OLAMGADOL2: "I Protest Desmond Tutu!"

What I Did--and Will It Matter?

I spent several hours on Saturday outside Boston's Old South Church, protesting Desmond Tutu's pro-Palestinian conference. Tutu used the church's bully pulpit to issue diatribes against Israel, going so far as to tell the Jews that the God of the Hebrews now supports the Palestinians. During the speech, several thousands of anti-war protesters joined with pro-Palestinian groups to spew hatred toward Israel and America. It was very discouraging to watch.

I dashed off a letter to the Boston Globe yesterday, and was NOT surprised to see that the newspaper probably buried it in the obituaries. I will continue to resend it for the next several days. Below is the text of my letter. (Incidentally, I'm in the process of drafting a letter to His Holiness, Pope Benedict, protesting his "prince's" use of the altar to promote hate speech.)

Letter to the Editor (Boston Globe):

Dexter Van Zile’s Oct. 25 op-ed “Hate at the Altar” accurately portrays Desmond Tutu as an archbishop with an agenda. Tutu’s misguided and quixotic quest to wage battle against the windmills of an imagined apartheid has lowered him to unimaginable depths by deliberately altering Scripture to “prove” that the God of the Jews now champions the rights of the Palestinians.

Perhaps Tutu’s advanced age and frailty have caused him some memory loss concerning what the Hebrew Bible actually does say about God’s relationship with the Jewish people. For his benefit, I would like to jog his failing memory:

“Genesis 12:1-3. … And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” May I also remind Mr. Tutu that it is rather unlikely that the God of Hebrew Scripture would have saved the Israelites from the Egyptians only to dash them against the altar of Palestinian savagery, which includes a multitude of atrocities ranging from the killing of Israeli schoolchildren to the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes.

Tutu’s caustic warning to Jews from the bully pulpit of Old South chillingly echoes that of another priest, Charles Coughlin, who in the 1930s also used anti-Semitic sermons to advance his own agenda of “social justice”. The only difference is that Coughlin never attempted to cloak his anti-Semitism in the guise of “human rights”.

Great post, Olam! And how wonderful you actually spent your time going there in person to protest! Good for you! Your alikening him to Coughlin was very apt; well do I remember his screeds of days gone by. It seems they never really went anywhere...