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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
Here is the version on the FOSNA website (http://www.fosna.org/conferences_and_trips/documents/2002_boston_tutu_keynote.pdf).
People are scared in this country to say wrong is wrong. (applause) Because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. Ha, Ha, Ha ha! So what? So what! This is God's world! For goodness sake this is God's world! The Apartheid government was very powerful, but we said to them: Watch it! If you flout the laws of this universe, you're going to bite the dust! (applause) Hitler was powerful. Mussolini was powerful. Stalin was powerful. Idi Amin was powerful. Pinochet was powerful. The Apartheid government were powerful. Milosevic was powerful. But, this is God's world. A lie, injustice, oppression, those will never prevail in the world of this God. That is what we told our people. And we used to say: those ones, they have already lost, they are, they are going to bite the dust one day. We may not be around. An unjust Israeli government, however powerful, will fall in the world of this kind of God. Because we don't want for that to happen but 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? What is your treatment of the vulnerable, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes God's judgment.
Here is the Guardian version (http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,706878,00.html).
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.
Not only is there definitely an implicit comparison of the Apartheid government with Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin, but Tutu did mention the Israeli government later in the paragraph in the FOSNA version. Yet he seemed to be putting Israel into a different category entirely by implying that the Israeli government unlike the Apartheid government could either be just or unjust.
I doubt any member of the audience took Tutu's words as an equation of the Jewish lobby or the Jewish people or Israel with Hitler. I certainly did not.
As I remember my conversation with him afterwards, I suggested that using a Zionist concept like the Jewish people and equating it with religious terms like People of Israel (am yisrael) will only strengthen the Jewish -- I probably said Israel -- lobby. Phrases like God's people the Israeli Jews or like God's people the Palestinian Arabs take a very easily understood conflict between European colonists and the native population and appear to turn it into a religious issue of competing covenantal relationships. The Archbishop felt that applying religious ideals would help resolve the conflict.
He probably should have recited the Book of Micah Chapter 3 to the audience.
2. Those who hate good and love evil-who rob their skin from upon them and their flesh from upon their bones,
3. and who ate the flesh of My people and flayed their skin from upon them, and opened their bones and broke them, as in a pot, and like meat within a cauldron
4. then they shall cry out to the Lord, but He shall not respond to them; and He shall hide His countenance from them at that time, as they wrought evil with their works.
5. So said the Lord concerning the prophets who mislead my people, who bite with their teeth and herald peace, but concerning whomever does not give into their mouth, they prepare war.
6. Therefore, it shall be night for you because of the vision, and it shall be dark for you because of the divination, and the sun shall set on the prophets, and the day shall be darkened about them.
7. And the seers shall be ashamed, and the diviners shall be disgraced, and they shall all cover their upper lips, for it is not a statement of God.
8. But I am truly full of strength from the spirit of the Lord and justice and might, to tell Jacob his transgression and Israel his sin.
9. Hearken now to this, you heads of the house of Jacob and you rulers of the house of Israel, who condemn justice and pervert all that is straight.
10. Each one builds Zion with blood and Jerusalem with injustice.
11. Its heads judge for bribes, and its priests teach for a price; and its prophets divine for money, and they rely on the Lord, saying, "Is not the Lord in our midst? No evil shall befall us."
12. Therefore, because of you, Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the Temple Mount like the high places of a forest.
I doubt any member of the audience took Tutu's words as an equation of the Jewish lobby or the Jewish people or Israel with Hitler. I certainly did not.
As I remember my conversation with him afterwards, I suggested that using a Zionist concept like the Jewish people and equating it with religious terms like People of Israel (am yisrael) will only strengthen the Jewish -- I probably said Israel -- lobby. Phrases like God's people the Israeli Jews or like God's people the Palestinian Arabs take a very easily understood conflict between European colonists and the native population and appear to turn it into a religious issue of competing covenantal relationships. The Archbishop felt that applying religious ideals would help resolve the conflict.
He probably should have recited the Book of Micah Chapter 3 to the audience.
1. And I said: Hearken now, you heads of Jacob and officers of the house of Israel! Is it not incumbent upon you to know the judgment?
2. Those who hate good and love evil-who rob their skin from upon them and their flesh from upon their bones,
3. and who ate the flesh of My people and flayed their skin from upon them, and opened their bones and broke them, as in a pot, and like meat within a cauldron
4. then they shall cry out to the Lord, but He shall not respond to them; and He shall hide His countenance from them at that time, as they wrought evil with their works.
5. So said the Lord concerning the prophets who mislead my people, who bite with their teeth and herald peace, but concerning whomever does not give into their mouth, they prepare war.
6. Therefore, it shall be night for you because of the vision, and it shall be dark for you because of the divination, and the sun shall set on the prophets, and the day shall be darkened about them.
7. And the seers shall be ashamed, and the diviners shall be disgraced, and they shall all cover their upper lips, for it is not a statement of God.
8. But I am truly full of strength from the spirit of the Lord and justice and might, to tell Jacob his transgression and Israel his sin.
9. Hearken now to this, you heads of the house of Jacob and you rulers of the house of Israel, who condemn justice and pervert all that is straight.
10. Each one builds Zion with blood and Jerusalem with injustice.
11. Its heads judge for bribes, and its priests teach for a price; and its prophets divine for money, and they rely on the Lord, saying, "Is not the Lord in our midst? No evil shall befall us."
12. Therefore, because of you, Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the Temple Mount like the high places of a forest.
1 comments:
Note the very last line of the Guardian version of the speech. It says there is a longer version.
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