Jeff Halper

Jeff Halper
Born	Minnesota
Nationality	Israel, U.S.
Occupation(s)	professor, director of Israeli NGO
Known for	founder and Director of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions

Jeff Halper (born in Minnsesota) is the co-founder and Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and a Professor of Anthropology. He has lived in Israel since 1973, having emigrated from the US. In 1997, Halper co-founded ICAHD to challenge and resist the Israeli policy of demolishing Palestinian homes. He forged a new mode of Israeli peace activity based on nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience to the Israeli Occupation authorities. Halper was nominated by the American Friends Service Committee for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, together with the Palestinian intellectual and activist Ghassan Andoni, for his work "to liberate both the Palestinian and the Israeli people from the yoke of structural violence" and "to build equality between their people by recognizing and celebrating their common humanity."

Academic research

Born in Minnesota, Halper was educated in the U.S. and was involved in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s. He immigrated to Israel in 1973 after attending rabbinical school. In Israel, Halper taught anthropology at Haifa University and Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva. He was the head of Friends World College, an international university program. His academic research has focused on the history of Jerusalem in the modern era, contemporary Israeli culture, and the Middle East conflict. He is the author of Between Redemption and Revival: The Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century(Westview, 1991). He is also the author of Obstacles to Peace: Reframing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (ICAHD publication, 2005).

ICAHD

In 1997, Halper co-founded the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions to challenge and resist the Israeli policy of demolishing Palestinian homes. As ICAHD Israel’s Coordinating Director, Professor Halper has organized and led nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience against Israel’s occupation policies and authorities. He has put his own personal safety on the line, facing bulldozers in front of Palestinian homes and confronting Israeli soldiers. He also organizes Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals to help rebuild demolished Palestinian homes. ICAHD uses dialogue between groups to open communication, foster reconciliation and challenge stereotypes. In acts of political resistance, ICAHD works in coalition with a wide range of Israeli human rights organizations including: Bat Shalom, Rabbis for Human Rights, Gush Shalom and the Alternative Information Center, as well as Palestinian groups such as the Land Defense Committee, the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee (PARC) and Rapprochement.

Social activism

In addition to his work with the Israeli peace movement, Professor Halper has been active on issues of social justice within Israel. He worked as a community volunteer for ten years in Jerusalem’s inner city neighborhoods, where he was one of the founders of the Ohel social protest movement of working-class Mizrahi Jews. He served as the Chairman of the Israeli Association for Ethiopian Jews, having been active on the issue of Ethiopian Jewish rights and researching the community in Ethiopia in the mid-1960s.

Professor Halper serves on the Steering Committee of the UN Conference on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.