 1995 Declaration on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations).
Yugoslavia under Milosevic failed this test in its treatment of the Albanian minority within its borders. They were relegated to second-class citizenship, derided, blatantly and discriminated against in every turn. Thus, according to principle 5, the Kosovars had a clear right to unilaterally secede.
As early as 1972, an International Commission of Jurists wrote in a report titled “The Events in East Pakistan, 1971″:
“(T)his principle (of territorial integrity) is subject to the requirement that the government does comply with the principle of equal rights and does represent the whole people without distinction. If one of the constituent peoples of a state is denied equal rights and is discriminated against … their full right of self-determination will revive.” (p. 46)
A quarter of a century later, Canada’s Supreme Court concurred (Quebec, 1998):
“(T)he international law right to self-determination only generates, at best, a right to external self-determination in situations … where a definable group is denied meaningful access to government to pursue their political, economic, social, and cultural development.”
In his seminal tome, “Self-Determination of Peoples: A Legal Appraisal” (Cambridge University Press, 19950, Antonio Cassese neatly sums up this exception to the right to territorial integrity enjoyed by States:
“(W)hen the central authorities of a sovereign State persistently refuse to grant participatory rights to a religious or racial group, grossly and systematically trample upon their fundamental rights, and deny the possibility of reaching a peaceful settlement within the framework of the State structure … A racial or religious group may secede … once it is clear that all attempts to achieve internal self-determination have failed or are destined to fail.” (p. 119-120)
Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights advocate — Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu
When we were struggling in South Africa against the vicious racist policies of apartheid, it was exhilarating to proclaim to our people that our God was encountered first not in the peaceful quiet of a sanctuary. No, our God was out there in the rough and tumble of the politics of the day. Our God revealed Himself in the utterly vulgar world of setting a fractious rabble of slaves free. Our God was/is the great liberator God of the Exodus — the paradigmatic event that helped to define God as the God who is never unbiased, but is always biased in favor of the oppressed, the marginalized, the down and outs.
This God in Jesus Christ continued to demonstrate this bias — Jesus companied not with the high and mighty, Archbishops, Presidents, and such like, but with the scum of society, prostitutes, sinners, the despised. This was the God who had an extraordinary identification with the little people — inasmuch as you have done this(clothed the naked,fed the hungry,etc.) staggeringly you have done it as to God. Wow. Our God did not give good advice from a safe distance. No, our God entered the fiery furnace to be there as Immanuel, God with us in our anguish and agony. Our God was not deaf, but heard our cries, was not blind but saw our suffering and would as of old come down to deliver us from our bondage too, so that we would enjoy the glorious liberty of the children of God.
Jeremiah Wright has said really no more than this which falls squarely in the ambit of black theology, black religion to answer the anguished questions of black people suffering under the brutality of white racism. It ultimately seeks reconciliation, but you cannot be reconciled with one who has his boot on your neck to keep you in the gutter. To be reconciled you must stand up right to look the other in the eye.
Black theology and religion seek the liberation of all, oppressor and oppressed, black and white together — as we accomplished it in South Africa for freedom is indivisible. Whites won’t be truly free until blacks are free. Listen to Condeleeza Rice in the Washington Times. Obama is a person of courageous integrity. He could have ingratiated himself to white Americans by repudiating his pastor completely. He did nothing of the sort. That speaks volumes for the man. America will not find peace with itself until you really deal with your history. You need something like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help you come to terms with your past.
Another Jeremiah, the prophet of old shocked his compatriots when Jerusalem was being besieged by the Chaldeans. He urged his compatriots to desert and join the enemy. What price patriotism.
About The Author: Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu was awarded the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to the cause of racial justice in South Africa. He served as the first black African archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996.
Prior to this role as spiritual leader of the Anglican Church in South Africa, Tutu served as General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches from 1978 to 1985. It was in this position that he became an international voice for the anti-apartheid movement and received the Nobel Prize.
In 1995, South African President Nelson Mandela appointed Archbishop Tutu Chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the body set up to investigate human rights violations under that country’s apartheid governments from 1960 to 1994. Tutu retired from in 1996 and was given the honorary title of Archbishop Emeritus.
Since then, Archbishop Tutu served as a visiting professor and scholar at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. He has received numerous awards and has authored two books, No Future Without Forgiveness and God has a Dream.
Tutu continues to write, lecture, and travel the world as an advocate of human rights and social justice. He is currently involved with a number of non-profit organizations working for peace and equality, meeting the needs of disadvantaged children and fighting HIV/AIDS.
