Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate and anti-apartheid icon, is at the centre of a furious row after Jewish activists accused him of “demonising Israel” and demanded that he be axed as the patron of two local Holocaust centres.
Outraged supporters, including Arthur Chaskalson, former Chief Justice of South Africa, and the singer Annie Lennox, have rallied to Mr Tutu’s side and labelled the slurs against the world-respected cleric as totally unacceptable.
The row blew up when a petition surfaced, signed by three well-known members of Cape Town’s Jewish community, accusing the the Archbishop of being a “bigot, dishonest and a defamer of Israel and the Jewish community”.
It stated: “Over the years, Archbishop Tutu has been guilty of numerous anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements.”