Archbishop Tutu’s calls for economic sanctions were instrumental in amassing the international pressure that forced an end to an odious system of institutionalized racism. Among his many outstanding accomplishments, Tutu served as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, using his influential position to urge what he called “the principle of restorative—rather than retributive—justice.” He stood firmly against violence and urged blacks and whites to bridge the chasm between them. He spoke his often-discomfiting truths to black leaders, as well as white. As the Times put it, he was a “spellbinding” preacher, his sermons laced with his hallmark wit and humour, ever upbeat, showcasing his “winning effervescence,” while “inviting his audience into a jubilant bond of fellowship.”
More! Tutu was a committed husband and father. He was modest, punctual, appreciative of bellhops, uncomfortable with limousines. He illustrated children’s books. In spite of his sufferings, “he did not allow himself to hate his enemies.” Indeed, he was “generous in forgiving his enemies.”
My goodness, was there ever such a paragon of ethical and moral leadership?
Tutu made his distaste for Jews clear in his discourse, with the use of classic antisemitic tropes like Jewish “arrogance,” “power,” and “money.” Tutu minimized the suffering of Holocaust victims, asserting that “the gas chambers” made for “a neater death” than apartheid did. He complained about the “Jewish Monopoly of the Holocaust,” demanding that its victims “forgive the Nazis for the Holocaust,” even though he himself did not forgive the Jews for “persecuting others.”
“He not only believed in antisemitism, he actively promoted and legitimated Jew-hatred among his many followers and admirers around the world,” Dershowitz writes.
All of Tutu’s accusations against Jews and Israel were demonstrably baseless canards, but “ordinary” antisemites believe them, because it gives them comfort to think their inchoate hatred is justified.
Such facts make a mockery of the very word “apartheid” in the mouth of a survivor, let alone a hero of apartheid’s demolition. Yet Archbishop Tutu had no qualms about weaponizing the word for hateful purpose. He knew very well that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, that the Israeli government is not guilty of “censorship of their media,” as he claimed (quite the contrary, but the Palestinian media are censored), and that Muslim Israelis enjoy equality rights that Christians in Muslim countries can only dream of. So it is especially shameful—a disgrace to the anti-apartheid movement—that Tutu would use his celebrity and lend his pulpit to bruit the kind of hateful messaging that one associates here with the white-supremacist dregs of society.
Dershowitz concludes by asking, “at a time of increasing antisemitism in the world,” that any decision on canonization of Archbishop Tutu—statues or other forms of homage—take his “decidedly mixed legacy” into consideration.
This is naturally for South Africans to decide.
Personally, I would be very surprised if this particular form of bigotry were to be any impediment whatsoever to Tutu’s lavish memorialization. Antisemitism is not like other hatreds. Not only because it is the oldest, but because it is the easiest to ignore, the easiest to exploit, the easiest to forget, and the easiest to forgive. Why? Like all antisemites, Tutu had a ready explanation: “Whether Jews like it or not, they are a peculiar people. They can’t ever hope to be judged by the same standards which are used for other people.”
For people who are not antisemites, the ancient question remains unanswered.