Howard Jacobson: Why Alice Walker shouldn't sail to Gaza
It should not need arguing, this late in the ethical history of mankind, that good people can do great harm. One of the finest and funniest novels ever written -- Don Quixote -- charts the damage left in the wake of a man who would make the world a better place.
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.
Read it all. A sad story about a very sad woman.
It should not need arguing, this late in the ethical history of mankind, that good people can do great harm. One of the finest and funniest novels ever written -- Don Quixote -- charts the damage left in the wake of a man who would make the world a better place.
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.
Read it all. A sad story about a very sad woman.
1 comment:
Not sad.
Nasty and vile.
Alice Walker knows that ample supplies of aid are getting through to Gaza despite the fact that Hamas is at war with Israel. The Gazans receive energy, medical supplies, and food from Israel.
Israel insists on the right of inspection, to prevent war materiel getting through, By refusing to send their humanitarian goods through the Israeli channels, the flotilla organizers are trying to claim Israel has no right to blockade weapons from Hamas controlled territory.
Worse still is that Alice Walker invokes the memory of Jewish civil rights martyrs in her effort to support this enterprise which is clearly to the benefit of Hamas whose Charter is racist and calls for the murder of Jews. Hamas is worse than the KKK which makes her involvement in this stunt despicable and shameful.
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