In a move that Alan
Dershowitz correctly calls “bigotry and
censorship,” writer Alice
Walker has
said she would not allow the translation of her novel
The Color Purple into Hebrew because “Israel is guilty of apartheid and
persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the
Occupied Territories.” She also said that South Africans have assured her Israel’s
policies are worse than apartheid.
Walker intends to bring this evil,
repressive Israeli regime to its knees by denying Hebrew-only readers access to
her 30-year-old novel about black women burdened by sexism, racism, and poverty.
This is the same Israel that allows its Arab citizens full rights, the only
country in the Middle East that respects women’s rights, gay rights, and human
rights for that matter.
No word on whether Walker will
also deny her book to Palestinians until 1) the Hamas leadership repudiates the
goal stated in its charter of utterly destroying the Jewish state, 2) stops
indoctrinating Palestinian children to become suicide bombers, and 3) stops
honoring the murderers of Jewish children.
How much moral authority does
Walker have to chastise Israel? Less
than zero, if I may allude to another 80s novel.
Let us count the ways in which she de-legitimizes herself as a champion of good
over evil:
Predictably, she is a longtime
admirer of murderous dictator Fidel
Castro and of “a teacher of mine,” radical
historian Howard
Zinn, who has turned the hearts and minds of at
least a generation or two against America.
Also predictably, Walker is a very
vocal opponent of war – or more precisely, she’s an opponent of America during
wartime. She protested the bombing of Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 and participated, in March 2003, in an anti-war demonstration organized by Code Pink, the rabid far left activists who never met an American
enemy they didn’t embrace.
She
had planned to challenge Israel’s Gaza blockade
with the (aborted) Freedom Flotilla last year in a boat that would have been
called “The Audacity of Hope,” after Barack Obama’s book. Naturally, Walker is
an Obama supporter. In her pretentious literary voice full of faux-poetic stylings that border on the
hilarious, she
once described candidate Obama as
a
remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like [Martin Luther]
King was and like Mandela is. We look at him, as we looked at them, and are
glad to be of our species. He is the change America has been trying desperately
and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change America must have if we are
to convince the rest of the world that we care about people other than our
(white) selves.
Obama makes us “glad to be of our
species”? So until he came along, were we humans envious of crustaceans or
fungi instead? As for the notion that America cares about no one other than our
“white selves,” that is a ludicrous but typical fantasy of racist womanists
(her neologism) like Walker, who see the warmongering white male patriarchy –
especially the American and Christian variety – as the fount of all evil
throughout history, destroying the innocence of pure, peaceful, matriarchal
indigenous peoples with such brutal methods as the “missionary” sexual position.
(As usual with Western feminists, she is silent about Islamic misogyny.)
Unsurprisingly, Walker is also a
staunch opponent of capital punishment, specifically the execution of black cop-killers.
A supporter of celebrity darling Mumia
Abu-Jamal, whom she describes as “beautiful” and “compassionate,” she says he reminds
her of Nelson Mandela and has no doubt he was framed. She supports amnesty for domestic
terrorist Assata Shakur, former Black Panther and
Black Liberation Army leader (and the step-aunt of murdered hip hop icon Tupac Shakur).
Assata Shakur was convicted of
first-degree murder and sentenced to life in a maximum-security prison for a
1973 shootout that left a state patrolman dead. She escaped from prison in 1979
and lived underground until 1986, when she was given political asylum in Cuba,
where she has lived ever since. Walker takes
Shakur’s word that she is innocent, and believes
that attempting to punish her any further is “demonic.” “I firmly believe that
the only punishment that works is love,” pontificates Walker.
Actually, she believes even more firmly in punishing people
by denying them love. Walker’s
daughter Rebecca painted a devastating portrait of her mother’s cruel hypocrisy
in a
tragic article exposing the emotional damage caused by the heartless woman
revered the world over as a feminist icon:
I came very low down in her priorities – after work, political integrity,
self-fulfillment, friendships, spiritual life, fame and travel…
My mother's feminist principles colored every aspect of my life… It was
drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a
form of slavery. Having a career, travelling the world and being independent
were what really mattered according to her…
Rebecca describes a life of near-abandonment by the famous
writer who champions sisterhood while scorning motherhood, and who showed her
own child not love and affection but resentment or, at best, indifference. When
the adult Rebecca finally chose not to repress her maternal instincts any
longer and became pregnant, Walker disowned her: “I haven't seen her or spoken to her since I became
pregnant,” says Rebecca. “She has never seen my son – her only grandchild. My
crime? Daring to question her ideology.”
And that betrayal is unforgiveable to leftist ideologues like
Alice Walker. As her daughter learned the hard way, her ideology supersedes
family and even humanity.
For the cold, hypocritical, racist, sexist, America-blaming
radical Walker to claim the moral high ground over Israel while remaining
silent in the face of Muslim atrocities is typical of the left’s delusional self-righteousness
and of their collusion with Islamic totalitarians. For Walker to expect that
her anti-Israel gesture will have any efficacy is typical of her overinflated
self-opinion. It doesn’t occur to her that by refusing to allow her overrated novel
to be translated into Hebrew, she is actually doing Israeli readers a favor.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 6/27/12)
