Three of the five parties in the governing coalition are explicitly religious Jewish political parties.

Certainly the West Bank settlements and everything that goes along with them are connected to Judaism.

Does Judaism not inform the current Israeli government policies with respect to Jerusalem as well?

Its a poor excuse to defend abhorrent political policies by attempting to use religion to justify the atrocities of war, oppression and discrimination against other people.

In the Bible, God does indeed instruct his followers to kill men, women, and children under certain circumstances.

Several fundamentalist Jewish leaders in Israel have justified violence against Palestinians on religious grounds.

Any state actor that promoted religiously excused violence and murders against innocent populations is a pariah among civilized nations. It is an evil company to keep and people all around the world have rightly condemned and ostracized past, and present, regimes for such atrocities. There is nothing to be proud of in evoking religious hatred as cover to do the vile deeds of evil men.

George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa

A more villainous man might be named, but whether Bush conjures up Christianity, or ICIS evokes Islam, or Israel exhorts Judaism in an attempt to rationalize their savageness, they have corrupted the basic tenets of their respective religions to prop up their own self serving agendas. Evil, unscrupulous men have employed religion throughout time in efforts to justify their barbarity, but it remains a transparent fraud.

I appreciate the courage and integrity of these religious groups and world respected leaders like Archbishop Tutu who are joining the boycott and divestment efforts to end to the illegal occupation of Palestine and bring about a peaceful resolution to the decades of the useless conflict.

...where you are headed with this oberliner.....and what exactly your point is .

My guess is that you are, like shira, accusing Tutu of antisemitism .....except in a more round about more polite manner .

Did you not read his full statement ????

What would you need to see?

Source: Algemeiner, 8th April 2015

The United Church of Christ, a liberal Protestant denomination with approximately 900,000 members (less than half of what it was in the mid-1960s and down approximately 300,000 members from the middle of the last decade), appears ready to jump back on board the anti-Israel bandwagon that it left in 2007.

The church’s General Synod, slated to take place in Cleveland in late June, will consider two resolutions that call on the church to divest from Israel and a third declaring that Israeli actions toward the Palestinians constitute apartheid. There are currently no resolutions on the General Synod’s agenda dealing with the ethnic cleansing of Christians in Iraq and Syria.

The divestment resolutions targeting Israel were submitted by two conferences – one serving churches in Northern California and Nevada and the other located in New Hampshire. The apartheid resolution was submitted by three conferences – the Central Atlantic, the Central Pacific and the New York Conference. The three resolutions will be considered first by a committee of the General Synod that will then make its recommendation to the entire body on how to deal with the issues raised.

Ominously enough, the denomination has invited Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, a Lutheran pastor from Bethlehem, to speak to the General Synod.

Read more: http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/04/08/is-the-ucc-headed-for-another-bout-of-anti-israelism/


Note: Personally, I agree with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and I hope the resolution will pass.

Last edited Mon Jun 22, 2015, 07:01 AM - Edit history (1)

.....against Palestinian women, gays, christians, and children. As if he couldn't care less about their rights.

The same way he is unconscionably silent about genuine Apartheid vs. Palestinians in Lebanon. Maybe those Palestinians don't have human rights according to Tutu.

Not to mention slavery in Sudan & Mauritania, or worsening conditions for Christians throughout the mideast and Africa. These are issues Tutu should be involved in constantly, but instead he is unconscionably silent.

Why?

Perhaps instead calling Tutu an anti-Semite some should ask him his opinions.

You never know, shira. He might answer you.

But I understand that some have to have their boogeymen in order to deflect from the Israeli Uncle Gunnysack.

....you don't have a problem with that silence, do you?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who led a decades-long fight against racial discrimination in South Africa, says the oppression of gay people around the world is the "new Apartheid." The retired Anglican archbishop spoke openly with NBC's Ann Curry about God, the bible and homophobia.

http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/ann-curry-reports/archbishop-desmond-tutu-oppression-of-gays-is-new-apartheid-290683459580

And not a peep from Tutu about Apartheid vs. Palestinians in Lebanon.

Or slavery in Mauritania and Sudan.

Or oppressed christians becoming an endangered species in the mideast and Africa.

===========

Someone needs to break the silence on that, but it won't be Tutu.

however do continue with laundry list of what you call Tutu's 'omissions'
or in bringing up Africa are you implying something else?

....facts and facts and more facts .......

The Evil That Dare Not Speak Its Name: Israel’s Apartheid

Posted on Jun 14, 2015

By Sandy Tolan

For years the “A-word” has been off-limits in polite conversation about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The A-word, we have been told, unfairly singles out the Jewish state and its use is perhaps even anti-Semitic. Such declarations can have a powerful silencing effect.

However, in 2002 Archbishop Desmond Tutu broke the taboo, writing in the British newspaper The Guardian that “the humiliation of Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks” reminded him “of what happened to us black people in South Africa.”

Four years later Jimmy Carter committed a similar indelicacy with the very title of his bestseller, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” A wave of condemnation of the former president followed. “He appears to be giving aid and comfort to the new anti-Semites,” wrote a reviewer for the Jewish Virtual Library.

For the most part, in the mainstream U.S. press at least, the decorum that forbids use of the A-word remains in place. Yet increasingly, as Israel continues to colonize the West Bank with settlers, and its army ensures their dominion over the lands they occupy, adhering to the A-word ban requires shielding one’s eyes, or, at a minimum, engaging in verbal gymnastics. What, after all, to call a system of legalized discrimination based on ethnicity and religion in which one group has full voting rights and the other does not? What to call a system under which one people can travel freely on roads built specifically for them, whisking through checkpoints because of their religion and the color of their license plates, and under which the other must submit to inspection at military kiosks frequently manned by snipers? A system under which one population in hilltop enclaves is protected by troops and military surveillance towers, while the other is subjected to frequent night raids by those same troops? Under which 40 percent of the adult male population has been forced to spend time in prison? Under which one group’s “civil administration” can designate a town of the other group as a historic archeological site and evict all the residents, who then must move into tents? Under which soldiers ordered Palestinian bathers out of a public swimming pool last spring so Jewish settlers could have a swim, alone and unbothered by the darker-skinned native population?

Here’s what I found on a trip I made to the West Bank recently.......

Continued @ :
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_evil_that_dare_not_speak_its_name_israels_apartheid_20150614