[NYTr] Catholic Univ Backs Down, Re-invites Desmond Tutu

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[No surprise, really.  Once the ADL's Abraham Foxman wrote, it was
a foregone conclusion that this miserable college would reverse itself
on Tutu.  Whether or not the Dean will get her job back is another
question. -NY Transfer]

sent by Steven L. Robinson -ativ-l

Amazing! End of Tutu smear! St Thomas reverses position and invites
Tutu!

Cecilie Surasky
Muzzlewatch

So much good news to report for a change.

We had a back and forth with folks at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
about the false Tutu quote after they used it in a release. Well, these
guys are good and went to the source, the Zionist Organization of
America, and finally put to bed this terrible smear against Tutu.

They also broke the story that Abe Foxman came out in support of Tutu
speaking. (We're in the piece as well.)  The extreme rightwing ZOA still
insists Tutu is an anti-Semite. Mitchell Plitnick and I wrote an op-ed
that appeared in the Minneapolis/St Paul Star Tribune today suggesting
that silencing Tutu and silencing debate is not the best way to be a
friend to Jews. Best of all - and the timing is no coincidence - this
afternoon, the University of St Thomas announced a reversal of their
decision.

I'll leave you with a link to Tony Karon's piece, "My Favorite
'Anti-Semite'," which I've been wanting to highlight since he write it
about Archbishop Tutu when the story broke. Karon, a Time.com senior
editor, is Jewish and a former anti-apartheid activist from south
Africa.

See for original and links: http://www.muzzlewatch.com/?p=271

*****************

Jewish Telegraphic Agency - October 12, 2007
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/20071009zoatutu.html

ZOA defends Tutu news release that contained incorrect quotes

By Ben Harris 

New York -- The president of the Zionist Organization of America is
defending his organization's use of a press release that incorrectly
quotes Archbishop Desmond Tutu as comparing Israel to Hitler and
apartheid.

The ZOA's release, dated April 29, 2002, gained unexpected attention
last week after it emerged that Tutu had his appearance at a Minnesota
university canceled over remarks he delivered just weeks before the
ZOA's release.

According to the ZOA, Ha'aretz reported that at a pro-Palestinian
conference in Boston, Tutu said that "Israel is like Hitler and
apartheid." The release also quotes Tutu as saying that "critics of
Israel are being smeared." In fact, neither quote appears in the report
from Ha'aretz, nor do they appear in a transcript of Tutu's speech
posted on the Internet.

Several right-wing commentators and activists in their condemnations of
Tutu have cited the alleged Hitler line as it appears in the ZOA
release. The JTA recently corrected a brief that relied on the ZOA's
account of the speech.

According to ZOA President Morton Klein, the organization intended to
present the quotations in question as synopses of Tutu's remarks that
were attributed to Klein himself. Both of the incorrect quotations were
followed in the release by the actual quotations from Tutu's speech.

Klein conceded that the release was poorly drafted and told JTA on
Tuesday that he would issue a clarification. Still, the ZOA leader said
that the general thrust of the release was correct.

"I intended that to be a quote from me to describe what he said," Klein
told JTA. "I made the phrase to sort of encapsulate what he said. I
never intended it to be his quote."

ZOA quoted from an account of the speech in which Tutu's only reference
to Hitler came when he stated: "People are scared in [the United
States] to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful --
very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world!
We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very
powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin,
Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end
they bit the dust."

Klein said there was little difference in criticizing Israel or
criticizing its defenders in Washington. He added that his portrayal of
Tutu's remarks is substantively accurate, even if those exact words
were not spoken.

"I stand by the fact that he compares Israel to Hitler and apartheid,"
Klein said.

In a subsequent interview, Klein attempted to bolster his case by
pointing to a transcript of the speech on the Web site of Friends of
Sabeel -- North America. He noted that, according to the transcript,
Tutu immediately followed the passage in question by saying: "An unjust
Israeli government, however powerful, will fall in the world of this
kind of God."

Klein acknowledged that he only recently became aware of the Sabeel
transcript, but said it backed up his contention that Tutu compared
Israel to Hitler.

According to the transcript, Tutu went on to say that "we don't want for
that to happen." He then ended by uring the audience to tell the
Israelis and the Palestinians that "peace is possible and that we will
do all we can to assist you in achieving this peace which is withing
your grasp, because it is God's dream that you will be able to live
amicably together as sisters and brothers, side by side because you
belong in God's family.

An Internet search reveals that the "Israel is Hitler" quote found its
way into other publications, including Front Page Magazine, which
published an article in January 2003 by John Perazzo citing the quote.

Charles Jacobs, president of the Boston-based David Project, cited it
in a column in August warning about Tutu's visit to Boston later this
month. And David Horowitz, Front Page's editor, used it in an article
slamming the divestment movement. Numerous bloggers also have cited the
quote.

Klein told JTA that he didn't see a problem using quotations that aren't
strictly accurate if they reflect the essence of a speaker's intentions.

"I frankly don't see the harm done when our encapsulation promotes what
his statements essentially said," Klein said. "I see no harm in it."