Was Desmond Tutu comparing Israel and Hitler?

1.

A plan to invite Archbishop Desmond Tutu to address students at the University of St. Thomas was canceled, after local Jewish community leaders condemned him as anti-Israel and an anti-Semite. The plan was to have him as a speaker next year, and it was scuttled by university officials who did not want to offend the Jewish community over the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (University officials confirmed the story to the press).

Julie Swiler, public affairs director for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that Tutu's remarks were "offensive and hurtful to Jews." While she said she did not consider Tutu anti-Semitic, his speech "compares Jews in Israel to Hitler" and "in another section he questions Jewish faithfulness to God."

Doug Hennes, vice president for university and government relations said that "He [Tutu] has been critical of Israel and Israeli policy regarding the Palestinians, so we talked with people in the Jewish community and they said they believed it would be hurtful to the Jewish community, because of things he's said". Hennes said the university does not believe Tutu is anti-Semitic, but cited a 2002 speech in which he said Tutu criticized "the Jewish lobby." Hennes also said Jewish groups feel Tutu has compared the Israeli policy toward Palestinians to how Adolf Hitler treated Jews.

2.

Can you see the difference?

She says: his speech "compares Jews in Israel to Hitler".

He says: "Jewish groups feel Tutu has compared"

Well, did he or didn't he compare?

3.

One of the sources for this Hitler comparison is a Haaretz story - or, to be more accurate, a quote of this story. The story itself is not available on the web, and spending some time looking for it I can tell you that not even a Haaretz worker can easily find it.

Anyway, the right wing ZOA quotes Haaretz in this way:

The Israeli daily Haaretz (April 29, 2002), reporting Tutu's remarks at a recent 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."

4.

But why waste time searching for a lost story, when the speech is available, signed by Tutu, in another publication, the British Guardian.

From the full quote, the original quote, one can learn why the Hitler comparison is, well, debatable:

"People are scared in this country [the U.S.], 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".

5.

Was he reminding his audience of the sufferings of Palestinians in a manner that invokes the Holocaust? He did. Was he talking about apartheid in this speech? Definitely, but mainstream American figures have also done that over the past year. And the same can be said about his comments on the Jewish lobby. But was this a comparison between Israel's policies and Hitler's? Not exactly.

Which still leaves us with a miserable speech of a biased and uninformed observer.


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