Before our first testimonies, others had already spoken out in public. These are some of them, summarised in our own words, with links to where they told their story.
Not interviewed by Unsettled. Their inclusion does not mean they endorse this project.
Left IsraelBorn in Baghdad in 1945, raised in Israel and a veteran of the Israeli army, he became a historian at Oxford. His memoir Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew (2023) challenges the Zionist account of why Iraq’s Jews left their country.
Sources: The Markaz Review · Wikipedia
Photo: Mans2014 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · B&W
Left IsraelA historian at the University of Haifa for over two decades. After supporting an academic boycott he was condemned in the Knesset, faced calls for his dismissal and received death threats. In 2007 he moved to the University of Exeter, saying it had become too hard to live in Israel with his views.
Sources: Times Higher Education · Wikipedia
Photo: Fjmustak · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · B&W
Left IsraelSon of IDF general Matti Peled and a former special-forces soldier. The killing of his niece in a 1997 bombing led him to question the beliefs he had been raised with. Today he is an anti-Zionist writer and speaker, author of The General’s Son.
Sources: Mondoweiss · The Real News
Photo: Miko Peled · CC BY 1.0 · Wikimedia Commons · B&W
A former Israeli Air Force helicopter pilot. In 2003 he wrote the Pilots’ Letter, in which 27 pilots refused to fly missions over the occupied territories, and co-founded Combatants for Peace. After losing his work as a pilot in Israel, he moved to Norway with his family.
Sources: JURIST (2024) · Bard College
Founder of Zochrot, which works to bring the Nakba into Israeli public memory, and its director until 2011. At the end of 2019 he and his partner Eléonore Merza left Israel for Brussels, partly so their child would not grow up in a militarised culture.
Sources: AJ+ · Haaretz via Portside
Born in Tel Aviv in 1964, she served in the army and left Israel for Australia in 1991, renouncing her Israeli citizenship in 2001. A psychotherapist in Scotland, she edited Beyond Tribal Loyalties, 25 personal stories of Jewish peace activists.
Sources: Mondoweiss (2022) · Green Left
The child of Holocaust survivors, he fought in the 1967 war, an experience he says transformed his life. A filmmaker and academic in London, he describes himself as an anti-Zionist and is the author of An Army Like No Other.
Sources: The Real News · Al Jazeera
StayedFormer Speaker of the Knesset and chairman of the Jewish Agency. He has described himself as post-Zionist, and in 2021 asked the courts to remove “Jewish” from his nationality registration in protest at the 2018 Nation-State Law.
Sources: Mondoweiss (2021) · Wikipedia
Photo: Itzhak Harari · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · B&W
StayedMember of the Knesset for Hadash since 2019 and its only openly anti-Zionist member. In 2024 he narrowly survived a vote to expel him from parliament, and he has been suspended several times.
Sources: Jacobin (2025) · Tribune (2024)
Photo: Amir Deeb · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · B&W
StayedProfessor of language and education. After her 13-year-old daughter Smadar was killed in a 1997 bombing, she became a leading voice against the occupation. Her research shows how Israeli school textbooks portray Palestinians. Sakharov Prize, 2001.
Sources: European Parliament · Groundviews (2013)
Photo: EPP-ED Group · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons · B&W
At 18 he became the first Israeli jailed for refusing military service in protest at the war in Gaza, in December 2023, and was sent back to prison in January 2024. He said there is no military solution to a political problem.
Sources: +972 Magazine · Connection e.V.
Stayed · Refused to serveRaised in an ultra-Orthodox family in Bnei Brak, he refused conscription in August 2024 in protest at the war and the occupation. He spent 197 days in military prison, the longest sentence for a refuser in two decades.
Sources: Amnesty International · +972 Magazine
Photo: Itamar Greenberg · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · B&W