RUTHFULLY YOURS

Alice Walker, the author of The Color Purple, has been disinvited from a book festival when the organizers discovered her long history of antisemitic remarks about Jews and Israel, the Jewish state that she often compares to Nazi Germany. A report on the reasons for her being uninvited is here: “California Book Festival Rescinds Invitation to Author Alice Walker Over Past Antisemitic Comments,” by Shiryn Ghermezian, Algemeiner, March 29, 2022:

A book festival in California has disinvited Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and poet Alice Walker from its event due to the author’s history of making antisemitic remarks about Jews and Israel, The Jewish News of Northern California reported on Friday.

Walker, 78, was scheduled to interview writer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, at the latter’s request, at the headlining event of the annual Bay Area Book Festival, which will take place May 7-8 in downtown Berkeley and is set to feature over 250 authors. The festival is the main project of the Foundation for the Future of Literature and Literacy, a California non-profit organization.

Organizers cancelled Walker’s participation in the festival on Thursday after being informed about her past hateful comments, according to The Jewish News of Northern California. Jeffers subsequently pulled out of the festival in response, the festival’s publicist Julia Drake told the outlet.…

Walker, who was the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for “The Color Purple” in 1983, has repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany and is an avid supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. In 2011, she claimed, “I think Israel is the greatest terrorist in that part of the world. And I think in general, the United States and Israel are great terrorist organizations themselves.” That same year she said Israel is “as frightening to many of us as Germany used to be.” Walker has also made antisemitic claims about Jews and Israel in her poetry.

Walker has been obsessed with Jews and Israel for years. She frequently compares Israel to Nazi Germany, and attacks the Talmud as an evil and racist document. In 2018, she promoted a book by British antisemite and conspiracy theorist David Icke, And the Truth Shall Set You Free, during an interview with The New York Times. In the book, Icke claims that Jews control the world and quotes frequently from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Icke, whose work Alice Walker so admires, describes the Talmud as “among the most appallingly racist documents on the planet,” and claimed that Jewish organizations are secretly behind various racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan.

Walker’s interview of the writer Honorée Fannone Jeffers was to have been the headline event at the Bay Area Book Festival. Jeffers, as the writer being honored in this fashion, had insisted that Walker be her interviewer. Jeffers must have known, when she chose her, Walker’s history of antisemitism, her repeated denunciations of Jews, Judaism, and Israel. She would have known Walker’s work, including the very long 2017 poem Walker wrote in which she called Israeli rule “demonic to the core,” and suggested that to understand “the inspiration for so much evil,” one must “study The Talmud” and “its poison.” Jeffers apparently was not bothered by any of this; she wanted Walker and no one else to interview her. And when Walker was disinvited because of her history of antisemitism Jeffers, in a sign of solidarity with Walker, refused to appear at the Book Festival.

Walker’s hatred of Israel is extraordinary. She told an Israeli publisher in 2012 that she does not allow The Color Purple to be translated into Hebrew because “Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.”

The organizers of the Bay Area Book Festival had apparently not known the extent of her demented antisemitism, when they chose her to interview Honorée Fannone Jeffers at the headline event, did not know the full extent of her hatred of Israel – “demonic to the core” — the Jewish state that she compares to Nazi Germany, nor her deep hatred of Judaism, and that Talmud whose “poison” she denounces. But when it was brought to their attention, the organizers of the Bay Area Book Festival did the right thing, and at once disinvited the disgraceful Alice Walker. It is heartening that there was no wobbling on the issue, once the evidence of her malignant obsession was presented, no attempt to explain away or hide her spittle-flecked hatred. She won’t be an honored guest; she won’t be anything at all, at the Bay Area Book Festival. That’s as it should be.