[1] She is the daughter of Matti Peled, an Israeli Major-General, scholar of Arabic literature, a member of Knesset and a noted peace activist.

Their daughter, Smadar, was killed at the age of thirteen in the 1997 Ben Yehuda Street Palestinian suicide attack in Jerusalem.

[3][4][5] Peled-Elhanan's brother, Miko Peled, is an activist for Palestinian rights, and author of the 2012 book, The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.

"[5] In an August 2020 webinar hosted by her brother, Miko Peled, Peled-Elhanan said that the Israeli textbooks teach students that Israel exists primarily to prevent another Holocaust, and as such, Jews are the only ones ever presented as victimized.

"[13] Peled-Elhanan also asserted that entire pages of textbooks are left blank as a result of this censorship, and “even if they wanted to [teach about Nakba, they can’t because] they are censored.

"[12] In 2020, Peled-Elhanan stated that teachers can plan to teach their Palestinian students whatever they want, but their textbooks do not allow it because their texts "are financed by [the] World Bank, the EU and so on and so forth who actually work for Israel.

"[12] In a 2007 address, Peled-Elhanan referred to Israeli soldiers as the "murderers of children, destroyers of houses, uprooters of olive [orchards], and poisoners of wells .

[15] In 2014, she wrote “Israeli leaders who worship nothing but Power and Death should know that no words will ever wash this blood off their hands, that nothing will ever exonerate them.”[16] In the same 2007 address to the Women in Black movement, she said of Israeli mothers: “[They] are nothing but golems that have turned on their creators and are more terrible and cruel than they, who dedicate their wombs to the apartheid state and the occupation army, who educate their children in unmitigated racism and are prepared to sacrifice the fruits of their bellies on the altar of their leaders’ megalomania, greed and bloodthirstiness.