The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement applauding
the decision by R&B singer Alicia Keys to go ahead with her July 4th
concert in Tel Aviv despite calls from a number of anti-Israel activists to
boycott the Jewish state.
“I look forward to my first visit to Israel. Music is a
universal language that is meant to unify audiences in peace and love, and that
is the spirit of our show,” Keys said in a statement Friday to the New York
Times.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and activist, Alice Walker,
and Pink Floyd member, Roger Waters, had beseeched Keys to boycott the Jewish
state.
Waker had wrote an open letter to Keys stating, “It would
grieve me to know you are putting yourself in danger (soul danger) by
performing in an apartheid country ... ."
Waters also asked the singer not to perform, as her
appearance would, “... give legitimacy to the Israeli government policies of
illegal, apartheid, occupation of the homelands of the indigenous people of
Palestine.”
In its statement, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center, Rabbi Marvin Hier stated, "When Ms. Keyes sings in Israel on July
4th, she will be singing in the only free country in the entire Middle East,
where women enjoy equal rights with men and Israeli Arabs have more rights than
any of their brothers and sisters in the Arab world.”
"Equating Israel with apartheid South Africa is a
sinister distortion of the truth,” Rabbi Hier said, adding, “Just look at what
is happening in Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt."
“Israel has said countless times that it is willing to sit
down with the Palestinians without pre-conditions. But Israel cannot be expected
to make peace with Hamas, a terrorist organization committed to Israel's
destruction, just as African-Americans cannot make peace with the KKK,"
Hier concluded.
Last year Walker refused to authorize a new Hebrew
translation of her acclaimed novel, “The Color Purple.”
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