US R&B musician Alicia Keys performing in Lisbon, Portugal US R&B singer Alicia Keys is reportedly being pressured this week by celebrities to join an anti-Israel boycott and cancel her upcoming concert in the capital Tel Aviv. Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, wrote Keys a letter encouraging her to join the boycott and warned her that if she didn’t cancel the concert, she’d be putting her “soul in danger,” albawaba reports.
“Dear Alicia Keys,” Walker wrote on the website for the US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel. “I have learned today that you are due to perform in Israel very soon. We have never met, though I believe we are mutually respectful of each other’s path and work. It would grieve me to know you are putting yourself in danger (soul danger) by performing in an apartheid country that is being boycotted by many global conscious artists.“A cultural boycott of Israel and Israeli institutions (not individuals) is the only option left to artists who cannot bear the unconscionable harm Israel inflicts every day on the people of Palestine, whose major ‘crime’ is that they exist in their own land, land that Israel wants to control as its own.”Earlier this month, physicist Stephen Hawking announced he was joining the movement, adding his name to a list of supporters that includes dozens of Nobel laureates. Walker also compared Israel to racist American institutions in the south that were boycotted to end American apartheid, which she called “less lethal than Israel’s against the Palestinian people.” Keys is set to appear in Tel Aviv’s Nokia Arena on July 4 As part of her ongoing Girl On Fire tour. The musician is yet to respond to activists requests.