A Philadelphia high school teacher who spent years presenting herself as Palestinian and Black has now acknowledged she is neither, ending a deception that reached into activist groups across the city.
Hannah Gann posted a statement on Instagram last week saying she has no Palestinian or Tunisian ancestry.
She described herself as a “white woman of significant privilege and wealth.” The Philadelphia Inquirer identified her as a teacher at the Workshop School, part of the Philadelphia School District.
Gann followed the post with a video. She said she was starting to take accountability and asked the public not to judge the groups she worked with because of her falsehoods. She said she deceived “everyone” in her life.
“There is not a single person on this planet, no friend, no fellow organizer, no one in my family, no professional connection, no secret op or handler who knew what I was doing,” she said. “I hid my family’s background from everyone in Philly, and also hid from the people in my own family what I was doing.”
Gann said her convictions have not changed.
“I still believe in every cause I ever supported, in the ongoing fight for justice and in the righteousness of liberation for all oppressed peoples,” she said in the video. “I still believe that theirs is the real story and mine is just a sick, deluded distraction.”
Online commenters quickly attached nicknames to her. Some called her the “Palestinian Rachel Dolezal,” while others went with “Temu Rachel Dolezal.”
The labels point to the former NAACP chapter president who presented herself as Black.
Dolezal legally changed her name to Nkechi Diallo in 2016. Her parents had publicly said she was “Caucasian by birth.”
NBC News contacted Gann on Wednesday. She declined to say more and pointed to her video as her only public statement.
Another Philadelphia teacher, Keziah Ridgeway, published her own video on Saturday. She said Gann misled her throughout a friendship that lasted nearly a decade.
The two met around 2018, Ridgeway said. At that point, she knew only that Gann was “speaking up for the Black community, for the Palestinian community.”
Ridgeway said the story shifted in 2023. After a trip Gann described as being to “Israel/Palestine,” Gann told her she had Palestinian Jewish ancestry and Muslim relatives.
The first crack appeared on Labor Day, according to Ridgeway.
A non-Palestinian member of the Philly Palestine Coalition messaged her that Gann had been pretending to be Palestinian and that the claim was false.
The message said the coalition planned to issue a statement after a meeting that Sunday.
Ridgeway said Gann denied the allegations when confronted.
Gann then offered a fuller account, claiming her father’s father died when her father was 13 and that a Palestinian Jewish woman raised her.
Ridgeway said Gann’s grandfather died when her father was 23.
Ridgeway does not belong to the coalition and could not attend its meeting. She later read the group’s report on Gann.
Last week, she confronted Gann a second time and asked her to phone her father so Ridgeway could question him directly.
“She hung up on her father and snapped at me when I tried to ask another question,” Ridgeway said. “And in that moment, I realized that her father didn’t know, her family didn’t know that she was here in this city, lying about being a Black woman to her students, about being Palestinian, and nobody in her family knew the truth.”
Gann responded to Ridgeway’s account in her own video. “Everything she said is true, and I fully corroborate,” she said.
The Inquirer reported that it obtained a copy of the coalition’s report.
According to the paper, the report found that the grandfather Gann described as Palestinian-born was born in Baltimore. The report also said she has family members living in Israel.
A Philadelphia School District spokesperson said the district knew of social media posts about an employee and her involvement in an outside advocacy organization.
“These posts reference the employee’s involvement in an external group,” the statement said. “The district is making support available to The Workshop School staff and students, as needed.”
Two groups, Philly Educators for Palestine and the Racial Justice Organizing Committee, issued a joint statement Friday. They said they were “stunned, saddened and angered by this betrayal.”
“Members met with Hannah and questioned her on her background on Thursday and after over an hour of discussion, Hannah finally admitted she lied,” the statement said.
The organizations said they asked Gann to publicly acknowledge that she “is a white woman of Jewish heritage and an Israeli settler family.”
They said they will no longer work with her and that she is not welcome in their spaces. They also said they hope people who collaborated with her in good faith will not be discredited.
“We will not allow her actions to distract us from our purpose or fracture the community we’ve worked hard to build,” the organizations said.
The Philly Palestine Coalition did not immediately answer NBC News’ request for comment on Wednesday.
