Tanya Reinhart, activist and author, has died March 17, 2007, in Long Island, New York.

Tanya was a tireless voice against the Israeli state’s oppression of the Palestinian people. In the articles she wrote for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot as well as Counterpunch and Znet, she argued passionately and with an unequalled rigour that Israel should leave the occupied territories.

Her books were similarly sharp and scholarly analyses. She wrote the acclaimed Israel/Palestine: How To End the War of 1948 (2002) of which Edward Said said: “The most devastating critique now available of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinian people.” Last year Verso published her The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003 (2006), which detailed the grim logic behind the erection of Israel’s wall but also the hope engendered by the increasing resistance of both Palestinians and Israelis to Sharon and Olmert’s brutality.

Tanya was a Professor of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University, her Ph.D having been supervised by Noam Chomsky. She had recently taken a position as Distinguished Global Professor at New York University.

We are shocked and saddened to hear of Tanya’s death. The Palestinian cause has lost a great voice.