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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/alice-walker-and-the-price-of-conscience?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo4NDI4MDY3MywicG9zdF9pZCI6NTI3ODEyNjYsIl8iOiJnMDJQSyIsImlhdCI6MTY1MDg1MzI2OCwiZXhwIjoxNjUwODU2ODY4LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNzc4ODUxIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.Nm5IDCc5EL6R-neLEOlQjaKLzguGtISU5jJ0huO96gg&s=r">chrishedges.substack.com</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Alice Walker and the Price of Conscience</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Chris Hedges - April 24, 2022<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><div dir="auto"><div><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcc777987-b3a8-4763-a439-c8a0352a9380_4500x3453.jpeg"><span><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcc777987-b3a8-4763-a439-c8a0352a9380_4500x3453.jpeg" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="301"></span></a></div><p>There
is a steep price to pay for having a conscience and more importantly
the courage to act on it. The hounds of hell pin you to the cross,
hammering nails into your hands and feet as they grin like the Cheshire
cat and mouth bromides about respect for human rights, freedom of
expression and diversity. I have watched this happen for some time to
Alice Walker, one of the most gifted and courageous writers in America.
Walker, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel <em>The Color Purple,</em> has felt the bitter sting of racism. She refuses to be silent about the plight of the oppressed, including the Palestinians.</p><p>“Whenever
I come out with a book, or anything that will take me before the
public, the world, I am assailed as this person I don’t recognize,” she
said when I reached her by phone. “If I tried to keep track of all the
attacks over the decades, I wouldn’t be able to keep working. I am happy
people are standing up. It is all of us. Not just me. They are trying
to shut us down, shut us up, erase us. That reality is what is
important.”</p><p>The Bay Area Book festival delivered the latest salvo
against Walker. The organizers disinvited her from the event because
she praised the writings of the New Age author David Icke and called
his book <em>And the Truth Shall Set You Free</em> “brave.” Icke has
denied critics’ charges of anti-Semitism. The festival organizers
twisted themselves into contortions to say they were not charging Walker
with anti-Semitism. She was banned because she lauded a controversial
writer, who I suspect few members of the committee have read. The poet
and writer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, who Walker was to interview,
withdrew from the festival in protest.</p><p>Walker, a supporter of the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, has been a very public
advocate for Palestinian rights and a critic of Israel for many years.
Her friendship with Icke has long been part of the public record. She
hid nothing. It is not as if the festival organizers suddenly discovered
a dark secret about Walker. They sought to capitalize on her celebrity
and then, when they felt the heat from the Israel lobby, capitulated to
the mob to humiliate her.</p><p>“I don’t know these people,” Walker said
of the festival organizers who disinvited her. “It feels like the
south. You know they are out there in the community, and they have their
positions, but all you see are sheets. That’s what this is. It’s like
being back in the south.”</p><p>Banning writers because of books they
like or find interesting nullifies the whole point of a book festival.
Should I be banned because I admire Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s
masterpieces <em>Journey to the End of the Night</em>, <em>Death on the Installment Plan,</em> and<em> Castle to Castle</em>,
despite his virulent anti-Semitism, which even after World War II he
refused to relinquish? Should I be banned for liking Joseph Heller’s <em>Catch-22</em>,
which I recently reread, and which is rabidly misogynistic? Should I be
banned for loving William Butler Yeats, who, like Ezra Pound, many of
whose poems I have also committed to memory, was a fascist collaborator?
Should I be banned because I revere Hannah Arendt, whose attitudes
towards African-Americans were paternalistic, at best, and arguably
racist? Should I be banned because I cherish books by C.S. Lewis, Norman
Mailer and D.H. Lawrence, who were homophobic?</p><p>We might as well sweep clean library shelves if the attitudes of writers we read mean we are denied a right to speak. </p><p>And
let’s not even get started with the Bible, which I studied as a
seminarian at Harvard Divinity School. God repeatedly demands righteous
acts of genocide, transforming the Nile into blood so the Egyptians will
suffer from thirst. God sends swarms of locusts and flies to torture
the Egyptians, along with hail, fire and thunder to destroy all plants
and trees. God orders the firstborn in every Egyptian household killed
so all will know “that the Lord makes a distinction between Egyptians
and Israel.” The killing goes on until “there was not a house where one
was not dead.” </p><p>The Bible contains much of this divinely
sanctioned slaughtering of non-believers. It endorses slavery and the
beating of enslaved people. It condones the execution of homosexuals and
women who commit adultery. It views women as property and approves the
right of fathers to sell their daughters. But the Bible also remains,
with all these contradictions and moral failings, a great religious,
ethical and moral document. Even the most flawed books often have
something to teach us.</p><p>Organizers of the festival attacked Walker for her poem “<a href="https://alicewalkersgarden.com/2017/11/it-is-our-frightful-duty-to-study-the-talmud/" rel="">It is Our Frightful Duty</a>.”
