Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Virgin boss Richard Branson play on the Holocaust to advance case against Israel
It is a sign of the corrosiveness of the anti-Zionist agenda that even some of the most admirable and well-regarded of international luminaries feel no compunction these days about using the greatest crime against the Jewish people as a convenient weapon against the Jewish state. Holocaust inversion has now entered the mainstream. No-one, it seems, is immune from its temptations.
Enter former anti-apartheid campaigner, Nobel laureate, and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu who has used an interview with the liberal-Left Israeli newspaper Haaretz today to make some typically ill considered remarks of his own:
“The lesson that Israel must learn from the Holocaust is that it can never get security through fences, walls and guns,” he was quoted by the paper as saying. “…in South Africa, they tried to get security from the barrel of a gun. They never got it. They got security when the human rights of all were recognized and respected.”
This is crass even by Tutu’s standards when talking about Israel. But it was nothing compared to the truly disturbing comments made earlier this week by Virgin Atlantic boss and international NGO financier Richard Branson.
Asked to draw on his business and public relations skills to advise Israel on how to improve its image, he said:
“I think it’s something similar to what happened after 9/11. You know after 9/11 the world had enormous sympathy for America, and you know that sympathy was somehow lost. And obviously after the Second World War, the world had enormous sympathy for the Jewish people. Over a number of decades, that sympathy has been lost …. You’ve got a great country, but you’ve just got to hold the hands of your neighbors, and then you’ll get back on top again.”
I have remarked on a number of occasions on how submersion in the anti-Zionist agenda leads otherwise reasonable and sane individuals to say things which make them look ridiculous. But “you’ve just got to hold the hands of your neighbours, and then you’ll get back on top again.”? Don’t these people ever think about what they are saying? The mind boggles.
That aside, the first thing to note about Branson and Tutu is that it is obvious that neither of them has any idea of what they are talking about. They seek to pronounce on a matter of great complexity while demonstrating that the history and basic facts of the conflict are simply lost on them. All we are left with is the standard UN/NGO narrative in which a belligerent and colonialist Israel is juxtaposed with oppressed third-world freedom fighters struggling against all odds for justice and recognition.
Tutu in particular has form in this regard. As an attentive reader reminded me earlier today, he made some particularly vicious remarks in a commentary in the Guardian along such lines in April 2002. In an article tellingly entitled Apartheid in the Holy Land he said of the struggle against Israel:
“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.”
Well, I’m glad that Desmond Tutu thinks we are living in a “moral universe”. And one trusts he is confident that, when confronted with the higher authority he invokes, his Faustian pact with the forces of anti-Zionist bigotry is not held against him.
As for Richard Branson, one really has to marvel at his audacity. I am not Jewish myself, but I would venture to say that “sympathy” is not quite what the Jewish people were looking for in establishing their state after the Holocaust.
Even so, if defending that state against extremism is all it has taken for all that “sympathy” to evaporate I am not convinced that it was all that deeply rooted in the first place.
Tags: Israel
August 28th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
More countries are against Israel today than ever before. In 1948 Israel had many supporters. Soon the US will (already beginning)turn against Israel. This has to happen as stated in the Bible. Not to worry. No matter what we do or say Israel will be attacked. When all seems lost Jesus will save the day. You can bet your soul on it.
August 28th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
“When all seems lost Jesus will save the day”
I have every faith in this prediction. After all, Jesus has done such a good job for the Jewish people on so many other occasions.
August 28th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Branson lecturing Israel?? Pass the sickbag.
Here’s what Tom Bower wrote about him when he wanted to take on Northern Rock:
“After a lifetime building a fortune on hype, misrepresentations and even a criminal conviction for tax evasion, Sir Richard Branson’s bid to rank among Britain’s leading bankers is being viewed among the more cautious members of the City establishment as a risk too far.
Observers in the City who have followed the roller-coaster career of Britain’s favourite tycoon over the past 38 years know that there are incidents which pose serious questions about his credentials to front a bank in which more than £20billion of taxpayers’ money will remain at risk. The truth is that the over-riding priority of Branson’s business career has been an obsession with himself. Treat any of his pledges to serve the public interest with prudence.
At heart, even Branson would admit, he is a ruthless and skilled money-maker who takes gambles to enhance his personal fortune.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-499971/Why-Richard-Branson-man-trusted-Northern-Rock.html#ixzz0PU313gVS
August 28th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
A few stray points:
Re The “Elders”
1) Mary Robinson presided over the infamously anti-Semitic World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in September 2001 at which the whole notion of Israel being an Apartheid state was first mooted. Indeed, it was at Durban that the anti-Israel forces decided to use the Apartheid label to deligitimise Israel. As we can see from the quote in our host’s post above, already, by April 2002, Desmond Tutu was doing his level best to advance this poisonous idea. Other quotes from the interview suggest that Tutu also supports the boycott of Israel; the boycott of course being a natural and intended consequence of the “Israel equals Apartheid” push.
