Antique, Pomegranate-shaped, Objects From The Israel Museum, Jerusalem:

Antique, pomegranate-shaped, objects from the Israel Museum, Jerusalem:

Pomegranate-shaped bottle, Cyprus or Egypt, 14th-13th century BCE, Brown glass, core-formed, The Eliahu Dobkin Collection.

https://www.imj.org.il/en/collections/227927

Pomegranate shaped vessel, Ashdod, 8th-7th century BCE, Pottery, Israel Antiquities Authority.

https://www.imj.org.il/en/collections/369578

Pomegranate-shaped vessel, Provenance unknown, 8th-7th century BCE, Pottery.

https://www.imj.org.il/en/collections/353189

Pomegranate bowl, Tel Halif, 9th-8th century BCE, Pottery, Israel Antiquities Authority.

https://www.imj.org.il/en/collections/369920

Amulet pendants in the shape of pomegranates, Provenance unknown, 14th-13th century BCE, Gold, Gift of Jeannette and Jonathan Rosen, New York, to American Friends of the Israel Museum.

https://www.imj.org.il/en/collections/344898

Israeli folk dancing at Kibbutz Dalia, Israel. 1945.

Some Excerpts As I Read

Reader Note: I have read The Color Purple and would never dismiss the importance of Alice Walker’s work. However, let’s not pretend that she’s too sacred to critique and treat like any other artist who does something racist. Her work to combat anti-black racism and highlight Black American struggles do not permit or excuse when she engages in other forms of bigotry.

I have never seen someone make a public stink about the extraordinarily racist poem, of which the section quoted above is only the tip of that particular racist iceberg.

In fact, I did not even know that Walker had written this horrible “poem” (if you can call an antisemitic diatribe with weird spacing a poem) —despite being very active in leftist spaces for my whole adult AND adolescent life and being an avid reader or both novels and poetry until 2023.

It was brought to my attention when she caught flak for being a TERF, as an incidental aside to prove that she was actually bigoted in several ways. A trait she ALSO shares with JK Rowling.

Look at these headlines. This is what comes up when I search “Alice walker transphobia.” They clearly label her as a TERF. But they do not make the same claim about her identity as BEING an antisemite. It is removed from her. Antisemitism is clearly not the focus here, which is fine. It is older news. These stories are reporting on her more recent bigotry. Cool.

These are the first results that come up when I search “alice walker antisemitism.”

The first result is from The Times of Israel, which makes sense, because that’s a place where a lot of Jews live and a lot of Jews will be upset by the things she wrote. But it also doesn’t make sense, because Walker is American. Why is the FIRST result about her antisemitism from an international newspaper that happens to have a large Jewish readership?

Why is the NYT headline about how Walker feels about her own bigotry, instead of how her Jewish readers feel?

The New York Magazine Article looked interesting so I clicked it. It was interesting. You should read it. It is an Op-Ed written by a Black, Jewish woman named Nylah Burton. Kudos to her. It was important. And non-Jews need to read it. It was written in 2018.

The Atlantic is next and primarily takes on the work of critiquing a different article in the New Yorker which also minimized the importance and harmful impact of antisemitism.

And then things get interesting. Still, on the first page of results, is this juxtaposition.

Among the many striking things here is the fact that the Jerusalem Post is writing from 2023. Al Jazeera is writing from 2019.

If you’ve read any of the above links or text you will note that yes, Alice Walker’s “offense” is indeed antisemitism. It’s not really debatable. She’s done many, many horrifically antisemitic things.

And yet, Al Jazeera jumps in, unprompted, to defend a known antisemite? Why?????? Oh, because she supports Palestine.

Well…perhaps…just maybe…supporters of Palestine shouldn’t want to leap to the defense of antisemites who spout blatant misinformation about the I/P conflict, demonize the Jews they know personally, and trade in antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Unless of course…they don’t care that they are pushing pro-Palestine Jews out of leftist spaces in the first place.

When did it become acceptable for leftists to excuse someone’s bigotry as long as the bigot agrees with you on other stuff?

Having a normal one

Sigalit Landau - Malka, 2018 (Shoes suspended in the Dead Sea)