“Brava to Alicia Keys,” declares an editorial in Monday’s NY Daily News, hailing the 14-time Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter “for standing up for truth and cultural freedom in refusing to join the insidious campaign to delegitimize Israel.”
Keys will be performing in Tel Aviv on July 4. As she was booking the venue, several leading figure in the BDS movement, seeking to punish Israel for “victimizing the Palestinians” in ways that have been compared to the South African apartheid regime (although a famous South African politician recently chastised the BDS activists for cheapening the memory of the South African suffering by comparing it to the benign conditions of Arabs in the European-style Israeli democracy (Give ‘Em H-E Double Toothpicks, Mr. Meshoe!).
Author Alice Walker urged Keys in a letter posted online to join the boycott of Israel. “Writing as an older black woman to a younger woman who was born to a black father and a white mother, Walker, 69, addressed Keys, 33, with words that were as offensively condescending as they were smugly muddleheaded,” noted the Daily News editorial.
“Keys would have none of it from a person who is one step above a lunatic shouting anti-Semitic canards on the street. She told The New York Times, ‘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.’
Brava, indeed!