Tutu Discusses His Views on Israel with Jewish Leaders in Cincinnati

Although he disagrees strongly with policies of the Israeli government, South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu told Jewish leaders here this week that he is not an anti-Semite.

And those who met with him Monday during the South African archbishop’s four-day visit to Cincinnati agreed.

It’s important, Tutu said at a news conference following the private meeting, that the world knows ” that the archbishop of Cape Town is not anti-Semitic.”

“I do not believe he’s anti-Semitic, not one bit,” Dr. Alfred Gottschalk, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, said at the news conference.

Gottschalk served as spokesman for the group of 18 Jewish community leaders whose private meeting with the Anglican cleric had been arranged at the request of Michael Rapp, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council here.

Although those who participated in the onehour meeting characterized it as “fruitful” and “worthwhile,” it was apparent that strong differences remain between the Anglican archbishop and the Jewish community.

Those differences center primarily on Tutu’s support for a Palestinian homeland and his comparison of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians with the South African government system of apartheid, in which the white minority population rules over the vast black majority.

CRITICIZED THE GOVERNMENT

Tutu used that analogy during a Christmas week visit to Israel last December, in which he harshly criticizing the government’s handling of the intifada and its unwillingness to support the creation of a Palestinian state.

He also suggested it was time for Jews to forgive the Nazis for perpetrating the Holocaust.

Tutu’s visit to the United States presented an opportunity to confront the archbishop about his views directly.

But although Tutu is visiting several other U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, New York and Washington, the only scheduled meeting with Jewish community leaders was the dialogue Monday in Cincinnati.

Because Monday’s meeting was limited to one hour, Jewish leaders here decided to focus primarily on Tutu’s comparison of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians with the South African system of apartheid, Rapp told The American Israelite.

A joint statement issued after the meeting reported that the “Jewish community leaders and Archbishop Tutu differed on whether comparisons could be drawn between the policies of the South African and Israeli governments.”

It also said that while Tutu reaffirmed “the right of Israel to exist within secure borders,” he also “restated his belief in the right of the Palestinian people to a homeland.”

According to Gottschalk, Tutu “walked away from” the analogy between Israel and South Africa and “spoke with great passion” of things he saw in the refugee camps he visited in the Israeli-administered territories.

But he reiterated the position of the Anglican Church, Gottschalk said, in condemning the Arabs’ protracted enmity against Israel, in supporting Israel’s right to exist with clear and defensible borders, and in supporting the Palestinians’ right to a homeland of their own.

Diana Aviv, associate director of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, who flew to Cincinnati for the Monday meeting, said that although the participants did not have time for all the issues, “it was a good start.”