2) A few weeks ago, on the 14th of August, Obama awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to Robinson and Tutu. Not surprising then that both Tutu and Obama (see Obama’s recent speech in Cairo) support the Arab notion that Jews have no real connection with Israel and the establishment of the Jewish state was a result of Western guilt over the Holocaust. The Palestinians, they both believe are paying the price for this. No mention naturally of the many hundreds of thousands of Jews who were ethnically cleansed by Arab nations (a much greater number than the Palestinian refugees from 1948), the unbreakable link between Jews and Israel which survived many centuries of pogrom and genocide in the Diaspora, the Jewish presence in “Palestine” (a majority Jewish presence in Jerusalem at the end of the 19th century), or the rejection time and time again by Arabs of the many overtures of peace which have been made by Israelis (Who can forget the “3 Nos” made by the 8 Arab nations at Khartoum in September 1967: No peace with Israel, No recognition of Israel, No negotiations with Israel?). And, of course, the notion of Western guilt over the Holocaust playing any part is quite the joke. Even today, most nations, especially the ones which were intimately involved with that particular genocide, have yet to accept responsibility for their crimes.
Re Richard Branson
This is the first overtly political stand taken by Branson that I remember (I recall an interview he gave to the BBC in 2003 when he basically sat on the fence and said that like most people he was in two minds about the invasion of Iraq). I don’t for one minute believe that Branson is a particularly deep thinker (he reads very little because of his dyslexia) or is concerned about the fate of Middle East peace. Branson, for the most part, is driven by commercial considerations, and at a time when every man and his dog treats both Israel and the Jewish people with contempt, I think he reached the conclusion that it would pay for him to join the pack. Whatever the downside might be, he imagined, it would be insignificant when weighed against the considerable upside.
August 28th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Sadly, others will point to the comments made by des and dick and use that to justify their hatred of Isreal…as if their hatred needed justification in the first place!
August 29th, 2009 at 7:33 am
It’s amazing to me that Tutu and others of his ilk constantly say that Palestinians are suffering for the Holocaust, as if Israeli Jews haven’t suffered from this protracted war as well. It has completely been erased from the world’s consciousness that Israeli Jews (and others) have been the victim of countless terror attacks. Maybe that’s because they haven’t been too pronounced recently, most likely as a result of the checkpoints, security barrier, and other measures which are constantly used to demonize Israel. Does it not occur to Tutu that Israel’s enemies are actually quite capable of using violence themselves? People feel so intellectual pointing out the “irony” that the victims of the Holocaust are now committing the same crimes. What never occurs to them is that maybe the victims of the Holocaust are still victims of the same millenia-old hatred that has simply manifested itself in a new way. This Holocaust-inversion sickens me to the core, and it hurts no one more than the Palestinians, which have many legitimate grievances and aspirations without having to resort to crude lies.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Well, I’ve never flown Virgin and there’s now no doubt that I ever will!
September 19th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
It is true that more countries then ever before (during these last 60 years) are against Israel. The reasons are rather simple:
First, Israel has no oil and no country in the world wants to risk an embargo of its main supply of energy that is controlled mostly by Muslim states, just to be fair and honest.
Second, Jews are not supposed to fight and win, war after war, when in the past, as a barely tolerated minority, they were greatefull to merely survive in any and all countries where the dominant religion was Christianity and Islam.
Third, Israel being the only democracy in the entire Middle East (not to mention Africa and South-East Asia) offers a very bad example to the people that live their entire life under dictatorships of one or another kind. A very bad example that must be eliminated ASAP.
Fourth, peace is a two way proposition and the Arab-Muslims living in Cis-Jordan have no intention of ever living side by side with the Israelis. On the contrary: their dream is to destroy Israel and take over the entire area through the use of force.
Fifth … oh, enough! Everyone that knows how to read and write is perfectly aware of the reality that maintains the conflict always active. It is better to be prepared for another 60 or 120 or even 180 years of conflict since killing rather than peace is what Islam is all about. By turning on the TV one can confirm this cruel reality in the latest bombings of innocent people (Muslims included) perpetrated by Islamists - so dear to the Western Leftists and their Politically Correct cohorts.
June 8th, 2010 at 2:26 am
“2) A few weeks ago, on the 14th of August, Obama awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to Robinson and Tutu.”
I call BS. The CMH is a military award, and cannot be awarded to any civilian.