Given what I know about this readership, my opinion here may be controversial. The following is a June 20 Associated Press story entitled, “Alice Walker rejects Israeli translation of book”:
American writer Alice Walker won’t let an Israeli publisher release a new Hebrew edition of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Color Purple,” saying she objects to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people.
Walker, an ardent pro-Palestinian activist, said in a letter to Yediot Books that Israel practices “apartheid” and must change its policies before her works can be published there.
“I would so like knowing my books are read by the people of your country, especially by the young and by the brave Israeli activists (Jewish and Palestinian) for justice and peace I have had the joy of working beside,” she wrote in the letter, obtained by The Associated Press. “I am hopeful that one day, maybe soon, this may happen. But now is not the time.”
There was something sweet about that last paragraph from Ms. Walker. I don’t believe she’s really a hater of Jews, especially considering that she married one; they divorced “amicably” ten years later, according to Wikipedia. But her obsession with Israel and Jewish issues is more than a little troubling.
Keep in mind that she doesn’t recognize the right of Israel to define itself as a Jewish state. She signed a 1988 statement published in The NY Times demanding an end to US support for “apartheid Israel” and hailing a future of Israelis and Palestinians living together in one country (I heard her essentially restate this position a few months ago on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate interview show). By way of contrast, later in 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organization indicated an acceptance of a two-state solution.
Walker is also a crusader against Brit Milah, the Jewish rite of circumcising male babies as a symbol of the Covenant. These are both extreme, uncompromising positions. One is against a principle that most Jews consider sacrosanct: the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination. The other is against a sacred ritual of the Jewish religion.
Yet I believe that Walker is moved to both positions out of compassion. On Israel and the Palestinians, I take it at face value that she cares about Palestinian suffering, and I share this concern. But I see the 2006 turn of a narrow plurality of the Palestinian electorate toward Hamas (hard on the heels of Israel’s complete unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005) as tragic. On & off episodes of Palestinian attacks on Israel have triggered severe and bloody Israeli reprisals; another result of this narrow decision of Palestinian voters six and a half years ago (and the Hamas victory in the brief civil war in 2007) is that the sporadic violence out of Gaza has moved the Israeli electorate decisively to the right.
And I know that Walker and others (including some of you, dear readers) have humanitarian considerations about male circumcision. There are extremely rare instances of physical harm from this rite, but it’s wrong to conflate male circumcision with female genital mutilation, as Ms. Walker apparently does. We should also be aware that there is a growing consensus of scientific opinion that male circumcision is a significant preventive measure against AIDS and some other venereal diseases.
I am a stickler for precision in the use of one particular word—antisemitism. Walker’s choice of a Jewish husband and the last paragraph of her quote above are both indications that she’s not antisemitic, i.e., not a hater of Jews. However, whether she realizes it or not, she is establishing a track record for being anti-Jewish. Even if the English language has not yet derived the right term for such complexity, we should be able to distinguish between someone whom we would condemn as a hater of Jews (an antisemite) and someone whom many of us would argue with on principled grounds as an opponent of Jewish values and interests. Walker falls into the latter category.
I love Great Britain. I think the culture is wonderful. There are many things I love about that nation, but I do not love everything about it. If I criticize Great Britain it does not make me a Britain-hater? I love the Israeli people, as I love the Palestinian people. I look forward to the day these two peoples can live in peace and security. In the meantime I condemn rocket attacks and I condemn harsh retaliation, for much the same reasons.
It is easy to say that all sides must find common ground, but there are indeed more than two sides to this issue, and consensus is nigh on to impossible. Just the same, we all must work toward that goal. Otherwise we condemn many more generations of Palestinian and Israeli youth to the hatred and warfare to which such anger inevitably leads.
I have news for you, what Walker is doing is nothing neutral or peace loving. The struggle between Israel and Palestinians is not one of oppressor vs the oppressed. It is a struggle between 2 people over a piece of real estate. Palestinians and Israelis are divided internally over the resolution to the conflict. Walkers actions places her focus on the injustice of the the Israel side while ignoring injustices on the Palestinian side. The moment she hopped on the flotilla to Gaza, she made a choice to participate in the armed struggle by Hamas, an organization focused on the replacement of Israel with a Islamic Palestinian state. She may not have picked up a gun or wrapped herself n explosives, but she was part of an attempt to force Gaza open for Iranian arms imports. This only strengthens the hands of a terror organization and the primary obstructor of any progress toward peace.
Now she has reinforced her decision to takes sides in the conflict by participating in the boycott of Israel. It is wrong. She has made a mistake. This is not about criticizing Israel and there is plenty of rom for that, it is about making Israel invisible to her as Jewish state. I believe that she even dismisses the right for a Jewish state exists, which I will try and back up.
I love the “The Color Purple”, but Alice Walker has lost all of my respect. Just for the record, I support withdraw from much of the West Bank, but not at al costs.
Finally, if Walker wants to truly boycott Israel, she better check her computer software and hardware. She might be disappointed tab she might be using a processor or a program created in Israel.
If Walker is against male circumcision, that would put her at odds with Muslims as well as Jews.
Ralph has made a useful distinction. I would go a little further. I don’t think Walker is anti-Jewish either.
I also find the Israel’s self-definition as a “Jewish state” to be troubling. It gives the false impression that Israel speaks for all Jews wherever they live and that Jews worldwide are duty bound to be loyal to Israel..
American Jews vigorously reject any attempt to define the US as a “Christian state.” And I sure as hell would not want to live in an Islamic state. So why is it OK for Israel to call itself a Jewish state?
France, for example, does not call itself a French state. It is a state of the citizens of France. Multi-national nations like Switzerland and Belgium do not elevate one nationality over another.
The Arab and other non-Jewish citizens of Israel have good reason to feel unwanted in a “Jewish state.”
Part of the problem that Bennett Muraskin addresses has to do with the dual nature of Jewish identity: it is both a religious designation and the name of a historic ethnic/cultural people. Given the secular Jewish identity of most of the founding generations of modern Israel (who were often even anti-religious, let alone non-religious), it should be clear that Israel was never created as a theocratic Jewish state in the way that numerous Arab and other countries declare themselves to be “Islamic.”
Since my friend Bennett is a committed Jewish secularist, I know that he fully understands what I am saying here. But just as the “Jewish state” need not be seen as favoring a particular religion, it should also be said that its founding document, its declaration of independence, guarantees the basic human rights of its citizens of all faiths and origins. The Jewish state needs to work harder at fulfilling this promise.
Every country has a right to define itself as it wishes. Just like anyone of irish decent can automatically receive citizenship in Ireland, the same allies in Israel’s case. Is ireland racist? Egypt is known as the United Arab Republic. ordain is the Hashemite Kingdom. I don’t get why Israel’s identity as a Jewish state is of concern to its critics.
I associate the fashionable condemnation of circumcision as being more an expression of the new atheist fad than focused antisemitism. That’s where I hear most of it coming from.
Alice Walker is a has-been. We might as well pay attention to the crowd that desperately wants to re-instate Pluto as a “real” planet.