For the British historian, see Alison Weir

Alison Weir is founder and executive director of the non-profit organization If Americans Knew, which focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with particular focus on media coverage of the issue.

Weir speaks widely throughout the United States and has written numerous essays on this topic; some of the most prominent are "Gaza: A Report From the Front", published in The New Intifada (Verso publishing); "Choosing to Act: Anti-Semitism is Wrong"; "Israel and Palestine, Choosing Sides," Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories (Seven Stories Press; 2004); and "Humiliation and Child Abuse at Israeli Checkpoints: Strip-Searching Children," CounterPunch , March 15, 2007.

In addition, she produces videos on Israel-Palestine, the most widely viewed a trailer for an upcoming documentary "If Americans Knew."

Weir also appears in several documentaries by other film-makers and is the subject of a documentary entitled "Off the Charts," by Alternate Focus.

In 2003 she received a widely reported death threat following her appearance in a debate on the University of California Berkeley campus. In March of 2004 she was inducted into honorary membership of Phi Alpha Literary Society, founded in 1845 at Illinois College. The award cited her as a: “Courageous journalist-lecturer on behalf of human rights. The first woman to receive an honorary membership in Phi Alpha history.”

Famous Quotes

“You call this…[Israel’s] ‘War of Independence.’ Please explain this to me. Independence from whom? From the farmers whose ancestors had tilled the land for centuries?….Independence from humanity? From morality? From normality? From everyone else in the world?”[12]

“People who say there are two sides to this ‘conflict’ are full of bs….Here there is the brutalizer and the brutalized. It’s not complicated.” [13]

“It is hard not to sound fanatic, over-wrought, biased. The lie is too big, the repression too complete, the Palestinians’ lives too horrible to write about reasonably.”[14]

“When a rare, crazed, would-be freedom-fighter escapes this prison and tries to strike his oppressor, we need to read about the prison he exploded out of. Rather than an ‘inexplicable, fanatical terrorist,’ we would see what we had helped create with our aid to Israel-a terrorized victim who has tragically but inexplicably turned to violence himself.”[15]

“Empowered by American money, Israel is occupying land that does not belong to it.”[16]

“When people say Israel has a right to exist, it means that Israel has a right to discriminate.”[17]

“Americans have to stop this [supporting Israel]. Israel will keep shooting kids in the back until we all say, Enough.”[18]

“You’ve called ‘anti-Semite’ once too often. You’ve pressured one too many newspapers, one too many universities, one too many mayors…”[19]

“This poverty [in the Territories] has not happened by accident, Weir argued. ‘I was seeing newly, artificially, purposefully created poverty. Poverty being created by America through its support of a regime that is consciously, and again, quite effectively, squeezing out people it does not want around.’”[20]

“The U.S. State Department has yet to impose any diplomatic sanctions whatsoever against a government whose "apology" for one of its soldiers crushing a young, peaceful American student has consisted of calling it "regrettable”…The American media have yet to accord this horror the attention it would normally merit, if it had been done by any other country on earth, including the U.S. government.”[21]

“Historians have since written that the fact that Israel was able to attack a US ship (the Liberty) and kill and maim American servicemen, with virtually no consequences, convinced Israeli hardliners that Israel could, whenever it wanted, get away with murder.”[22]

“[Weir] told me that Israeli soldiers are invincible-that they are bulletproof. I wasn't sure if I heard her correctly, so I asked her, "You mean people never come up to them and shoot them and kill them?" and she said no, they have armor, they are bulletproof.” Alex Scheinker, student at Washington University[23]

Her website contains photos and additional writings.