https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/alice-walker-disinvited-book-festival-hugh-fitzgerald/
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.