Yesterday, as I sipped a cup of coffee at the Malha Mall in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Malha I thought about Alice Walker.
What does enjoying one of my favorite beverages have in common with the author of The Color Purple you ask? Walker recently refused an Israeli publisher's request to translate her famous book into Hebrew because she claims that Israel is an apartheid state just like South Africa under its former Afrikaner regime, a racist country akin to America's once Jim Crow South. Her claims are of course outlandish and false. We can point to the current Israeli Arab who serves on Israel's Supreme Court and follows in the footsteps of previous Israeli Arabs, the Israeli Arab parties that serve in the Israeli Kenesset, the Israeli Arabs who have equal access to and attend Israel's colleges and universities just like their Israeli Jewish counterparts. These are just a few of the many realities that make Walker's claims, like those of her fellow BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) colleagues - among them Annie Lennox, Elvis Costello, John Waters, Emma Thompson - sound ludicrous. The Palestinian/Israeli Arab family that sat down next to me at the Aroma Cafe as I enjoyed my coffee was further evidence that defied her ugly slander, one that seeks to de-ligitimize Israel's right to exist.
Alice Walker's latest stand has confirmed her bona fides as an Anti-Semite and a person who hates the State of Israel (Remember, Hebrew is the language of the Jewish People, not just of Israelis, and Walker who has championed the national liberation of just about every other ethnic/racial group in the world actively opposes Zionism, the Jewish People's own national liberation movement). The divide between Israelis and the Palestinians and its Arab citizens isn't racially based, it's political in nature; the consequence of war and the failure of two peoples to reach a political resolution of their conflict. Like other democracies around the world, Israel has failed when it comes to ensuring complete equality for its minority citizens and, like its sister democracies, it strives to do better. As a values nation it must do better. So one would think that Walker would also refuse to have her works translated into english, French, German, Swiss, Arabic and Turkish.
But Walker hasn't just maligned us, she's done great harm and damage to the victims and survivors of South Africa's apartheid system and our own country's horrendous system of Jim Crow. To make the claim that Israel is like Apartheid South Africa and the Jim Crow South belittles the experience of and the memory of the real victims of Apartheid and the state sponsored racial discrimination that once existed in America. Alice Walker has dishonored her own.
I wonder what she would think if she joined me for a cup of coffee at Malha or Mamilla Mall and watched Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians intermingling in the shops and cafes, and using the same water fountains and restrooms. I'll never know, because she's already closed her mind to anything other that contradicts her own prejudice.
