South African Jewish group: Comparing Tutu to Hitler "morally offensive"

A South African Jewish group has condemned a recent article by the chair of Likud South Africa, in which Nobel Laureate Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is compared to Adolf Hitler.

In a statement issued Wednesday, South African Jewish Voices for a Just Peace (JVJP) respond to the piece penned by Leon Reich, and published by the South African Jewish Report (SAJR) website on September 10. The article – now removed, but a cached version is viewable here – is titled ‘Arch no better than Hitler or Stalin says Reich’ and features a crude image of Tutu as the Nazi dictator.

After noting Tutu’s history and “international standing” as a moral voice, JVJP state that they “utterly reject the assumption that dissent from Zionism is equivalent to anti-Semitism” and also “take issue with the article’s distorted and dishonest representation of the Palestinian solidarity movement as a movement invested in the ‘destruction of Jews'” – a “myth”, they say, perpetuated “in order to maintain a siege mentality amongst Jews in South Africa”.

SAJR later removed the piece from its website, but even its published apology is criticised by JVJP, who note that it was “more concerned with the way in which the article may have offended some Jews with its reference to the Holocaust than it is with making amends to Tutu by offering a sincere and unequivocal apology, as would be fitting under the circumstances”.

JVJP explain that they are speaking out “as Jews” because this attack on Tutu “was launched by a Jewish organisation, speaks to a Jewish audience, and frequently invokes the collective ‘we’ which assumes that the Jewish community is homogenous in its views”.

According to the organisation, JVJP aims to “facilitate respectful dialogue and discussion amongst South African Jews”, in recognition that “the South African Jewish community is not homogenous in its thinking and that there are many different views on Israel”. They claim that “many Jews in our country are deeply troubled by the actions of Israel and the human rights abuses which are inflicted on Palestinians”, yet many “are afraid to speak about these abuses for fear of being ostracized.”