Simon Wiesenthal responds to Desmond Tutu on Israel.

Wednesday October 30, 2002 06:38

by Dan

Simon Wiesenthal responds to Desmond Tutu on Israel.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center sharply criticized former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu's call for divestment from Israel as unjust and a distortion of the truth.

Rabbi Heir said, what is most hurtful about Desmond Tutu, is rather than cry out on behalf of the innocent victims of terror, Tutu aligns himself with those who have refused to stop it. Rather than urge American universities to divest from the Middle East's only democracy, Tutu should be urging Moslem religious and political leaders to unequivocally condemn the terrorist organizations whose only aim is the total destruction of the State of Israel", Rabbi Hier concluded.

If there is no peace in the Mideast, It is because Arafat rejected former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's offer of a Palestinian State and deployed terror as a deliberate means to kill Israeli civilians. This is what Arafat calls his phase by phase plan.

If there are security check points in Israel, it is because there have been 120 suicide attacks that have murdered more than 460 Israeli men, women, and children, many of those attacks carried out by terrorist groups affiliated with Arafat's own Fatah organization. If ambulances are checked, it is because the Palestinians have used them to conceal terrorists and weapons in their attacks", he continued.

Are Israeli policies fair game for criticism? Of course. But it is not "criticism" to falsely smear Israel as racist -- not when the Arab world seethes with a hatred of Jews more rabid even than the Nazis'.

It is not "criticism" to accuse Israel of apartheid, when it is the Arab world that preaches "Kill the Jews!" and dances in the street when terrorists kill Israeli civilians.

It is not "criticism" to lay the blame for the violence of the Middle East at Israel's doorstep while ignoring the immense risks that Israel has taken and the sacrifices it has made in pursuit of peace with the Palestinians.

It is not "criticism" to accuse Israel of apartheid, when it is the Arab world that preaches "Kill the Jews!" and dances in the street when terrorists do so.

This is not criticism -- it is calumny. It butchers the truth and subjects Israel to an outrageous double standard. It abets the cause of the world's foremost Jew-haters -- people whose explicit goal is the liquidation of the Jewish state.