ZIONIST PRESSURE AT WORK:
Alice Walker disinvited from University of Michigan over ‘Israel comments’
Alice Walker disinvited from University of Michigan over ‘Israel comments’
Submitted by Ali Abunimah
Thu, 08/15/2013
Thu, 08/15/2013
World-renowned American author Alice Walker has been disinvited from giving a speech at the University of Michigan because a donor objects to her views on Israel, the agent negotiating the contract was told.
Walker, the Pultizer Prize winning author of The Color Purple, posted on her blog an excerpt of a letter from the agentinforming her that the invitation to keynote the 50th anniversary celebration of the Center for the Education of Women at the University of Michigan had been withdrawn.
The agent wrote:
I’m saddened to write this because I’m a proponent of free speech and have been brought up to allow everyone to have their say. But I also realize that there are other considerations that institutions are faced with. This afternoon I was contacted by the University of Michigan instructing me to withdraw their invitation due to the removal of funding from the donors, because of their interpretation of Ms. Walker’s comments regarding Israel. They are not willing to fund this program and the university/Women’s center do not have the resources to finance this on their own. They are deeply regretful but I wanted to let you know immediately either way. I hope you can appreciate the fact that I’m uncomfortable even having to send this email in the first place. Hopefully we can work together again down the road. Thanks for understanding. I wish things had turned out differently.
Calling the withdrawn invitation “Censorship by Purse String,” Walker wrote, “Such behavior, as evidenced by the donors, teaches us our weakness, which should eventually (and soon) show us our strength: women must be in control of our own finances. Not just in the family, but in the schools, work force, and everywhere else. Until we control this part of our lives, our very choices, in any and every area, can be denied us.”
Walker is listed as one of the speakers represented by the American Program Bureau agency.
Alice Walker not “optimum choice”
Gloria D. Thomas, director of the Center for the Education of Women, acknowledged that Walker had been disinvited, but said that the matter was a “misunderstanding.” In an email to The Electronic Intifada, Thomas wrote:
The [Walker’s] blog was a result of an unfortunate misunderstanding. As director of the Center for the Education of Women (CEW), I decided to withdraw our invitation because I didn’t think Ms. Walker would be our optimum choice for our 50th anniversary.Our 50th anniversary funding is assured. All donations, for this and other events, are accepted with no provisos or prohibitions regarding free speech. In fact, in a conversation with one of Ms. Walker’s friends/representatives, I indicated that I would be willing to speak with other units around campus to serve as a possible co-sponsor for a lecture by Ms. Walker in the near future.
Asked if a speaker had been chosen to replace Walker, Thomas wrote, “No contract has been signed yet. This information will be made available on our website once the contract is confirmed.”
Walker: supporter of Palestinian rights
In recent years, Walker has become increasingly outspoken in her support of Palestinian rights, sometimes likening Israel’s abuses to the Jim Crow racist system she grew up with in the southern United States.
Walker has written about her visit to Gaza, and participated in the June 2011 solidarity flotilla that attempted to reach the territory besieged by Israel, which led to her being demonized by the Israeli army.
Her position on boycott has also been deliberately distorted by Israeli media.
Walker has campaigned for other artists, most recently Alicia Keys, to respect the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).
In her letter to Keys, Walker wrote:
I have written over the years that explain why a cultural boycott of Israel and Israeli institutions (not individuals) 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.
Could Walker, one of the most celebrated figures in American letters, now be paying the price of refusing to be silent about Palestine?
Poems for Palestine, Egypt, Syria by Marvin X and Mohja Kahf
PALESTINE by Marvin X (Imam Maalik El Muhajir)
I am not an Arab, I am not a Jew
Abraham is not my father, Palestine is not my home
But I would fight any man
Who kicked me out of my house
To dwell in a tent
I would fight
To the ends of the earth
Someone who said to me
I want your house
Because my father lived here
Two thousand years ago
I want your land
Because my father lived here
Two thousand years ago.
Jets would not stop me
From returning to my home
Uncle toms would not stop me
Cluster bombs would not stop me
Bullets I would defy.
No man can take the house of another
And expect to live in peace
There is no peace for thieves
There is no peace for those who murder
For myths and ancient rituals
Wail at the wall
Settle in "Judea" and "Samaria"
But fate awaits you
You will never sleep with peace
You will never walk without listening.
I shall cross the River Jordan
With Justice in my hand
I shall return to Jerusalem
And establish my house of peace,
Thus said the Lord.
© 2000 by Marvin X (Imam Maalik El Muhajir)
After Friday Prayers
Egypt: After Friday Prayers
After Friday Prayers
After salat
salaam-alaikum
al humdulilah
we shall meet in the streets
to shout no more pharaoh
no more presidents for life
no more American aide for guns and tear gas
no more uncle abdullah
no more
no more reactionary theology
no honor killings
suppression of women's dignity
no more
after Friday prayers
in Tunisia
Cairo
Yemen
Sudan
Jordan
Saudi Arabia
Persian Gulf
no more
after Fatihah/Ikhlas
we shall meet the guns of Pharaoh Mubarak
we shall meet the tear gas
even death even
we shall meet
and go to paradise
for freedom
we have no fear of Pharaoh's guns/tear gas
no fear no more
we are mostly young and invincible
we have the model
we shall meet in the streets
to live again
to breathe
to love
to take control of our lives
to feed our families
to fly in the sun of freedom and liberty.
