Tanya Reinhart
Tanya Reinhart (1944 - March 17th, 2007[1]) was an Israeli linguist who wrote frequently on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She contributed columns to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot and longer articles to the CounterPunch, Znet, and Israeli Indymedia websites.
Reinhart studied philosophy and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem as an undergraduate, where she later received an M.A. in comparative literature and philosophy. In 1976 she obtained a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her thesis supervisor was Noam Chomsky.
Reinhart was a former professor of linguistics and literary theory at Tel-Aviv University. She was also a guest lecturer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and ended her international career as Distinguished Global Professor at New York University (NYU).
For many years, Reinhart was an outspoken critic of Israel's handling of the Palestinian problem. She argued that Israel should abandon the West Bank and Gaza:
- Israel should withdraw immediately from the territories occupied in 1967. The bulk of Israeli settlers (150,000 of them) are concentrated in the big settlement blocks in the center of the West bank. These areas cannot be evacuated over night. But the rest of the land (about 90%–96% of the West bank and the whole of the Gaza strip) can be evacuated immediately. Many of the residents of the isolated Israeli settlements that are scattered in these areas are speaking openly in the Israeli media about their wish to leave. It is only necessary to offer them reasonable compensation for the property they will be leaving behind. The rest — the hard-core "land redemptions" fanatics — are a negligible minority that will have to accept the will of the majority. [2]
Reinhart pointed out that immediate withdrawal would still leave under debate between six and ten percent of the West Bank with the large settlement blocks, as well as the issues of Jerusalem and the right of return, and maintains that these should be the subject of "serious peace negotiations".
In 2002, Reinhart was heavily criticized in Israel for signing a European petition calling for a moratorium on European support of Israeli academia in protest of Israel's Palestinian policies.
The same year, she also published a book, Israel/Palestine: How To End the War of 1948, in which she analyzed what she saw as the breakdown during the preceding three years of constructive engagement over the Palestinian issue and the hardening of the Israeli position.
Tanya Reinhart was married to Israeli writer Aharon Shabtai. She has been described as a post-Zionist.[citation needed]
Further reading
- Israel/Palestine : how to end the War of 1948, New York : Seven Stories Press, cop. 2002. - ISBN 1-58322-538-2
- The road map to nowhere : Israel/Palestine since 2003, London ; New York : Verso, 2006. - ISBN 1-84467-076-7
References
- ^ "In Memory of Tanya Reinhart" Noam Chomsky, 19 March 2007
- ^ Israel/Palestine: How To End The War Of 1948, Znet, November 08, 2002
External links
- Reinhart's homepage (Tel Aviv)
- Reinhart's homepage (Utrecht)
- Date-ordered list of Reinhart's political publications
- Book info
- Interview (November 8, 2002)
- "Jenin: the Propaganda Battle" (April 24, 2002)
- "The guaranteed failure of the road map" (May 16, 2003)
- Radio interview with ABC Australia LNL (October 05, 2006)
- News from Within PODCAST: Elections, Occupation and Solidarity - An Interview with Professor Tanya Reinhart (April 2006)
- Obituary in Haaretz (19 March 2007)