UPenn's Commencement Speaker is an Anti-Semitic Leftist

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | Monday, April 7, 2003 | By Morton A. Klein

[JohnHuang2]

UPenn's Commencement Speaker is an Anti-Semitic Leftist
By Morton A. Klein
Zionist Organization of America | April 7, 2003

The Israeli daily Ha'aretz (April 29, 2002), reporting 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 ... I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about... "I say why are our memories so short? Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? ... 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. Injustice and oppression will never prevail."
* "The Jewish lobby is very powerful": "People are scared in this country [the U.S.], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful--very powerful."

"Critics of Israel are being smeared": "You know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the U.S.] and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic, as if Palestinians were not Semitic." 

"Jewish Arrogance" 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)

"Jewish Monopoly of the Holocaust Tutu complained about the Jewish monopoly of the Holocaust." (Jerusalem Post, July 26, 1985)

"Forgive the Nazis" During his 1989 visit to Israel, Tutu "urged Israelis to forgive the Nazis for the
Holocaust" (Jerusalem Post, Dec. 31, 1989), a statement which the Simon Wiesenthal Center called "a gratuitous insult to Jews and victims of Nazism everywhere." During the visit, Tutu remarked "If I'm accused of being antisemitic, 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)

"Zionism Is Racism" Tutu has claimed that Zionism has "very many parallels with racism." (American Jewish Year Book 1988, p.50)

"Jews Thought They Had a Monopoly on God" 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)
 
"Palestine, Not Israel": In conversations during the 1980s with the Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Eliahu Lankin, Tutu "refused to call Israel by its name, he kept referring to it as Palestine." (Simon Wiesenthal Center's Response magazine, January 1990)

"Jews Cause Refugees": Asked about the Zionism-is-racism resolution, Tutu complained that
"the Jewish people with their traditions, religion and long history of persecution sometimes appear to have caused a refugee problem among others." (South African Zionist Record, July 26, 1985) 
 
Penn's press release
(http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/releases/2003/Q1/commencement.html):

Desmond Tutu to Speak at Penn Commencement

PHILADELPHIA -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel laureate and one of the world's foremost Christian leaders to oppose apartheid in South Africa, will deliver the address at the 247th Commencement ceremony of the University of Pennsylvania May 19.

Tutu graduated from college with a teaching diploma and taught high school before entering the Anglican ministry. He later earned bachelor of divinity and master of theology degrees in England before returning to South Africa.

Tutu was named secretary general of the South African Council of Churches after the historic 1976 uprising against apartheid in Soweto. His leadership at the SACC created a public stage for his active resistance to racial injustice in South Africa, earning him the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.

Tutu devoted the following years to bridging the chasm between the people of South Africa. In 1986, he became the first black Anglican archbishop of Cape Town. More recently, he headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an attempt to heal the wounds of the former system of government-enforced racial segregation. He retired as archbishop of Cape Town and was named archbishop emeritus in 1996.

At Penn's Commencement, Tutu will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree.

[JohnHuang2]

Monday, April 7, 2003

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