The recent petition for Archbishop Tutu along with Professor Asmal and Judge Richard Goldstone to step down from their positions as Patrons at the Holocaust Centre is disturbing. Even though the Chief Rabbi thinks the Archbishop’s criticisms of Israel are unfair he has come out clearly in support of Arcbishop Tutu remaining a patron, while staying silent about Professor Asmal and Judge Goldstone
Having Tutu, Goldstone and Asmal (each of them revered throughout the world as champions of human rigjts for all) as Patrons of the two Holocaust centres adds weight to the universality of what we can all learn from the genocide . Nor should we forget what the Nazis did to gay people, disabled people, communists and others.
The claim that the Archbishop is anti-Semitic is absurd. When some of us opposed apartheid, we were told that we hated our own race and that we were unpatriotic. We were loyal to our common humanity in the same way that Tutu,, Goldstone and Asmal are.
Is it possible for some people, that their identity and remembrance of their own and their peoples trauma, blinds them to the suffering they are causing today?
Fr Michael Lapsley,SSM
Institute for Healing of Memories
Cape Town
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