Anna Baltzer is a Jewish-American activist for Palestinian human rights, author, and public speaker, known for taking positions counter to the Israeli government regarding the Palestinian territories, including the wall/fence and checkpoints. Baltzers grandparents survived the Holocaust. Baltzer first traveled to the Middle East in 2003 while on a Fulbright grant to teach English in Ankara, Turkey. Since then, she has traveled to the West Bank as a volunteer for the International Womens Peace Service to as she describes, document human rights abuses and support nonviolent resistance. Her publications have documented eight months of human conditions while on assignment in the West Bank for the International Womens Peace Service. Since the summer of 2005, she has been touring around the United States and abroad with a presentation and has written a book (Witness in Palestine) describing her personal experiences, observations, and photographs from eight months of documenting what she described as human rights violations in the West Bank. Noam Chomskys review of Baltzers book states, Even those who are familiar with the grim reality of the occupied territories will quickly be drawn into a world they had barely imagined by these vivid, searingly honest, intensely acute portrayals, while Tanya Reinhart author of Roadmap to Nowhere call it Moving and vivid. Mark Chmiel, teacher at St. Louis University and Webster University and author of Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership, has also written about Baltzers book. On October 28, 2009, Baltzer was a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, along side Mustafa Barghouti. Baltzers activism centers around nonviolent protests, as well as providing documented information to those interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the purpose of education and encouraging dialogue towards taking action on the issues. She correctly points out that critical information doesnt show up in the United States mainstream media. Baltzer has been criticized by Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a pro-Israel media watchdog group, which described her as Chomsky Lite and condemned Baltzers baseless distortion of Zionism as a racist movement.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 16:57:00 +0000
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