--Marvin X
1/27/11
Oh, Mohja
how much water can run from rivers to sea
how much blood can soak the earth
the guns of tyrants know no end
a people awakened are bigger than bullets
there is no sleep in their eyes
no more stunted backs and fear of broken limbs
even men, women and children are humble with sacrifice
the old the young play their roles
with smiles they endure torture chambers
with laughs they submit to rape and mutilations
there is no victory for oppressors
whose days are numbered
as the clock ticks as the sun rises
let the people continue til victory
surely they smell it on their hands
taste it on lips
believe it in their hearts
know it in their minds
no more backwardness no fear
let there be resistance til victory.
--Marvin X/El Muhajir
Oh Marvin, how much blood can soak the earth?
The angels asked, “will you create a species who will shed blood
and overrun the earth with evil?”
And it turns out “rivers of blood” is no metaphor:
see the stones of narrow alleys in Duma
shiny with blood hissing from humans? Dark
and dazzling, it keeps pouring and pumping
from the inexhaustible soft flesh of Syrians,
and neither regime cluster bombs from the air,
nor rebel car bombs on the ground,
ask them their names before they die.
They are mowed down like wheat harvested by machine,
and every stalk has seven ears, and every ear a hundred grains.
They bleed like irrigation canals into the earth.
Even one little girl in Idlib with a carotid artery cut
becomes a river of blood. Who knew she could be a river
running all the way over the ocean, to you,
draining me of my heart? And God said to the angels,
“I know what you know not.” But right now,
learn the names of all the Syrians.
See what your species has done.
--Mohja Kahf
To Egypt With Love
Dedicated to my son, Abdul El Muhajir (Darrel P. Jackmon, RIP)
He studied at the American University in Egypt
fell in love in Egypt
some Ghanian ambassador's daughter
told him don't give no woman keys to your apartment
he never did
not even the ambassador's daughter, he told me
he loved Egypt
spoke the language
graduated UC Berkeley in Arabic and Middle Eastern Literature
said the Africans were slaves throughout the Middle East
Arabs took their passports
making them slaves
racism was pervasive
unsustainable
yet understandable
they are not the aboriginal Arabs
not the Arabs of Sabah
Queen of Sabah's land
who ruled from Canaan to Jerusalem to the Persian Gulf
Queen of Sabah
who fascinated King Solomon
My son loved Arabic, Persian
Fulbright fellowship to University of Damascus
Syrian intelligence interrogated him daily
why was he hanging around those filthy Palestinians
Why did he swim at the American embassy
Dad, they tried to recruit me for the C.I.A
Mormons controlled the US Embassy
wanted me to be a Mormon
Toward the end my son became a Mormon
lived with Eldridge Cleaver
himself a Mormon, for a time
said Eldridge got strange phone calls
from strange people
we know Eldridge was dr. strangelove
The Ghanaian woman came to see my son in Cali
I do not know what happened
but she went home
In the end he loved a Portuguese woman
he loved Brazil
said he wanted to live in Bahia
dance Condomble
a man of the world
at his funeral came his friends
no black man no black woman
Asians whites
after all
he was a man of the world
what could he say to a nigguh in the ghetto
his travels to Africa, Egypt, Jerusalem, Brazil,Japan, what could he say to a ghetto nigguh
In Japan, he said they teach the women to say three things:
yes, thank you and I'm sorry
Japanese woman he got pregnant said no to his black baby
so she could go home in peace
family told her don't bring no black baby home.
Abdul loved the Middle East
loved Persian
poetry
the rhythms of the language
poets who dervish.
Egypt may fall today tomorrow
my son will be pleased
Pharaoh Mubarak is no more
the regime is history
what a story to tell my son
who walked into a train
in his midnight madness
Dr. Hare said he was like Malcolm and Martin
he was 38, they were 39
he self destructed
suicide and homicide is the same
different sides of the same coin.
Let Egypt arise for the sons and daughters who have suffered
a long suffering that has come to an end.
Mubarak a page in history
a pitiful note in the eternal song of a people.
--Marvin X
1/31/11
Two Poems for the People of Syria
how much water can run from rivers to sea
how much blood can soak the earth
the guns of tyrants know no end
a people awakened are bigger than bullets
there is no sleep in their eyes
no more stunted backs and fear of broken limbs
even men, women and children are humble with sacrifice
the old the young play their roles
with smiles they endure torture chambers
with laughs they submit to rape and mutilations
there is no victory for oppressors
whose days are numbered
as the clock ticks as the sun rises
let the people continue til victory
surely they smell it on their hands
taste it on lips
believe it in their hearts
know it in their minds
no more backwardness no fear
let there be resistance til victory.
--Marvin X/El Muhajir
Syrian poet/professor Dr. Mohja Kahf
Oh Marvin, how much blood can soak the earth?
The angels asked, “will you create a species who will shed blood
and overrun the earth with evil?”
And it turns out “rivers of blood” is no metaphor:
see the stones of narrow alleys in Duma
shiny with blood hissing from humans? Dark
and dazzling, it keeps pouring and pumping
from the inexhaustible soft flesh of Syrians,
and neither regime cluster bombs from the air,
nor rebel car bombs on the ground,
ask them their names before they die.
They are mowed down like wheat harvested by machine,
and every stalk has seven ears, and every ear a hundred grains.
They bleed like irrigation canals into the earth.
Even one little girl in Idlib with a carotid artery cut
becomes a river of blood. Who knew she could be a river
running all the way over the ocean, to you,
draining me of my heart? And God said to the angels,
“I know what you know not.” But right now,
the angels seem right. Cut the coyness, God;
learn the names of all the Syrians.
See what your species has done.
--Mohja Kahf
