Anna Baltzer - Biography

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. Baltzer’s grandparents survived the Holocaust.

Overview

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 Women's 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 Women’s 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 Chomsky’s review of Baltzer's 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 Baltzer's book.

On October 28, 2009, Baltzer was a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, along side Mustafa Barghouti.

Political activism

Baltzer's 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 claims that critical information doesn't show up in the United States mainstream media. Baltzer first went to Israel on a free birthright trip in January 2000, where she saw "a beautiful picture of Israel" but nothing of what was happening to the Palestinians. "A Jewish student-life coordinator at Hillel, called the SJP event very well organized and well attended. It seemed very non-threatening and very non-violent. (Speaker) Baltzer made an extra special point that just because she was anti-Israeli policy, it doesn’t mean she is anti-Jewish." Controversial political artist, cartoonist, and illustrator Ben Heine, has reflected Anna Baltzer's political activism into an illustration inspired by Michelangelo's Pietà called "Palestinian Pieta".

Criticism

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 Baltzer's "baseless distortion" of "Zionism as a racist movement".

Further reading

• Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories (Updated & revised ed.), Anna Baltzer, Paradigm Publishers, 2007, paperback, 400 pp.
• "Life in Occupied Palestine: Eyewitness Stories & Photos", Matt Quinn (journalist for Citizens for Justice in the Middle East) on Anna Baltzer.

Notes

External links

• "Anna's Eyewitness Reports from Palestine" personal blog
• "Anna Baltzer: Witness in Palestine" website