The Israeli daily, Haaretz is reporting that Alice Walker, one of America’s most cherished writers is now taking her personal support for the “Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) campaign a step further by urging American singer Alicia Keys not perform in Israel. I’d like to pose a couple of thoughts and a question to Alice Walker and other progressive thinking supporters of the BDS movement:
Why in instances where there is a regrettable historic strife between two “tribes,” two religions, two ethnic groups, my fellow liberal crusaders for human right inevitably side with the group that is less white, less connected racially to Europe, less engaged in modern commerce, less familiar with western education-technology and culture? Doesn’t truth, history and objectivity count for anything?
Have the Palestinians had it tough? Yes. Have they been mistreated by Israelis? Yes. Should they have their homeland? Yes.
The question the knee-jerk liberals like Alice Walker can’t or won’t answer is: How did we get to this point and who is responsible for this situation? Why do the Alice Walker’s of the world choose to ignore the political and cultural vilification of the Jewish people and Israel in the culture of most Arab nations? When did it become socially and morally acceptable to side with those who promote hate and bigotry? When did automatic support for third world people of color replace intellectual honesty? Why is hate among people of color ignored or tolerated?
(reprinted from Haaretz)
Alice Walker urges singer Alicia Keys to cancel July concert in Israel
In open letter to the R&B musician, author of ‘The Color Purple’ and proponent of the BDS campaign calls on Keys to boycott Israel and visit Gaza instead.
Alice Walker, renowned American author of “The Color Purple” who made headlines in Israel last year after refusing to authorize a Hebrew translation of her prize-winning book, has published an open letter urging singer Alicia Keys to cancel her scheduled July concert in Israel.
Walker, who is a proponent of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and participated in the 2011 Gaza Flotilla, says in her letter that although she has never met her, “It would grieve me to know you are putting yourself in danger (soul danger) by performing in an apartheid country that is being boycotted by many global conscious artists.
Invoking the civil rights movement she fought in that the 33-year R&B star is too young to have known personally, Walker calls a boycott of Israel “our only nonviolent option and, as we learned from our own struggle in America, nonviolence is the only path to a peaceful future.”
Just days after Alicia Keys confirmed her summer performance in March, the BDS campaign began to kick into gear, and websites, Facebook pages, and petitions urging Keys to cancel her plans to play Tel Aviv started popping up.
In her letter, Walker specifically holds Obama and his administration accountable for Palestinian suffering, and ends the letter by urging Keys to visit the Gaza.
“This is actually a wonderful opportunity for you to learn about something sorrowful, and amazing: that our government (Obama in particular) supports a system that is cruel, unjust, and unbelievably evil….Please, if you can manage it, go to visit the children in Gaza, and sing to them of our mutual love of all children, and of their right not to be harmed simply because they exist.”
Tent of Abraham 
I was really excited when i saw the topic for this post but I felt a bit let down that you didn’t refute the typical anti-Israel arguments. For me, this post ended too abruptly.
Janice, Thanks for taking time to comment. The point of the post was not to refute anti-Israel arguments but to highlight the hypocrisy and double standards of some people who are quite sure that they can proudly claim to being champions of human rights while also passionately hating the State of Israel. The fact that Alice Walker won’t allow her masterpiece, The Color Purple to be translated into Hebrew is an even bigger red flag about what is really going on in heart of hearts than her support of the BDS movement. A 3,000 year old language is somehow evil? What’s that all about? Duh.
I posted this latest nonsense about Walker’s personal prejudices to serve as a reminder that even enlightened liberals are not immune from civilization’s oldest social disease, anti-Semitism. In is mind boggling to me even the renown 92nd Street Y in Manhattan is going to allow her to speak at a such Jewish financed, cultural icon in the coming days. (http://www.92y.org/Uptown/Event/Alice-Walker-with-Eve-Ensler.aspx) No, not all critics Israel are anti-Semitic, but Alice Walker sure as hell is.
Some on the far left are just as idiotic as those on the far right. Nothing will ever be solved by those on the extreme edges, they are the problem not the solution
Great piece today (6/24/13) by Alan Dershowitz on Walker. http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/alice-walker-s-crass-bigotry-exposed.premium-1.531716