Alice Walker’s support for Palestine is unwavering

Pulitzer Prize winning author, Alice Walker, has used some of the recent publicity surrounding the recent revival of The Color Purple musical to raise awareness for Palestinians.

When she was asked in a recent interview about her decision to stop a Hebrew translation of the book from being re-released in 2012 she said, “I don’t have anything against the language but there is a boycott of Israeli products because of the way they are killing so many of the Palestinians and have stolen their country and basically stole Palestine from the Palestinians and turned it into Israel.”

She also countered the mainstream media’s narrative around Palestine by stating that she doesn’t “think it’s necessarily all about religion, it’s all about greed because the powers that be would like to have all that oil in that part of the world and they are systematically destroying the people so they can take it.”

In her initial letter to the publisher of the book she said that after attending the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in South Africa which “determined that Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories” she could not allow the book to be republished in Israel.

Her decision to so did not go without repercussions. Since then, she has been vilified by the Anti-Defamation League and the Israeli press and was even disinvited from speaking at the University of Michigan because her stance against Israeli apartheid.

However, she is not alone. Many other celebrities and academics, including Stephen Hawking and Desmond Tutu,  have also joined the call of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel to boycott Israel and Israeli academic and cultural institutions.

Most recently the American Anthropological Association voted to endorse the academic boycott of Israel.