Good Riddance Desmond Tutu!!!

Last week Archbishop Desmond Tutu celebrated his 79th birthday, with an announcement that he was retiring from public life to spend more time with family and  personal interests.

President Barack Obama congratulated Archbishop Desmond Tutu on his official retirement, praising him for the extensive list of accomplishments in his decades-long career.
"For decades he has been a moral titan -- a voice of principle, an unrelenting champion of justice, and a dedicated peacemaker," Obama said in a written statement.

The President's declaration was echoed by many leaders across the world, but the President and Tutu's cheering squad are wrong.  Sure the Bishop's fight against Apartheid was just and moral, and Tutu should be praised for helping to rid the world of that plague of intolerance.  But since that time, Desmond Tutu has not been a "moral titan," he has been spreading one of the oldest hatreds in the history of the world Antisemitism.

Allow me to make one important distinction, many folks believe that being anti-Israel is the same as being anti-Semitic. I am not a subscriber to that belief.  While there is certainly a large cross-over, it is quite possible to be against the Jewish State without having a hatred toward the Jewish people.  Bishop Desmond Tutu on the other hand is both anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.

Tutu has made some very disturbing statements about the Holocaust. He has publicly complained about what he calls “the Jewish monopoly of the Holocaust.” (Jerusalem Post, July 26, 1985) Sorry Bishop, Jews do own the copyright. We paid for it with more than Six Million lives, one and a half million of those were little children. 

During his 1989 visit to Israel, Tutu “urged Israelis to forgive the Nazis for the Holocaust,” a statement which the Simon Wiesenthal Center called “a gratuitous insult to Jews and victims of Nazism everywhere.” (Jerusalem Post, Dec. 31, 1989)

Tutu spreads around the anti-Semitic stereotype about the Jewish Lobby running the world.

People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what? 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 (Source:Monday April 29, 2002, The Guardian UK).

The liberal Israeli daily Ha’aretz (April 29, 2002), reported Tutu’s remarks at a conference in Boston, quoted him as saying: “Israel is like Hitler and apartheid”: “I’ve been deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa

Tutu accused Jews of exhibiting “an arrogance—the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support,”(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily News Bulletin, Nov. 29, 1984)

After his call for "forgiving Hitler" (Jerusalem Post, Dec. 31, 1989) Tutu remarked, “If I’m accused of being anti-Semitic, tough luck,” and in response to questions about his anti-Jewish bias, Tutu replied, “My dentist’s name is Dr. Cohen.” (Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Response magazine, January 1990)

Yes Tutu we get it, some of your best friends are Jews, some of our best friends are bigoted Bishops.

Beyond regurgitating Jews control the world charges from "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," Tutu comes up with new attacks. Speaking in a Connecticut church in 1984, Tutu said that “the Jews thought they had a monopoly on God; Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings.” In the same speech, he compared the features of the ancient Holy Temple in Jerusalem to the features of the apartheid system in South Africa. (Hartford Courant, Oct. 29, 1984)

This is the "mindset of the man" who is pushing UC California Berkeley to divest itself from Israel, after a vote by the Student Senate in favor of divestment Tutu wrote:

It was with great joy that I learned of the recent 16-4 vote at UC Berkeley in support of divesting the university's money from companies that enable and profit from the injustice of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and violation of Palestinian human rights. Principled stands like this, supported by a fast growing number of U.S. civil society organizations and people of conscience, including prominent Jewish groups, are essential for a better world in the making, and it is always an inspiration when young people lead the way and speak truth to power.

 Tutu pushes his usual argument which totally ignores the terrorism that still exists today and the "gestures" made by Israel to make peace, none of which were matched with gestures from the Palestinians.  If he was really interested in human rights, he would have criticized the decision to single out Israel for condemnation, rather than any of the real human rights offenders in the world many of which are in Israel's neighborhood, such as Iran, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Desmond Tutu may have been a champion of Human Rights in his own country, but he has been a champion of hatred against Jews across the world. I will not be sending him a gold watch or a set of golf clubs for his retirement, just a sign that says, "good riddance!"