ABSTRACT
Activism and activist are emotive and ill-defined terms. They are claimed by any party wishing to project itself as a courageous, independent voice that speaks out against what it narrates as injustices, and in so doing place itself and its supporters at varying degrees of risk. The Zionist Organization of America, for instance, boasts that it is ‘Always on the front lines of pro-Israel activism’ (Zionist Organization of America, n.d.), just as the many groups opposed to Israel and documented on the Palestine Freedom Project website (Palestine Freedom Project, n.d.) refer to themselves and are referred to by others as activists. The terms themselves, according to Tymoczko (2010: 12), have only been in circulation since the middle of the twentieth century, and were initially associated with high profile initiatives that involve direct political action, such as the feminist demonstrations and anti-war rallies of the 1960s and 1970s.
