Defend Tutu from these vindictive Zionists
An international petition has been set up to support Desmond Tutu against an onslaught by the Israeli Ambassador to South Africa and the South African Zionist Federation. Just as they ganged up on eminent South African judge Richard Goldstone when he found Israel guilty of war crimes in Gaza (an attack so vindictive that at one point he was banned from his grandson’s bar-miztvah ceremony) they have now branded Desmond Tutu an anti-semite and a “bigot” and demanded that he be removed as patron from the country’s Holocaust centres.
Desmond Tutu, one of the indisputably good guys on this planet, has not rested on his laurels after leading the fight to defeat Apartheid. As a staunch supporter of human rights anywhere, he’s stood by the Palestinian people, met their leaders and visited Gaza. He said loudly and clearly that Israel is practising apartheid and worse.
He is a man who speaks truth to power, and does it unambiguously: “Only the thickest-skinned South Africans” he wrote, appealing to the Cape Town Opera not to play in Israel “would be comfortable performing before an audience that excluded residents living, for example, in an occupied West Bank village 30 minutes from Tel Aviv, who would not be allowed to travel to Tel Aviv, while including their Jewish neighbours from an illegal settlement on occupied Palestinian territory.”
Emeritus Archbishop Tutu has been a patron of the Cape Town and Johannesburg Holocaust Centres, believing that such grotesque and racist crimes against humanity must never happen again, and supporting the Centres’ mission statement that we must build “a more caring and just society in which human rights and diversity are respected and valued”.
One of the initiators of the petition, Lungisa Mndende, said “Whether it is the struggle against Nazi genocide or against Apartheid, it is important for us to remember the history of oppression. For his advocacy of non-violence and human rights Archbishop Tutu is an ideal patron for the Holocaust Centre because he reminds us that we have the strength and the duty to struggle against racism and violations of human rights at home and in every country around the world.”
And as the citation for the petition states,”He represents the finest tradition of resistance to all forms of oppression. He has taught us that understanding the Holocaust begins with appreciating that the only way for each of us to be safe is for all of us to be safe. He embodies the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document born of the horrors of the Second World War, the rights contained in which pertain equally to Israelis and Palestinians. … To use the Holocaust in an attempt to de-legitimise Tutu is to undermine its legacy and insult the memory of its victims. To call him an anti-Semite, because he has attacked the policies of the Israeli government, is outrageous, renders the term meaningless, and enfeebles the necessary efforts to defeat real anti-Semites and racists.
www.thepetitionsite.com/1/defend-tutu/
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