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<\/a><\/p>\nHannah Gann, a Jewish public school teacher and activist in Philadelphia who pretended to be Palestinian for years, addresses a meeting of the Philadelphia Board of Education, Dec. 4, 2025.(Screenshot)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Hannah Gann posted confessions and apologies to social media this week, following confrontations from local pro-Palestinian groups she had worked with. In her apologies, she identified herself as \u201ca white woman with significant privilege and wealth\u201d who has \u201cno Palestinian or Tunisian heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment to Gann was not immediately returned.<\/p>\n
Two local activist groups Gann had been involved with, Philly Educators for Palestine and Racial Justice Organizing Committee, said in their own statement that Gann was also \u201cof Jewish heritage and [part of] an Israeli settler family.\u201d They further accused Gann of falsely claiming to be Black at various points, until they confronted her about her background days ago.<\/p>\n
Comparisons to Dolezal, a white woman who posed as Black for years, taught Africana college courses and held a leadership role with a local NAACP branch before being exposed in 2015, spread over the Internet on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
\u201cI hid the truth or outright lied about my background to everyone in my life,\u201d Gann, a teacher at West Philadelphia\u2019s The Workshop School, said in her own Instagram video message on Monday. \u201cI hid my family\u2019s background from everyone in Philly and also hid from the people in my own family what I was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither of Gann\u2019s visible social media apologies mentioned Jewish heritage. But the Philadelphia Inquirer, citing internal documents from the activist groups, reported that she had identified herself in college as a \u201cJewish woman with family in the occupied West Bank.\u201d <\/p>\n
Gann had also told colleagues her grandfather was born in Palestine, when he was reportedly born in Baltimore, according to documents cited by the Inquirer. Fellow activists accused her of having darkened her skin using makeup and fake tanner and adopting a Black American accent after returning from a stint in the Peace Corps in Rwanda.<\/p>\n
As with Dolezal, commenters accused Gann of posing as a member of a marginalized group of color to gain clout.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen marginalization becomes a form of social currency some people will always do this,\u201d one account under the name \u201cregretmaxxing\u201d wrote in Gann\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n
Gann had made the pro-Palestinian cause central to her identity over the years, including a teach-in at her school in 2024 to protest \u201cscholasticide\u201d in Gaza, the Inquirer reported. That year she also told a local media outlet that the right-wing group Accuracy in Media had displayed her name on a truck calling her \u201cPhiladelphia\u2019s Leading Antisemite.\u201d <\/p>\n
Accuracy in Media, which has targeted activists in other states using similar methods, confirmed to JTA that they had also done so to Gann. <\/p>\n
\u201cHannah Gann remains one of Philadelphia\u2019s leading antisemites,\u201d the group\u2019s founder, Adam Guillette, said in a statement, linking to a video of his group\u2019s truck displaying the message outside the school where Gann worked.<\/p>\n
Delivering testimony to the Philadelphia Board of Education in December 2025, Gann, wearing a keffiyeh, urged them to \u201ctreat Islamophobia, anti-Black and anti-Palestinian racism just as seriously as you treat allegations of antisemitism.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are Jewish staff members\u2019 experiences immediately assumed to indicate systemic failures, while Black, brown and Muslim students\u2019 testimonies are treated as isolated incidents?\u201d she continued, shortly before a board member cut off her mic.<\/p>\n
A fellow teacher of Gann\u2019s said on Instagram that Gann had told her, following a trip to Israel in 2023, that she had both Jewish and Palestinian people in her family, later claiming that her grandfather had been an anti-Zionist Jew born in Mandatory Palestine who left over disagreements with the direction of Israel. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will no longer work with Hannah, and she will no longer be welcome in any of our organizing spaces,\u201d the pro-Palestinian groups said in their own statement.<\/p>\n
A biography of Gann still visible on the West Philly Participatory Defense Hub, a different local organizing group, describes her as having \u201cloved ones directly impacted by the criminal (in)justice system\u201d and notes that she is a member of The First Unitarian Church.<\/p>\n
In her apology, which she posted on Yom Kippur, Gann argued that her advocacy was genuine even though her persona was not. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that I lied about who I was does not mean anyone else who speaks up for Palestine is lying and does not erase the urgency of listening to voices on the ground,\u201d she said. She added that she would be \u201cdeleting anything posted by Zionists.\u201d<\/p>\n