An October 12 editorial argues that an examination of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s actual remarks shows that he said nothing about Israel being racist, that he did not compare Israel to Hitler and that he is not even remotely antisemitic (“The Tutu Heave-Ho”).
But in fact, the full transcript of Tutu’s speech shows he said the following: “Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Idi Amin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and the apartheid government were powerful. But, this is God’s world. A lie, injustice, oppression, those will never prevail in the world of this God… those ones, they have already lost, they are going to bite the dust one day… an unjust Israeli government, however powerful, will fall in the world of this kind of God.”
How can the Forward claim that Tutu was not comparing Israel to Hitler and the other evil powers that have bitten the dust and whose fate, Tutu states, Israel will share one day? Tutu compared Israel to apartheid by stating, “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.”
And why, for that matter, has Tutu only attacked Israel for having traded with South Africa, while essentially ignoring the 20 countries whose trade with Pretoria surpassed Israel’s? Is it because Israel is full of Jews?
Morton Klein
National President
Zionist Organization of America
New York, N.Y.
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