Novelist Alice Walker recently called on Alicia Keys to cancel her planned July performance in Tel Aviv. In an open letter, Walker alleged that Israel was the world's "biggest terrorist" and that suicide bombings were "last-ditch resistance," even as the acts of terror have resulted in the murder of hundreds of Israeli civilians, including children. "It would grieve me to know you are putting yourself in danger (soul danger) by performing in an apartheid country that is being boycotted by many global conscious artists. A cultural boycott of Israel…is the only option left to artists who cannot bear the unconscionable harm Israel inflicts every day on the people of Palestine, whose major ‘crime’ is that they exist in their own land, land that Israel wants to control as its own. This is actually a wonderful opportunity for you to learn about something sorrowful, and amazing: that our government (Obama in particular) supports a system that is cruel, unjust, and unbelievably evil…Please, if you can manage it, go to visit the children in Gaza, and sing to them of our mutual love of all children, and of their right not to be harmed simply because they exist," Walker wrote.
