ABSTRACT
HAAN, Jacob Israel de 1881-1924. Dutch writer. De Haan was a talented Dutch writer, poet and journalist with extreme emotional instability, which, it has been suggested, was caused by repressed homosexual tendencies. The son of a cantor, he became a left-wing radical. In 1918, he abandoned his non-Jewish wife and his children and settled in Palestine as the correspondent of the Amsterdam Algemeen Handelsblad and the London Daily Express. Here he swung round to an ultra-orthodox religious position, became the spokesman for the Agudat Israel, and poured out articles that were anti-Zionist and pro-Arab. His attitudes and his collaboration with Arab leaders aroused strong resentment and hostility in the yishuv. In 1924, he was assassinated under circumstances that caused heated controversy.
