Time to call this man on his bigotry: Desmond Tutu says Israel’s claim to be a “civilised democracy” is “fallacious”

by Robin Shepherd

Desmond Tutu may have retired earlier this month as an Anglican Archbishop, but he has not given up on his obsession with demonising the Jewish state. Yesterday he was at it again with an appeal to the Cape Town Opera to cancel a planned trip next month to Israel and thus join the international boycott movement.

He said the decision to go would advance “Israel’s fallacious claim to being a ‘civilized democracy.’” He added that, like apartheid South Africa, Israel was “a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity.”

Ok. Enough is enough from this man. He’s got away with extreme bigotry against the Jewish state for one reason and one reason alone: because he was a brave and principled opponent of South Africa’s inhuman system of apartheid. But this is ludicrous and it’s time he was called on it.

For one thing, the fact that one opposes something that is wrong does not mean that one is oneself a good person, let alone some sort of saint beyond reproach. Stalin opposed Nazism, which meant that he helped defeat a great evil. He nonetheless remained a great evil himself. While I’m not comparing apartheid to Nazism, or Tutu to Stalin, the principle at issue here should be clear.

For another thing, it is possible to have been a good and decent person at one point in one’s life and to degenerate as life goes on.

Desmond Tutu did good things in the earlier part of his life but has devoted a considerable portion of his later life to pushing and perpetuating the number one cause of bigots around the world: the demonisation of the Jewish state of Israel.

He was once a hero. Now, he’s a disgrace. And none of us should hesitate to say so.

Robin Shepherd

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