ADL Blasts Anti-Israel Author Walker: She is ‘Unabashedly Infected With Anti-Semitism’
by Zach Pontz
The Anti-Defamation League slammed Tuesday a new book from anti-Israel advocate Alice Walker, saying she “has taken her extreme and hostile views to a shocking new level.”
According to a statement from the organization, Walker’s “The Cushion in the Road” (The New Press, 2013) devotes 80 pages to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, often making comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, denigrating Judaism and Jews, and suggesting that Israel should cease to exist as a Jewish state.
“Alice Walker has sunk to new lows with essays that remove the gloss of her anti-Israel activism to reveal someone who is unabashedly infected with anti-Semitism,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “She has taken her extreme and hostile views to a shocking new level, revealing the depth of her hatred of Jews and Israel to a degree that we have not witnessed before. Her descriptions of the conflict are so grossly inaccurate and biased that it seems Walker wants the uninformed reader to come away sharing her hate-filled conclusions that Israel is committing the greatest atrocity in the history of the world.”
Walker has a history of making extreme anti-Israel statements. In June 2012 she refused to allow an Israeli company to publish a Hebrew edition of her novel, “The Color Purple.” Most recently, Walker wrote a letter calling on the singer-songwriter Alicia Keys to cancel her upcoming July 4th concert appearance in Tel Aviv.
In her book, Walker accuses Israel of “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “crimes against humanity,” and “cruelty and diabolical torture.”