Anat Matar is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University and a prominent Israeli political activist. She has long been dedicated to the philosophy of language, political philosophy, and the study of Wittgenstein’s thought.
Matar is a co-founder of Academia for Equality, an organization of over 800 members dedicated to the democratization of Israeli academia and opposition to the occupation. Her significant academic contributions include studies on Wittgenstein and the groundbreaking work The Philosophy of the Palestinian Prisoners. In this book, she examines the identity of “political prisoners,” the ethics of resistance, and how incarceration serves as a tool of colonial rule. As the longtime Chair of the Israeli Committee for the Palestinian Prisoners, she serves as a vital bridge between academic inquiry and grassroots rights movements.
She steadfastly supports international pressure on Israeli military and academic institutions, arguing that academia cannot remain neutral in the face of systemic injustice. Between 2023 and 2026, she organized numerous campus protests demanding an immediate end to the military siege of Gaza. Beyond writing op-eds exposing the double standards of the Israeli legal system, she frequently appears in military courts to support Palestinian activists held in administrative detention. Despite facing harassment from far-right groups and administrative pressure from her university, she continues to equate “freedom of thought” with the “freedom to resist oppression.”
She encouraged her son, Haggai Matar, who was a conscientious objector: “To conclude I mention the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who served a six-month prison sentence for criticizing the policy of the British government in World War I, a fact he was proud of till the end of his days. I end with thanks to those who have insisted on being citizens in the past few years, Yesh Gvul, New Profile, Knesset Member Tamar Gozansky who accompanied Haggai and continues to encourage him and the other refusers, and to two ‘future laureates of the Israel Prize,’ poets Yitzhak Laor and Aharon Shabtai, who dedicated poems to Haggai on the occasion of his refusal.“