“Whether Jews like it or not, they are a peculiar people. They can’t ever hope to be judged by the same standards which are used for other people.”
"We are looking forward to a nonracial, just and egalitarian society in which color, creed, and race shall form no point of reference." [Stephen Biko]
"As the world mourns the loss of Desmond Tutu, Professor Alan Dershowitz ,during a recent television interview, branded him an 'anti-Semite' and a 'bigot after his death'" [Newsweek by Khaleda Rahman on 12/28/21.
We read, "Tributes have poured in from all over the world, with former President Barak Obama hailing the Nobel Peace Prize-winning archbishop as 'a moral compass for me and so many others, adding, he was grounded in the struggle for liberation and justice in his own country, but also concerned with injustice everywhere" Really? Another statement by Obama is open to correction.
Alan Dershowitz , the famed attorney and Harvard law professor rightly found time in an interview on FoxNews to decry such tributes. He continued to claim that Tutu had minimized the Holocaust and compared Israel to Nazi Germany. Further, he explained to Newsweek, his remarks stemmed from Tutu's "criticism of Jews. He didn't talk about the Israel lobby, he talked about the Jewish lobby. He minimized the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust and said that getting killed in gas chambers was an easy death compared to apartheid. Tutu said that Jews claimed a monopoly on the Holocaust and demanded that Jews forgive the Nazis for killing them."
On January 55, 2011, Dershowitz's "Bishop Tutu is no Saint when it comes to Jews " was published by the CT Jewish Ledger. We learn from this is that Tutu was far more vocal about Israel’s imperfections than about the genocides in Rwanda, Darfur and Cambodia. He compared Israel to Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union and Apartheid South Africa, saying that they too were once “very powerful” but they “bit the dust,” as will “unjust” Israel. He has minimized the suffering of those murdered in the Holocaust by asserting that “the gas chambers” made for “a neater death” than did Apartheid. In other words, the Palestinian Arabs, who in his view are the victims of “Israeli Apartheid,” have suffered more than the victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Enough said!
Now, as Jews, we do not need a skewed version of forgiveness. We are fully educated in the laws pertaining to forgiveness through the Torah, where it is applicable. He reminds us of the creation of a new category of Arabs, the "Palestinians", whose national identity crystallized only after the Six Day War when Israel captured Gaza and the 'West Bank'.
Tutu could also study Josephus and the Jewish Wars where he would find that the Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel and subsequently maintained a presence therein, up until the present.
As stated by Dershowitz, Tutu "encouraged others to have similar views and because he was so influential, he became the most influential anti-Semite of our time. ''We cannot pretend that there is no violence,'' Tutu said. ''We cannot keep silent in the face of that injustice and that oppression.'' as he saw parallels to South Africa.
While Tutu caustically mad insidious remarks against Israel, one had to wonder if he suffered from extreme prejudice or a total lack of knowledge of history, or both.
During Dec 02,2 010 JHV of Houston published Edward Alexander's "Desmond Tutu vs. Israel an OldStory "from which we learn that in late October of the same year, Tutu urged the South African Opera Troupe to cancel its performance of "Porgy and Bess "in Israel. He was refused in that the issue was one of art and not politics. However, during the Anglican clergyman's 79th birthday, US President Barack Obama lauded Tutu as a moral titan - a voice of principle, an unrelenting champion of justice and a dedicated peacemaker.
The contrast between Tutu and Steve Biko is like day is to night.
According to former US Senator Iowa, Dick Clark, Steve Biko was an historic figure in the struggle for freedom in South Africa. Likewise, former UN Special Committee Against Apartheid Chairman, Leslie O. Harriman, informs us that in less than a decade, Steve Biko and Black Consciousness gave a new dimension to the struggle for liberation. Neither the cruel murder of Biko, nor the incarceration of his colleagues could stop it from its inevitable triumph.
In all other available publications on Steve Biko, one does not find any derogatory content on Jews or Israel as in the case of Tutu.
Yet another freedom fighter against t apartheid, who put his life on the line, Donald Woods, wrote a book, entitled, "Biko" 1st published by Paddiganton Press in 1978 and subsequently by Lume Books in 2018.Woods commences his book with a memoriam to South Africans who are known to have died in detention in the hands of the Afrikaner National Government's Security Police.
All were imprisoned without legal representation and access to friends or relatives. The causes of death alleged by the Security Police ranged from suicide by hanging, fell 7 floors during interrogation, causes undisclosed, natural causes, suicide, death disclosed under questioning in Parliament on January 28,slipped in shower, thrombosis ,fell down stairs, leapt from 10th floor window during interrogation, fell against chair during scuffle, no details given, fell down stairwell, fell 6 floors during interrogation and suffocation in epileptic fit. A total of 42 prisoners!!
In summary, the book addresses, [1] The man [2]The Trial [3]The killing and [4]The inquest [5]The thirteen days [6]The indictment [7]Epilogue and commences on September 6 when Stephen Biko was taken by South African l security police to Port Elizabeth where he was handcuffed , put into leg irons, chained to a grille, and subject to 22 hours of interrogation, in the course of which he was tortured and beaten, sustaining several blows to the head that damaged his brain fatally, causing him to lapse into a coma and die 6 days later.
While Biko in his personal life sought to avoid violence, he did not hesitate to retaliate, when attacked. The book provides as history and background, the white settlers , the black response, the Bulhoek Massacre of 1921 and the infamous Sharpeville riot of 1960, which likewise ended in the same sort of massacre, followed by the most explosive Soweto riot of 1976 and followed a decade later by sporadic rioting and train bombings in 1987.
In his book, "Biko: The powerful biography of Steve Biko and the struggle of the Black Consciousness Movement", Donald Woods discusses Steve Biko's Predecessors. He focuses on Mandela's 1961 address to the court, an outstanding performance, articulating his belief and the position of the disenfranchised Blacks. Woods quotes Mandela in full because they seem to him the forerunner of Biko's Black Consciousness , With Mandela imprisoned, the leadership vacuum around 1960 was filled by Bantu Stephen Biko, albeit a new style of leadership. Upon reflection, the given book is as much about author Donald Woods as Stephen Biko.
What comes first to mind, when one thinks of political trials in South Africa are the Rivonia Trial of 1956-61 and the Treason Trial of 1963-64. rarely, if ever is the 1976 SASO/BPC Trial mentioned in the same breath and yet it was perhaps the most political trial of all. Biko was to testify, without realizing that, unknown to all it, was to be his last public appearance. Millard Arnold's, " Steve Biko -Black Consciousness in South Africa" includes his own words recorded at political trial. Despite outstanding, in fact brilliant testimony, the defendants were all found guilty on either one or two counts of the indictment.
On September 12, 1977, Biko became the forty-first person detained under South Africa's security legislation to die while in police custody.
At the heart of Stephen Biko's thinking was the realization by Blacks that the most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed, and not terrorism. During Day 5 [the final day] of his testimony, he argued for the creation of a nonracial society without any particular minority protection. It is his contention that minority rights are guaranteed when everyone is equal before the law.
From the wisdom of Stephen Biko:
"It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die,"
“I’m going to be me as I am, and you can beat me or jail me or even kill me, but I’m not going to be what you want me to be.”
" Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time."
Alex Rose, [email protected], was born in South Africa in 1935, moved to the USA in 1977 and lived there forr 26 years. He is an engineering consultant who worked for Westinghouse for 18 years and then became self-employed. He was on the Executive of AFSI and a founding member of CAMERA, today one of the major forces monitoring media balance and accuracy in reportage on Israel. He made aliya with his wife in 2003 and lives in Ashkelon.