James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute:
Forty years of Israeli occupation, destruction and humiliation have failed to quash the dignity and fortitude of the Palestinian people.
My work also brought me into contact with some extraordinary Israeli human rights activists. Two who stood out as most significant were Felicia Langer and Israel Shahak. The latter, who as a child was interned in the Nazi camp at Bergen- Belsen, chaired the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights. His motto was "Equal rights for every human being", and he lived it, letting no injustice pass. A brilliant researcher and analyst, and a tireless advocate, he devoted himself to opposing hypocrisy and abuse wherever he found it, whether from Israel or among the Arabs.
Derided by her detractors as a communist, Langer was an attorney and a passionate defender of Palestinian victims of Israeli land theft, home demolition and political repression. Each week she would write to me in elegant prose, telling me of her new cases and appealing for support. "Your letters from the US," she would say, "can hold back the hand of the torturer, and rein-in the bulldozers."
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