About four days after Brad Pitt interviewed Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu for the special Bono-edited Africa issue of Vanity Fair, I had the exact same opportunity myself -- without the luxury of going home to Angelina Jolie.
It was slightly intimidating. Desmond Tutu was (after Nelson Mandela) the most important face of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, and he has been a major figure in peace movements ever since.
During the interview, the Archbishop repeated a controversial remark he has made in the past: He likened Israel's treatment of Palestinians to apartheid.
This is not a new idea. It is a view that has been espoused by many human rights activists, diplomats and world leaders -- most notably former President Jimmy Carter. I, however, had never heard it. In fact, I have rarely heard a word in opposition to Israel that hasn't come from Hamas, al-Qaeda or some other extremist group. But Desmond Tutu is no militant yahoo, so after the interview, I decided to look further into the issue.
The first similarity is basic: "Apartheid," directly translated from Afrikaans, means "separateness." The current Israeli policy of unilateral disengagement is called "Hafrada," which in Hebrew means "separation." Tutu insists that this policy would be okay if the plan was to divide Israel and Palestine into two sovereign states. The problem lies in the fact that, according to the U.N. Security Council, the West Bank and Gaza are still occupied by Israel.
In the West Bank, Israel maintains control of all major roads and has a passbook/checkpoint system in place to limit movement of suicide bombers from place to place. The problem with this is that it has become nearly impossible for Palestinians to leave their own village. There have been instances of emergency vehicles or women in labor being refused clearance at checkpoints. Naturally, this has crippled the Palestinian economy in the West Bank.
Unemployment is alarmingly high. This all bears a striking resemblance to the passbook laws enforced upon non-whites by the South African apartheid regime.
"I saw for myself the roadblocks where they would stop the Palestinians," Archbishop Tutu told me, "and for me it was such a replay of the kinds of things that we experienced. When I was Bishop of Johannesburg and we would be traveling from Soweto to town, we would be stopped, and they would want to be giving a body search to my wife and children. In public. You saw the same kind of humiliation meted out to Palestinians."
One of the more frightening aspects of this concept is that it may be conscious on the part of the Israeli government. In South Africa, faux "homelands" called "Bantustans" were set up for all non-whites. The apartheid government declared that all non-whites in South Africa were not South African citizens, but rather citizens of one of the Bantustans, and therefore were not entitled to the rights normally bestowed upon the citizens of a country. Former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema has reported that, during a meeting with former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the latter stated that South Africa's Bantustan model was the most appropriate solution.
Though there are many similarities between Israel/Palestine and the South African apartheid, I have come to the conclusion that this comparison is simplistic. Can you blame Israel for being obsessed with security, given that they are surrounded by hostile countries and are subject to frequent suicide bombings? Can you blame the Palestinian people for voting a militant organization into power that is violently opposed to the Israeli government when Israel has been -- to put it nicely -- less than scrupulous about protecting the rights of the Palestinians in the territories they control? But perhaps drawing a perfect comparison was not the Archbishop's goal. Perhaps he was just alarmed at similarities and refused to watch silently while people suffered as he once did.
Before this situation ends, both sides are going to have to acknowledge their wrongdoings. But in the United States, we tend to gloss over Israel's offenses because we perceive that we share the same enemies. What we refuse to realize is that it is self-defeating to sacrifice human lives and human rights for the sake of security. As Archbishop Tutu constantly says, "My humanity is tied up in your humanity: I am a human because you are, and I should treat you as such."
Matt Hershberger is a junior majoring in journalism. His e-mail address is mdh5031@psu.edu.
