Novelist Alice Walker, who is slated to speak at Manhattan’s 92nd
Street Y, called on singer Alicia Keys to boycott Israel and cancel a
scheduled concert there.
In an open letter
posted on her website, Walker wrote, “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.”
Keys is scheduled to perform in Tel Aviv on July 4.
Walker, who is slated to speak Thursday at the Y, has called Israel
the world’s “biggest terrorist,” described suicide bombings as
“last-ditch resistance” in saying it was dishonest to engage in “blaming
the oppressed for using their bodies where the Israeli army uses
armored tanks,” and refused to allow “The Color Purple,” her Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel about black life in the segregated South, to be
translated into Hebrew. She also participated in a flotilla of ships
attempting to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.
A group called JCC Watch called on the 92nd Street Y to cancel Thursday’s event
with Walker, at which she is scheduled to discuss her activism and her
writing with Eve Ensler, author of “The Vagina Monologues.”
The Y did not respond to a request seeking comment.
“A cultural boycott of Israel and Israeli institutions (not
individuals) is the only option left to artists who cannot bear the
unconscionable harm Israel inflicts every day on the people of
Palestine, whose major ‘crime’ is that they exist in their own land,
land that Israel wants to control as its own,” Walker wrote in her
letter to Keys. “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.”
Thursday 30 May 2013
Alice Walker calls on Alicia Keys to boycott ‘apartheid’ Israel
Posted @ 16:57
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