They accuse Walker of channeling Icke’s alleged anti-Semitism into her
writing, as if Walker is unable to think for herself. The attack on the
poem, which is a gross misreading of its intent, exposes the lie that
Walker’s position on Israel and Palestine had nothing to do with her
being disinvited.</p><p>“Unfortunately, Ms. Walker has not only promoted
Icke’s ideas widely on her own blog and in interviews, but they may
have influenced her own writing,” the festival wrote in a statement.
“Ms. Walker's 2017<a href="http://alicewalkersgarden.com/2017/11/it-is-our-frightful-duty-to-study-the-talmud/" rel=""> poem</a>
"It is our (Frightful) Duty to Study the Talmud" encourages people to
use Google and Youtube to “follow the trail of “The / Talmud” as its
poison belatedly winds its way / Into our collective consciousness. //
Some of what you find will sound / Too crazy to be true. Unfortunately
those bits are likely / To be true.” A New York Magazine<a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/alice-walkers-anti-semitic-poem-was-personal.html" rel=""> essay</a> by writer Nylah Burton (who identifies as Black and Jewish) describes her reaction to Walker's support of Icke and this poem.”</p><p>The
poem calls out these hate-filled religious texts. “All of it: The
Christian, the Jewish, The Muslim; even the Buddhist. All of it, without
exception, At the root.” Walker reminds us in the poem that these texts
have been used throughout millennia to sanctify subjugation,
dehumanization and murder. Slave holders defended the enslavement of
Blacks by citing numerous passages in the Old and the New Testament,
including Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians where, equating slaveholders
with God, Paul writes:<strong> </strong>“Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ.” </p><p>Israel
seeks, in the same way, to legitimize its colonial-settler project by
citing the Old Testament and the Talmud, the primary source of Jewish
law. Never mind that Palestine was a Muslim country from the 7th century
until it was seized by military force in 1948. The Old Testament, in
the hands of Zionists, is a deed to Palestinian land.</p><p>Walker
excoriates this religious chauvinism and mythology. She warns that
theocracies, which sacralize state power, are dangerous. In the poem,
she highlights passages in the Talmud used to condemn those outside the
faith. Jews must repudiate these sections in the Talmud and the Old
Testament, as those of us who are Christians must repudiate the hateful
passages in the Bible. When these religious screeds are weaponized by
zealots —Christian, Muslim or Jewish — they propagate evil. </p><p>Walker writes:</p><p>Is Jesus boiling eternally in hot excrement,</p><p>For his “crime” of throwing the bankers</p><p>Out of the Temple? For loving, standing with,</p><p>And defending</p><p>The poor? Was his mother, Mary,</p><p>A whore?</p><p>Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews, and not only</p><p>That, but to enjoy it?</p><p>Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse?</p><p>Are young boys fair game for rape?</p><p>Must even the best of the Goyim (us, again) be killed?</p><p>Pause a moment and think what this could mean</p><p>Or already has meant</p><p>In our own lifetime.</p><p>Walker
was invited to the festival to interview Honorée Fanonne Jeffers about
her work, not to give a lecture on Icke or Palestine — but no matter.
She ran afoul of the thought police, who are always vigilant about
catering to smear campaigns against Israeli critics but blithely ignore
the virulent and overt racism of Israeli politicians, military
commanders, writers and intellectuals.</p><p>Walker is not the first
writer targeted by Israel. Israel banned the author Gunter Grass and
demanded the rescindment of his Nobel prize after he wrote a poem
denouncing Germany’s decision to provide Israel with nuclear submarines,
warning that Israel "could wipe out the Iranian people" if it attacked
Iran. Former Israeli Defense Minister <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/1.476749-1.476749" rel="">Avigdor Lieberman</a>,
who calls for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to create a
“Greater” Israel, described the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish as
“someone who has written texts against Zionism — which are still used as
fuel for terror attacks against Israel.” He said honoring Darwish was
the equivalent to honoring Adolf Hitler for “Mein Kampf.” Israeli
bookstores Steimatzky and Tzomet Sefarim purged Sally Rooney’s novels
from some 200 branches and online sites because of her support for BDS.
