I'm struck by the contrast between the tone of most of the comments and that struck by Alice Walker in her letter to Yediot (available online at http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1917). Quiet, sober and with a passionate commitment to non-violent means of bringing about social change Walker supports the non-violent Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement in the hope that it “will have enough of an impact on Israeli civilian society to change the situation”. You don’t have to agree with her analysis but at least connect with what she says.

Blair Thornburgh tries to do so but his argument is vitiated by his misrepresentation of her. Nowhere does Walker refuse to let the book be translated into Hebrew; she is well aware that it was published in Hebrew in the eighties. She simply won’t have it re-translated by a commercial publisher in Israel now, in order (at some personal cost) to make a political statement against oppression of Palestinians by Israel, an issue she feels increasingly strongly about.

None of these commentators appear to have read Alice Walker's statement or to have thought about it. It’s not even clear they’ve read Thornburgh’s think piece since they generally don’t engage with it. Instead they project onto Walker a hatred she nowhere expresses and end up as mirror-image parodies of what they have constructed her to be.

Comments range from the are shrill to the hate-ridden. For shriber5 Walker is simply antisemitic (and s/he "wouldn't read anything by Alice Walker even if I were paid to do so"). For Ned Sadhe, the fact that her opinions and view are in line with those who call for a boycott of Israeli academics and their institutions shows "her hateful and extremist views". r_gordon_7 finds her antisemitic too, this time coloured purple. Not enough cries Arrajews; she's an "incipient Nazi"! For JehudaBenIsrael , Walker is motivated by an obsessive hate: Amalek!

Give me Alice Walker’s humanity a hundred thousand times over in preference to this tribal nonsense!