An online petition has accused the revered anti-apartheid icon Archbishop Desmond Tutu of “demonising Israel” with its organisers demanding he be axed as the patron of local holocaust centres.
The petition, by three Cape Town locals and which has drawn nearly 350 supporters, accuses the Nobel Peace Prize laureate of being a bigot, dishonest and a “defamer of Israel and the Jewish people”.
“Over the years, Archbishop Tutu has been guilty of numerous anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements,” states the campaign on www.thepetitionsite.com.
It demands that Tutu resign or be sacked as patron of the Cape Town holocaust centre and the Johannesburg holocaust and genocide centre.
“We, the undersigned, are outraged by his malicious distortions, paraded with hypocritical sanctimony and his latest foray into demonising Israel,” it said.
“Tutu is dishonest when he tries to argue that Israel is a racist society,” it added.
Tutu, who retired from public life ahead of his 79th birthday last year, is an internationally respected activist whose numerous targets have included Israeli policy toward Palestinians and the occupied territories.
Last straw
Last year he urged the Cape Town Opera to cancel an Israeli trip as Palestinians would not have equal access to the performance, drawing parallels with the international boycott during apartheid South Africa.
“That is what sparked the petition,” its author David Hersch told AFP. “That’s not the main issue, it just was the last straw,” he said.
The petition, which was launched last month and lists several of Tutu’s outspoken comments, rejects his “false, bigoted and politically motivated accusation” that Israel was an apartheid state.
It also calls his support for Israeli sanctions “morally repugnant because it is based on horrific and grotesquely false accusations against the Jewish people”.
The anti-Tutu effort has sparked a counter-petition which had more than 1 500 signatures online.
“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,” it said.
Tutu, who is abroad, will meet the South African Holocaust Foundation on the 25th of January, said his aide Dan Vaughan.
“The relationship has been amicable,” he said.
The South African Zionist Federation, which said it had nothing to do with the petition, said it had suspended Hersch as vice-chairman last year. Hersch denied being suspended. — Sapa-AFP