Israeli writer Yehonatan Geffen was beaten outside his home for calling
the Israeli prime minister a racist.</p><p>Bay Area Book Festival
founder and director Cherilyn Parsons defended the board’s decision to
disinvite Walker when I requested a comment: </p><blockquote><p>Our
decision to disinvite Ms. Walker had nothing to do with her position on
Palestine, her voice as a Black woman writer, or her right to speak her
mind freely. We honor all those things. We also do not hold that she is
anti-Semitic. (To be pro-Palestinian does not mean a person is
anti-Semitic, just as to be Jewish does not mean that one is
anti-Palestine.) Our decision was based purely on Ms. Walker’s
inexplicable, ongoing endorsement of David Icke, a conspiracy theorist
who dangerously promulgates such beliefs as that Jewish people
bankrolled Hitler, caused the 2008 global financial crisis, staged the
9/11 terrorist attacks, and more. (See his book “And the Truth Shall Set
You Free,"<a href="https://archive.org/stream/DavidIckeAndTheTruthShallSetYouFree/David+Icke++And+The+Truth+Shall+Set+You+Free_djvu.txt" rel=""> available full-text</a>
on the Internet Archive.) Icke also regularly promotes “The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion,” a fabricated, uber-anti-Semitic text that was
widely read during the time of social upheaval in pre-WWII Germany and
turned public sentiment against Jews–a truly dangerous document for a
populace to embrace. Finally, we note that Ms. Walker provided financial
support for, and participation in, a<a href="https://alicewalkersgarden.com/2019/06/renegade-the-life-story-of-david-icke-draft/" rel=""> documentary celebrating Icke and his work</a>.</p></blockquote><p>“I
do not believe he is anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish,” Walker posted on her
website. “I do believe he is brave enough to ask the questions others
fear to ask, and to speak his own understanding of the truth wherever it
might lead. Many attempts have been made to censor and silence him. As a
woman, and a person of color, as a writer who has been criticized and
banned myself, I support his right to share his own thoughts.”</p><p>“I
maintain that I can be friends with whoever I like,” Walker told me.
“The attachment to this belief that this person is evil is strange. He’s
not.”</p><p>I worked for two years as a reporter in Jerusalem. I
listened to the daily filth spewed out by Israelis about Arabs and
Palestinians, who used racist tropes to sanctify Israeli apartheid and
gratuitous violence against Palestinians. Israel routinely orders air
strikes, targeted assassinations, drone attacks, artillery strikes, tank
assaults and naval bombardments on the largely defenseless population
in Gaza. Israel blithely dismisses those it murders, including children,
as unworthy of life, drawing on poisonous religious edicts. It is
risible that Israel and its US supporters can posit themselves as
anti-racists, abrogating the right to cancel Walker. It is the
equivalent of allowing the Klan to vet speakers lists. </p><p><em>Torat Ha’Melech</em>
by Rabbi Yitzhak and Rabbi Yosef Elitzur is one of innumerable examples
of the deep racism embedded in Israeli culture. The book provides
rabbinical advice to Israeli soldiers and officers in the occupied
Palestinian territories. It describes non-Jews as “uncompassionate by
nature” and justifiably exterminated to “curb their evil inclinations.”
“If we kill a gentile who has violated one of the seven commandments of
[Noah]…there is nothing wrong with the murder.” It assures troops that
it is morally legitimate to kill Palestinian children, writing, “There
is justification for killing babies if it is clear they will grow up to
harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and
not only during combat with adults.” The Biblical prohibition on murder,
Yitzhak and Elitzur write, “refers only to a Jew who kills a Jew, and
not to a Jew who kills a gentile, even if that gentile is one of the
righteous among the nations.” They even say it is “permissible” to kill
Jewish dissidents. A Jewish dissident, the rabbis write, is a <em>rodef. </em>A <em>rodef</em>,
according to traditional Jewish law, is someone who is "pursuing"
another person to murder him or her. It is the duty of a Jew to kill a <em>rodef </em>if the <em>rodef</em>
is told to cease the threatening behavior and does not. Yigal Amir, who
assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, argued that
the <em>din rodef, </em>or "law of the pursuer,” justified Rabin’s murder.</p><p>Walker
is the best among us. She is one of our most gifted and lyrical
writers. She stands unequivocally with the crucified of the earth. She
sees her own pain in the pain of others. She demands justice. She pays
the price.</p><p>Boycott the Bay Area Book Festival.</p><p>That is the least we owe a literary and moral titan.</p><p><a href="https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/alice-walker-and-the-price-of-conscience?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share" rel=""><span><br></span></a></p></div></div></div></div>
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