Elhanan was born in Jerusalem; his father was a Holocaust survivor who made aliyah to Israel in 1946. As a young man, he served in the Israel Defense Forces as a tank mechanic and was a soldier during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
On Sept. 4, 1997, Elhanan’s daughter Smadar was killed along with four others as a result of a suicide bombing on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem; she was buying school books at the time. In 1999, Elhanan met Yitzchak Frankenthal, whose son had been kidnapped and killed by Hamas militants in 1994; Frankenthal later founded the Parents’ Circle-Families Forum for family members of children from both sides killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which advocates for peace and nonviolence in the region. After Smadar’s death, Elhanan became an active member of the organization.
Elhanan also became a member of Combatants for Peace, an organization composed of former Israeli and Palestinian fighters who now fight for peace. Through his membership, he first met Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian who had served seven years in prison for throwing a grenade at Israeli soldiers. Two years after the meeting, in 2007, Aramin’s daughter died after being hit by a plastic bullet from an Israeli soldier, and Aramin then became a member of Parents’ Circle.

Since Smadar’s death, Elhanan has become an advocate for ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Elhanan and Aramin have traveled around the world advocating for a peaceful end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the need for concessions on both sides. Both have become co-directors of the Parents’ Circle-Families Forum.

Elhanan is married to philologist Nurit Peled, with whom he has three sons and a daughter, Smadar (1983-1997).