http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Baltzer Anna Baltzer
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Anna Baltzer
Baltzer giving a lecture at Columbia University, New York, 2008
Born Albany, CA 1979
Nationality United States
Ethnicity unknown
Education Mathematics/Economics
Alma mater Columbia University
Occupation Public Speaker
Known for pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activism
Anna Baltzer is a Jewish-American pro-Palestinian activist, author, and public speaker, known for taking positions counter to the Israeli government regarding the Palestinian territories, including the Israeli West Bank barrier and checkpoints.
Contents
1 Overview
2 Political activism
3 Proof of fraud regarding her background
4 Criticism
5 Further reading
6 Notes
7 External links
Overview
After graduating from Columbia, Baltzer claims that she traveled to the Middle East in 2003 on a Fulbright grant to teach English in Ankara, Turkey.[1] 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.[2]
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”,[3] while Tanya Reinhart author of "Roadmap to Nowhere" call it "Moving and vivid.”[citation needed] Mark Chmiel, teacher at St. Louis University and Webster University and author of "Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership",[4] has also written about Baltzer's book.[5]
On October 28, 2009, Baltzer was a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, along side Mustafa Barghouti.[6]
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.[7] According to Balter's own account, wthe she 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." [8]
Proof of fraud regarding her background
In January 2013, journalist Lee Kaplan wrote at the Gatestone Institute website that both the Fulbright program and Israel's Birthright program had told him they have no records that she was ever a Fulbright scholar or her claim that she participated in Birthright Israel in year 2000 or at any time; he also reported, "After researching her grandparents through the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel, as well as the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, to see if her family were actually in concentration camps, nothing could be found. This, too, appears to be a fabrication by Baltzer, or at best an embellishment."[9] These claims are particularly significant in view of assertions in the press that her career is based less on her knowledge of the Arab/Israeli conflict than on her assertion that she is "the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors" and was once a pro-Israel Jew who had an epiphany against Zionism [10] In a radio interview in Ireland in 2010 linked from the Gatestone article, Baltzer concluded the interview by shouting, "Inshallah! One day we will bring down Zionism!"Criticism
Baltzer has been criticized by Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a pro-Israel media watchdog group,[11][12][13][14] which described her as "Chomsky Lite" and condemned Baltzer's "baseless distortion" of "Zionism as a racist movement".[15] She has been accused "wilful ignoring of facts which mitigate against her position" and writing in an inaccurate "one-sided, inaccurate, politicised, and inflammatory" manner. Her expertise on issues have also been questioned.[16] Steven Stotsky writing in the New Jersey Jewish Standard described her message as rehashed accusations against Israel made by Palestinian speakers, and involving absurd claims. He accused her of sanitising the stated Arab intention to eliminate Israel. She reportedly published on her blog for months a false story accusing Israeli soldiers of shooting several Palestinian children before eventually removing it. Baltzer added that while the story, purportedly circulated by a colleague, emerged as false, “I don’t think it’s hateful to hold a nation accountable for targeting civilians.”[17]
She has also been accused of falsely claiming to have witnessed an incident in which a Palestinian woman was refused emergency entry into Israel for medical care when in fact she later admitted that she had heard of the incident second hand, from a Palestinian propagandist, and could not provide details such as the name of the woman, the date, or the name of the checkpoint.[18] more on this liar http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2013/01/international-solidarity-movement.html#links
Topic: Look at this pro-muslim self-hating Jew who lies profusely (Read 664 times)