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Julia Chaitin grew up in Detroit and immigrated to Israel in 1972. Since then she has lived in Kibbutz Urim, located in the Negev (desert), but travels abroad extensively lecturing on "peace."

According to her biography and curriculum vitae, Chaitin received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, Israel. From 2000 - 2003, she was head researcher at PRIME – The Peace Research Institute in the Middle East – supposedly a jointly-run Palestinian–Israeli non-governmental research organization. In fall 2006, she joined the Department of Social Work at the Sapir Academic College in Israel as a Senior Lecturer. She is also a grant writer for NISPED – The Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development.

Julia Chaitin may be the leading pro-Hamas voice coming out of the Negev and the embattled town of Sderot, the regular target of Hamas rockets and bombs. She exploits her residence in the Negev to legitimize her anti-Israel activism. She recently organized a "Solidarity with Hamas" conference at Sapir College.

Note this quote from a recent article by her:

"I live in the Negev and teach at the Sapir Academic College -- the school located next to Sderot -- in the heart of what is called 'Qassam-land,' after the rockets that fall on us. I know the fast beating of your heart and the awful pit in your stomach that comes when a tzeve adom -- red alert -- is sounded, heralding a rocket attack. I know what it is like to comfort students and colleagues when the rockets strike very, very close -- and to wish that someone was there to comfort you as well. I know what it is like to be afraid to get into the car and drive to work because you are not sure you will make it from the parking lot to your classroom alive.

"But I know the answer to our conflict will not come with this war. We will know peace only when we accept the fact that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have every right to lives of dignity. We will know peace only when we recognize that we must negotiate with Hamas, our enemy, even if we are devastated that the Palestinians did not elect a more moderate party to lead them. We will know peace only when our leaders stop considering our lives cheap and expendable, and help us create a beautiful, green Negev, free of fear and despair."

Gaza is not starving, or "under siege," a propaganda term despite all the hype by the ISM and their flotilla boats (Chaitin has lectured in the US at ISM affiliated churches and groups like the Methodist Church and International Women's Peace Service about her theories on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict). In fact, there are luxury hotels in Gaza and people frolic at the beach and nobody is starving.

Another quote from her about Operation Cast Lead:

"Since the Israeli air force began bombing Gaza, it has been almost impossible to speak openly against the war. It is difficult to find public forums that welcome a call for a new cease-fire and for alternative solutions to the conflict -- ones that do not rely on military strength or a siege of Gaza. When people are in the midst of war, they are not open to voices of peace; they speak (and scream) out of fear and demand retribution for the harms they have suffered. When people are in the midst of war, they forget that they can harness higher cognitive abilities, their reason and logic. Instead, they are driven by the hot structures of their brains, which lead them to respond with fear and anger in ways that are objective threats to our healthy survival. When people are in the midst of war, voices calling for restraint, dialogue and negotiations fall on deaf ears, if their expression is allowed at all."

Naturally Chaitin also supports the ISM's Gaza Flotilla boats:

"When I turned on the Israeli news at 6:40 AM on Monday morning, knowing that the flotilla must be nearing our shores, the broadcaster's first words were a knife to the heart: Something very bad has happened. The commanders knew ahead of time that this was a lose-lose situation... I could not help but wonder why the naval commanders (and obviously the higher-ups in the government) would knowingly go into a situation that was 'lose-lose.' I could not help but wonder why, once again, we had thrust ourselves into an impossible situation, endangered so many lives, perpetuated violence and severely damaged our relations with the world community in a nonsensical effort to enforce the unjustifiable blockade of the Gaza Strip."

An "unjustifiable blockade" indeed. Almost as unjustifiable as the Allied embargo of Germany in 1942.

Chaitin has also compared Israeli youth going into the IDF with Palestinian suicide bombers. Here's a quote from an interview with her as the Director of PRIME:

"I talked about my decision to live there [Israel] and my life there, again, in the context of the conflict. I continued on about how my identity has been affected and the way I've changed over the years, the way I look at things differently. I've been in Israel over 30 years, so I look at things differently now, then when I first came. I more or less ended with the fact that my youngest son, at the time he was 17, now he's eighteen, is going into the army soon. We have a lot of discussions at home, and he wants to go into a fighting unit. He wants to be a combat soldier. He's 18 years-old and has got raging hormones. All of his role models, all of his friends, and the people he looks up to are combat soldiers. Among 18-year-old boys, that's what's discussed. I keep trying to tell him, 'Daniel, I don't want you to go into something where you're going to be, say, in the West Bank, pointing a gun at a Palestinian citizen.' It always ends with, 'Oy mom, give me a break.' He's going to decide what he's going to decide. He's 18 years old. He's an adult. It's his decision. I was talking about how I'm torn because I love and care about him, he's my son. Whatever he does I have to support because how can he go into the army for at least three years and me not support him? Then he's going to be doing things that are against my morals, against things that I believe in. One of the Palestinians said to me, 'Well, you just have to forbid him.' And I said, 'I can't, what do you mean I have to forbid him, sit on him? I mean what am I supposed to do?' And he said, 'No, if you really meant it, then you would forbid him.' And I said, 'You know, I really mean it and I can't forbid him, he's going to do it.'

"Then either one of the Germans or someone else from outside the Israeli-Palestinian group said, 'Look, what if your son came to you and said, 'I'm going to go be a suicide bomber?' What would you do?' Cause this is also a man of peace, this Palestinian, and he said, 'Well, I would forbid him.'' And I said, 'How would you forbid him? What would you do?' He said, 'He wouldn't do it.' I said, 'What would you do? Would you lock him in the house? What would you do?' I could tell that he didn't accept it. He kept asserting, 'No, I would forbid him.' The other said, 'Okay, I believe that you would like to forbid him just like Joy would like to forbid her son, but in the end, your son will choose whatever path he chooses, just like her son will choose whatever path he chooses, and that's one of the tragedies. I mean, hopefully, neither son will choose one of these paths, but the fact is that you live within societies where there's also great pressure on Palestinian youth to become suicide bombers, just like there's great pressure on Israeli youth to go into these fighting units.' So, I think if we'd just been the Israelis and Palestinians, that whole thing would have really blown up… So I'm not saying we have gotten to any happy end, but on the other hand, things could be brought up and then they were much more diffused because it wasn't me saying it, it was somebody from the outside."

Kudos to Chaitin's son for having more common sense than his mother! IDF soldiers like Chaitin's son are defending the Jewish people from that annihilation.

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