Susan Nathan

Susan Nathan was born in 1949

Nathan was born in England in 1949 to a Jewish family. Her father was born in South Africa, and as a young woman she visited friends and family there during the apartheid era. Back in London, she worked as an AIDS counselor.

After her divorce, and once her children had grown up, she immigrated to Israel in 1999 under the Law of Return. She settled in Tel Aviv, taught English and worked with several centre-left groups.

Nathan came to believe that many of Israel's Arab citizens faced neglect and oppression. In 2003 she moved to Tamra in northern Israel, where she wrote The Other Side of Israel. The book describes her Arab neighbors and the discrimination she believed they face, and it was translated into 9 languages.

She spoke at events in Sweden, the United States and Britain, wrote for the Swedish paper Aftonbladet and promoted UN Resolution 1325 on women in peacemaking. In 2007 she was the subject of a BBC One documentary and an Israeli Channel 2 program.

In 2010 she moved to Kozhikode in Kerala, India, where a Malayalam edition of her book appeared. In 2012 she was deported to Israel for overstaying her visa, while an appeal to the Supreme Court was still pending.