Howard Jacobson: Why Alice Walker shouldn’t sail to Gaza (updated)
Human beings are seldom more dangerous than when they are sentimentally overcome by the goodness of their own intentions. That Alice Walker believes it is right to join the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza I do not have the slightest doubt. But beyond associating her decision with Gandhi, Martin Luther King and very nearly, when she talks about the preciousness of children, Jesus Christ, she fails to give a single convincing reason for it.
A famous black woman sailing on a ship christened “The Audacity of Hope” to deliver messages of solidarity with the children of Gaza. I have many contradictory emotions as I consider this newest downgrading of Jews, by relevant omission, to beings not worthy of solidarity. That somehow, Jewish children are perpetrators and Gazan children are victims. That is the now rampant left-wing meme that should evoke nothing but disgust from fair-minded people. But the clear (to me) attempt to add the Gazan blockade as a link in the chain stretching back to the Civil Rights movement adds a new dimension of moral turpitude to Walker’s position. I could go through a lengthy history of the CIvil Rights movement, underscoring the solidarity (there’s that word again) of Jewish Americans with with Dr. King, the Freedom Riders, etc. That Walker is turning that history against the Jews is hurtful and confusing. But, unfortunately, no longer unexpected. I would hope for a statement from the Obamas that they do not condone the appropriation of the book title for this scurrilous venture. I also cannot possibly express the depths of my disappointment in Walker for finding a way to keep snipping at the already tenuous relationship between two people - Blacks and Jews - who have had so much in common and fought and died together for equal civil rights.