Vale Tanya Reinhart

Anyone who has had the good fortune to have met Tanya Reinhart will be shocked to learn of her sudden death in New York last Friday. She was quite a remarkable woman with a moral compass few can ematch let alone emulate. Her many books testify to her scholarship.

Haaretz reports of her death as follows:

"Linguist and left-wing activist Professor Tanya Reinhardt died in New York on Saturday at age 63.

Reinhardt, one of the most outspoken representatives of the radical Israeli left, was a fierce critic of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, saying they represented a perpetuation of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. She was also a proponent of an academic boycott of Israeli universities to protest the occupation.

Reinhardt espoused the principle of non-violent resistance, and was among the leaders of the left-wing activists who called for boycotts of the 1996 and 2001 elections.

She was active in recent years in Israeli-Palestinian efforts against the West Bank separation fence and the seizure of land from Palestinians for its construction."

As Women for Palestine [Melbourne] have said, "Palestine has lost a read friend and the world has lost a truly decent human being".

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