Alice Walker has said she will not allow an Israeli publisher to translate her 1983 Pulitzer winning "The Color Purple" into Hebrew. The author wrote a letter to Yediot Books saying that she refuses to have her book published in Hebrew because "Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories." 

While it is not entirely clear weather Walker has the legal rights to stop the publication of the book in Israel, her move is characteristic of the author who has been a strong advocate for Palestinian nationhood.  In the letter, Walker also said that the Israeli treatment of Palestinians is far worse than the segregation she endured in the American South and that South Africans have told her the same of their experience with apartheid.

The full letter is available on the website of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel.  In the letter, Walker writes, "It was not a particularly difficult position to hold on my part: I believe deeply in non-violent methods of social change though they sometimes seem to take forever, but I did regret not being able to share our movie, immediately, with (for instance) Winnie and Nelson Mandela and their children of the brutally murdered, while police custody, Steve Biko, the visionary journalist and defender of African integrity and freedom."

Alice Walker is the author of more than 30 novels, poetry collections and non-fiction books. She has won seveal awards for her writing as well as for her activism on issues of race and gender.