Nurit Peled

Nurit Peled-Elhanan
Nurit Peled-Elhanan in a meeting of the European Parliament
Born	1949 Jerusalem
Nationality	Israeli
Occupation	philologist, professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Relatives	Miko Peled (brother)
Awards	Sakharov Prize (2001)

Nurit Peled-Elhanan (Hebrew: נורית פלד-אלחנן‎; born in 1949 in Jerusalem) is an Israeli philologist, professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, translator, and a human rights 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. She has also criticized George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and Ariel Sharon for fostering anti-Muslim views.

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. Elhanan's 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.

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 Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, was released in the U.K. in April 2012.