A Jewish public school teacher who posed as a pro-Palestinian advocate in Philadelphia, Hannah Gann, admitted to fabricating Palestinian, Tunisian and black heritage to her colleagues for years, in a case that some online commenters are dubbing “the Palestinian Rachel Dolezal.”
Dolezal, a white woman who posed as black, taught Africana courses and held a leadership role with a local NAACP branch before being exposed in 2015.
Gann posted confessions and apologies to social media this week, following confrontations from local pro-Palestinian groups she had worked with.
In her apologies, Gann identified herself as “a white woman with significant privilege and wealth” who has “no Palestinian or Tunisian heritage.”
Two local groups Gann had been involved with, Philly Educators for Palestine and Racial Justice Organizing Committee, said in their own statement that Gann was also “of Jewish heritage and [part of] an Israeli settler family.”
They accused Gann of falsely claiming to be black at various points, until they confronted her about her background days ago.
“I hid the truth or outright lied about my background to everyone in my life,” Gann, a teacher at West Philadelphia’s The Workshop School, said in her own Instagram video message on Sept. 21, Yom Kippur.
“I hid my family’s background from everyone in Philly and also hid from the people in my own family what I was doing.”
Neither of Gann’s 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 “Jewish woman with family in the occupied West Bank.”
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.
Pro-Palestinian activists accused her of having darkened her skin using makeup and fake tanner and adopting an African American accent after returning from a stint in the Peace Corps in Rwanda.
As with Dolezal, commenters accused Gann of posing as a member of a marginalized group of color to gain clout.
“When marginalization becomes a form of social currency some people will always do this,” one account under the name “regretmaxxing” wrote in Gann’s comments.
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 “scholasticide” in Gaza, the Inquirer reported.
That year she also told a local media outlet that Accuracy in Media had displayed her name on a truck, calling her “Philadelphia’s Leading Antisemite.”
Accuracy in Media, which has targeted activists in other states using similar methods, confirmed to JTA that it had also done so to Gann.
“Hannah Gann remains one of Philadelphia’s leading anti-Semites,” the group’s founder, Adam Guillette, said, linking to a video of his group’s truck displaying the message outside the school where Gann worked.
Delivering testimony to the Philadelphia Board of Education in December, 2025, Gann, wearing a keffiyeh, urged them to “treat Islamophobia, anti-black and anti-Palestinian racism just as seriously as you treat allegations of anti-Semitism.”
“Why are Jewish staff members’ experiences immediately assumed to indicate systemic failures, while black, brown and Muslim students’ testimonies are treated as isolated incidents?” she continued, shortly before a board member cut off her mic.
A fellow teacher of Gann’s 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.
“We will no longer work with Hannah, and she will no longer be welcome in any of our organizing spaces,” the pro-Palestinian groups said in their own statement.
A biography of Gann is still visible on the West Philly Participatory Defense Hub, a different local organizing group. It describes her as having “loved ones directly impacted by the criminal (in)justice system” and notes that she is a member of The First Unitarian Church.
In her apology, which she posted on Yom Kippur, Gann argued that her advocacy was genuine even though her persona was not.
“The fact that I lied about who I was does not mean anyone else who speaks up for Palestine is lying,” she said, adding that she would delete “anything posted by Zionists.”
