Elhanan was born in Jerusalem and described himself as being a "sixth-generation Jerusalemite"; his father was a Holocaust survivor who made aliyah to Mandatory Palestine in 1946.
[1] As a young man, he served in the Israeli Defence Forces as a tank mechanic, and was a soldier during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
[2] On 4th September 1997, Elhanan's daughter Smadar was killed alongside four others following a suicide bomb attack on Ben Yehuda Street, Jerusalem; she had been shopping for schoolbooks at the time.
Through his membership, he first met Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian man who had served seven years in prison for throwing a grenade at Israeli soldiers.
Elhanan and Aramin have travelled around the world advocating for a peaceful end to the Israel-Palestine conflict, including the need for concessions on both sides.