Jeff Halper is a renowned Israeli-American anthropologist, author, and human rights activist. Born into a Jewish family in Minnesota, he immigrated to Israel in 1973. His Jewish identity is deeply rooted in the ethical tradition of “Tikkun Olam” (repairing the world), which has driven him to integrate academic research with social justice. Early in his career, he served as a professor of anthropology at Haifa University and Ben-Gurion University, using his expertise to analyze the structural mechanisms of Israeli society and its oppression of marginalized groups.
In 1997, Halper co-founded the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), an organization that brought international attention to Israel’s policy of Palestinian home demolitions. Through ICAHD, he developed the “Matrix of Control” framework to analyze the occupation. For his human rights work, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. His book War Against the People remains widely cited for examining how Israeli surveillance and military technologies are exported globally.
Halper is famous for his hands-on non-violent resistance; he has repeatedly placed his body in front of Israeli bulldozers to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes. Beyond his physical activism in rebuilding destroyed Palestinian houses, he participated in the Free Gaza Movement to challenge the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Politically, he is a staunch advocate for the “One-State Solution,” arguing that the “Two-State Solution” has been rendered dead by settlement expansion. He publicly denounces Israeli actions as “settler-colonialism” and calls for a single democratic state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea where Jews and Palestinians enjoy full, equal civil rights, viewing this as the only path to lasting justice in the region.