Hagai El-Ad, an Israeli human rights activist, is the executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the country's leading human rights organization. Prior to joining ACRI, El-Ad served as the first executive director of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance (JOH), the Holy City's LGBT community and advocacy center.

Born in Haifa, El-Ad was a pre-doctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA. He completed his B.Sc. (Special Honors Program) and M.Sc. (Astrophysics) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. El-Ad published numerous articles on Arab-Jewish relations and equality in Israel, LGBT rights, and more. Most recently he contributed a chapter to the book, Where, Here: Language, Identity, Place.

Blog Entries by Hagai El-Ad

Democracy, Human Rights, Us. No Way We're Giving Them Up.

19 Comments | Posted November 23, 2009 | 12:50 AM (EST)


There's a limit to how many blows democracy can take before it is trampled down and beaten into something else. Democracy and human rights are absolutely essential for protecting who we are, preserving our rights, and enabling us to realize the equality we all deserve.

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Netanyahu on Goldstone: "Looking Into" Doing the Right Thing, for the Wrong Reasons

29 Comments | Posted October 26, 2009 | 11:24 AM (EST)


Prime Minister Netanyahu was quoted in The Washington Post on Saturday, in response to a question on an independent inquiry following the Goldstone report, responding thus: "We're looking into that not because of the Goldstone report but because of our own internal needs."

There exists both hypocrisy and truth...

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I'm No Triathlete

Posted September 1, 2009 | 01:50 PM (EST)


For starters, here's the sprint version of this post: this Saturday, I am going to participate in the first full triathlon in my life. It's a huge effort, and honestly - I'm quite anxious, but also excited and hopeful. I hope to be able to actually finish, and to even...

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"Natural Growth"? There's Nothing Natural About Destroying Israeli Democracy

12 Comments | Posted August 19, 2009 | 06:06 PM (EST)


The annals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have certainly charted many triumphant peaks of newspeak. Still, recent weeks seem to somehow have succeeded in yet setting new records in this unfortunate endeavor. Cynicism put aside, we should not be amused. The cost of politicians toying so recklessly with our future is...

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From Ni'ilin to Chernobyl and Back, in Under a Week

Posted July 6, 2009 | 04:20 PM (EST)


July 1: Not A Marginal Difference
An IDF officer allegedly orders one of his soldiers to shoot a bound, blind-folded Palestinian detainee at close range. The soldier then fires a rubber bullet at point-blank range at Mr. Ashraf Abu Rahma. The incident is caught on-camera by a B'Tselem...

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Defending Freedom of Speech in Israel, the Web 2.0 Version

Posted June 16, 2009 | 12:57 PM (EST)


The prologue was a national election campaign, which, amongst other novel ideas, put into question the citizenship of one in five Israelis. With such a promising opening, chapter one quickly unfolded: Less than 100 days into this new government, a barrage of anti-democratic initiatives emerged: Nakba remembrance on Israel's Independence...

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Jerusalem 42 Years Later: Where East and West Are Worlds Apart

10 Comments | Posted May 21, 2009 | 06:39 PM (EST)


Listening to all the endless, pompous rhetoric about Jerusalem, one might be convinced to believe that this is a city inhabited by divine symbols, not by real human beings, flesh, blood, sweat and all. But Jerusalem is obviously both: a city of unique international symbolism and home to more than...

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Torture: The Truly Painful Lessons from Israel

Posted April 26, 2009 | 10:01 PM (EST)


In a recent NY Times piece ("In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Look at Past Use", April 21), a former advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005 and 2006, Mr. Philip D. Zelikow, is thus quoted:

"Competent staff work could have quickly canvassed relevant history, insights from the...

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Israeli Elections: Voting For The Past

Posted February 12, 2009 | 05:50 PM (EST)


As any trekkie knows, rifts in the space-time continuum are a fact of life; and as any Israeli knows, one of the defining such domestic rifts is the one between Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv: for the two cities are only 60 kilometers (40 miles) away, and yet they stand some 2,000...

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Escapism Is Not An Option

Posted January 4, 2009 | 06:13 PM (EST)


When I was younger, or so the legends go, the wars here were more robust. They used to come once a decade or so, coherent, conventional, with a clear beginning and ending. And now, I blinked my eyes, and suddenly it is January of 2009. It's a month of Broadway...

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The Right to Be Hopeful

Posted December 8, 2008 | 06:25 PM (EST)


A powerful intersection between the personal and the professional can be good reason to pause, contemplate, and perhaps even try and conjecture an op-ed or a blog post. Such is my predicament, as I recall that striking talkback from a most thrilled individual writing from somewhere on this planet, featured...

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