Anna Baltzer is an American human rights activist, author, and speaker. A graduate of Columbia University and a former Fulbright Scholar, she is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. In 2003, she traveled to the West Bank as a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS) to document human rights conditions, an experience that led her to full-time advocacy against the Israeli occupation.
Baltzer is the author of “Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories” (originally published in 2006 as “Building Tea Houses under Fire”), which combines photographs and first-hand documentation to detail daily life, land confiscations, and movement restrictions in the West Bank. She served for years as the National Organizer for the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) and has presented her documentation at academic and policy institutions globally, including the Oxford Union. In 2009, she appeared alongside Palestinian activist Mustafa Barghouti on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”
In recognition of her documentation work, Baltzer was named “Activist of the Year” by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). She is an advocate for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and frequently speaks on college campuses and before religious organizations. In her public lectures, she emphasizes the distinction between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israeli government policy, documents checkpoint restrictions and home demolitions, and calls for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.