The distinguished Israeli professor of linguistics Tanya Reinhart, who has died suddenly aged 63, was even better known for her prolific writing on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, her searing criticism of her own country, and her role as an activist, including her support for an academic boycott of Israel. She was a woman of immense bravery, and believed that fierce criticism of Israel "is the best act of solidarity and compassion with the Jews that one can have".

She was born in Israel, and brought up in Haifa by her mother, a communist and single parent. At the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, she gained a BA in philosophy and Hebrew literature in 1967 followed by an MA in philosophy and comparative literature. She was politically active with both the Communist party and the Young Communist league.

She went to study in the US, and in 1976 gained a PhD in linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where her supervisor was Noam Chomsky. On hearing of her death, he described her as an "old and cherished friend" and paid tribute both to her academic work and the political writing on her own society, which "drew away the veil that concealed criminal and outrageous actions and shone a searing light on the reality that was obscured".

Reinhart taught at Tel Aviv University for more than 20 years, and held a chair as professor of linguistics and cultural studies. She was a multi-disciplinarian and also taught and published on art, literature and media studies. Those who attended her media studies lectures remember how, amid fierce debate, students' mindsets and lives were changed by her analysis, encouraging them to read between the lines of their country's writers. Her moral indignation flared quickly, but she was also given to long and patient discussions with her students.

She taught too at MIT; Columbia University, New York; the University of Paris; and for 15 years was linked to the University of Utrecht. Her contribution to linguistic theory lay in the connection between meaning and context and the interface between syntax and systems of sound. Her most recent academic book, Interface Strategies, was published last year, and she was on the editorial board of several academic journals in various linguistic disciplines.

Reaching to other audiences, she was a columnist for the Israeli paper Yediot Aharnot and for the radical online magazine, Counterpunch. Her most recent political book, The Roadmap to Nowhere, was also published last year.

She came to see parallels with apartheid South Africa, writing in 2003: "What Israel is doing under Ariel Sharon far exceeds the crimes of the South Africa's white regime. It has been taking the form of systematic ethnic cleansing, which South Africa never attempted." It was the analogy between Israel and South Africa's apartheid that she used in justifying the academic boycott movement of recent years.

With great understatement she commented, also in 2003: "It is not easy for an Israeli academic to support the calls for boycott of Israeli academic institutions these days. Like any other segment of the Israeli society, the universities are paying the price of Israel's war against the Palestinians, with severe budget cuts and deteriorating research conditions. A freeze of the EU funds would, no doubt, make things even tougher. It is therefore understandable that the Israeli academia is mobilising its forces to attack any such boycott attempt. Understandable, but not just."

Reinhart's passionate calls for justice for the Palestinians made her a sought-after speaker internationally, and last October she gave the Edward Said Memorial lecture at Adelaide University in Australia. In her memorable final speech in France, last December at the Résistances bookshop in Paris, she roundly denounced the embargo imposed on the Palestinians since the election of a Hamas government in January 2006. European countries, including France, she said, had no right to cut off food supplies to the Palestinians. "It was not an act of generosity which Europe could either carry on or not - Europe chose not to force Israel to respect its obligations under international law."

She was not only a writer, but also a frontline activist. Over the years she organised solidarity campaigns with Palestinian academics at Birzeit University on the West Bank, and against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Many friends and colleagues described countless visits with her to the occupied Palestinian territories, and the demonstrations and detentions which were part of them. Her like-minded academic colleagues, Avraham Oz and Ilan Pappe, are feeling "orphaned" by her sudden death.

Most recently she was active in protests against the building of the long partition wall and the annexing of Palestinian land for it. She never tired of taking visitors to see the reality of lost livelihoods and unviable lives the wall has created for tens of thousands of Palestinians literally immured in villages without land in the latest Israeli scheme to create facts on the ground and prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state.

Reinhart was an optimist however, and last October wrote that "persistent struggle can have an effect, and can lead governments to act. Such struggle begins with the Palestinian people, who have withstood years of brutal oppression, and who, through their spirit of zumud - sticking to their land - and daily endurance, organising and resistance, have managed to keep the Palestinian cause alive, something that not all oppressed nations have managed to do."

She also believed in the modest role of international solidarity movements, "that send their people to the occupied territories and stand in vigils at home, professors signing boycott petitions, subjecting themselves to daily harassment, a few courageous journalists that insist on covering the truth, against the pressure of acquiescent media and pro-Israel lobbies. Often this struggle for justice seems futile. Nevertheless, it has penetrated global consciousness."

In 2006 she was ousted by what she felt to be bureaucratic harassment from her post at Tel Aviv University, and with great regret decided to leave Israel. She died in her sleep in New York, where she had immediately been offered a teaching post at New York University. She is survived by her husband, the Hebrew language poet Aharon Shabtai

· Tanya Reinhart, academic and human rights campaigner, born 1944; died March 17 2007