Nurit Peled-Elhanan (; born 17 May 1949 in Jerusalem) is an Israeli philologist, professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, translator, and activist. She is a 2001 co-laureate of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought awarded by the European Parliament. She is known for her research on the portrayal of Palestinians in Israeli textbooks, which she has criticized as being anti-Palestinian. Elhanan supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and has made highly controversial statements, including equivocating between Zionism and ISIS, as well as criticizing Israeli laureate and peace activist AB Yehoshua for being an obstacle to peace. She has also criticized George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and Ariel Sharon for fostering anti-Muslim views.
Biography
Nurit Peled-Elhanan was raised in a leftist family in Jerusalem's Rehavia neighborhood. She described her home growing up as a leftist-Zionist home. Her grandfather, Avraham Katsnelson, signed Israel's Declaration of Independence. She is the daughter of Matti Peled, an Israeli Major-General, scholar of Arabic literature, a member of Knesset and a noted peace activist. Peled-Elhanan is married to graphic designer and peace activist Rami Elhanan, with whom she has four children. Their daughter, Smadar, was killed at the age of thirteen in the 1997 Ben Yehuda Street Palestinian suicide attack in Jerusalem.
Her brother, Miko Peled is an activist for Palestinian rights, and author of the 2012 book, The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.
Career
Peled-Elhanan is a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a 2001 co-laureate of the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. She has translated Albert Memmi's Le racisme (1982) and Marguerite Duras' Écrire (1993) into Hebrew. Her book, Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, was released in the U.K. in April 2012.
Opinions
On Israeli curriculum
In her book, Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, which was released in the UK in April 2012, Nurit Peled-Elhanan describes the depiction of Arabs in Israeli schoolbooks as racist. She states that their only representation is as "refugees, primitive farmers and terrorists," claiming that in "hundreds and hundreds" of books, not one photograph depicted an Arab as a "normal person."
In an August 2020 webinar hosted by her brother, Miko Peled, Peled-Elhanan said that the Israeli textbooks teach students that Israel exists primarily to prevent another Holocaust, and as such, Jews are the only ones ever presented as victimized. She stated further that the curriculum commands students to actively ignore other victims, and that it “Nazif[ies] Arabs.”
On Palestinian curriculum
As a Lecturer in Language and Education, Peled-Elhanan has written and lectured widely on Israeli and Palestinian curricula and textbooks. She claims that the Palestinian curriculum is highly censored, and that "the teaching of Palestinian history, or the Nakba, even in Arab schools (Nasser and Nasser, 2008), is forbidden -- a prohibition that has recently been formulated as a law (the Nakba Law). . . ." Peled-Elhanan also asserted that entire pages of textbooks are left blank as a result of this censorship, and “even if they wanted to [teach hate, they can’t because] they are censored."
In 2020, Elhanan stated that teachers can plan to teach their Palestinian students whatever they want, but their textbooks do not allow it because their texts "are financed by [the] World Bank, the EU and so on and so forth who actually work for Israel."
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Peled-Elhanan’s opinions on the conflict are ever-present in her public appearances outside the academy. In a 2007 address, she referred to Israeli soldiers as the "murderers of children, destroyers of houses, uprooters of olive [orchards], and poisoners of wells . . . who have been educated in this place over the years in the school of hatred and racism. [These] children who have learned for 18 years to fear and despise the stranger, to always fear the neighbors, the gentiles, children who were brought up in the fear of Islam – a fear that prepares them to be brutal soldiers and disciples of mass murderers"