Correction appended

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- African-American author Alice Walker has written to an Israeli publisher refusing them permission to publish her Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Color Purple due to "Israeli apartheid," a campaign group said.

In a letter published by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, Walker turned down Yediot Books' request to print the book because "Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories."

Walker said sitting on the panel of the citizen-based jury The Russell Tribunal on Palestine in Cape Town in November 2011 had influenced her decision, describing the testimonies as "devastating."

"It is my hope that the non-violent Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, of which I am part, will have enough of an impact on Israeli civilian society to change the situation," the letter said.

The Color Purple, which describes racism in the American South in the early 20th century, won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was adapted into a film that was nominated for 11 Oscars.

(This versions corrects that Alice Walker is an African-American author, not South African as originally stated.)