Author Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” won’t be read any time soon by Israeli citizens new to the classic tale of racism in the American south.
Walker’s animosity toward the state of Israel is so profound she refuses to authorize a Hebrew translation of a story that became an Oscar-winning film back in 1985 by Jewish director Steven Spielberg.
In a June 9 letter to Yediot Books, Walker said she would not allow an Israeli house to publish the book because “Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.”
In her letter, posted Sunday by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel on its website, Walker supported the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and offered her hope that the BDS movement “will have enough of an impact on Israeli civilian society to change the situation.”
Walker said Israelis policies were “worse” than the segregation she suffered as an American youth and said South Africans had told her it was worse than Apartheid….
Walker has intensified her anti-Israel activism in recent years, traveling to the Gaza Strip to advocate on behalf of the Palestinians.