I have never been acquainted with her work, but I will make it a point to familiarize myself now, because this is clearly a person of substance and courage.
It should not take such courage and determination for a performer to entertain in Israel, but these days it does, with all the blind, stupid and/or anti-Semitic loudmouths out there buying the Islamic propaganda about the tiny country, and creating an environment in which performers who want to work in the Jewish state are made to feel like lepers; like they’re doing something wrong.
This doesn’t happen to entertainers who book shows in Arab/Muslim countries where, a good deal of the time, they’re busy killing each other, if they can’t get their bomb belted hands on anyone else, preferably Jews, and where half the audience appear like ghosts, covered head to toe despite oppressive heat. And where in some cases, Jews aren’t even allowed to set foot, while these same Muslims accuse Israel of running an apartheid state.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sickening.
Anyway, the Simon Wiesenthal Center recently congratulated R&B singer Alicia Keyes for her “courageous decision” to go ahead with her July 4th, Tel Aviv concert, despite nasty remarks by “people like Pulitzer Prize-winning author and activist Alice Walker and Pink Floyd member, Roger Waters,” according to an article. “Walker’s appeal to Keyes stated, ‘It would grieve me to know you are putting yourself in danger (soul danger) by performing in an apartheid country ….’”
Waters also asked the singer not to perform, as her appearance would, “… give legitimacy to the Israeli government policies of illegal, apartheid, occupation of the homelands of the indigenous people of Palestine,” clearly someone who has swallowed the Arab narrative hook, line and sinker, despite the ease with which even a cursory look at history would divest him of this misinformation.
“When Ms. Keyes sings in Israel on July 4th, she will be singing in the only free country in the entire Middle East, where women enjoy equal rights with men and Israeli Arabs have more rights than any of their brothers and sisters in the Arab world,” a Simon Wiesenthal Center spokesman said.
Equating Israel with apartheid South Africa is a sinister distortion of the truth, he said, adding, “Just look at what is happening in Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.”
The story said that last year, Walker refused to authorize a new Hebrew translation of her novel, “The Color Purple;” a brilliant move, since everyone knows the best way to influence people to your way of thinking is to not let them know what your way of thinking is.
No great loss.
Too bad about Waters, though, I used to like Pink Floyd.
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