Jacob Israël de Haan (1881–1924) was a Dutch-Jewish poet, novelist, legal scholar, and political activist whose remarkable life connected European literature, queer history, Jewish religious politics, and the turbulent emergence of the modern Middle East.
In 1904, De Haan published Pijpelijntjes, one of the earliest Dutch novels to portray homosexual relationships openly. The book provoked a major scandal and severely damaged his literary and teaching career. He later reinvented himself as a legal scholar, earning a doctorate in law in 1916 and developing an early interest in the relationship between language and law.
After emigrating to Mandatory Palestine in 1919, De Haan underwent a profound political transformation. Initially sympathetic to Zionism, he became a leading spokesman for the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Edah HaChareidis community. Rather than accepting the Zionist project of establishing a Jewish state, he advocated Jewish communal autonomy within a broader political framework in the Middle East.
De Haan pursued direct diplomacy with Arab leaders, including King Hussein of the Hejaz and Emir Abdullah of Transjordan. His efforts to build an alternative Jewish-Arab political arrangement alarmed Zionist leaders, particularly because he was preparing for an important diplomatic mission to London.
On June 30, 1924, De Haan was assassinated in Jerusalem by members of the Haganah. His killing became one of the defining political assassinations of the Yishuv and remains deeply controversial.
Today, De Haan occupies an unusual place in history: a pioneering queer writer, a religious anti-Zionist, a political dissident, and a martyr whose legacy is claimed by communities with radically different visions of Jewish identity and the Middle East.
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