Nissan Rilov

Nissan Rilov (, ; July 19, 1919 - March 10, 2007) was an Israeli artist. Prior to undertaking his artistic career, he served in paramilitary and military groups such as the Special Night Squads (SNS), the Haganah, and the British Army during World War II. Rilov became disenchanted with Zionism after a series of experiences that culminated in his refusal to obey an order to shoot an elderly man and his expulsion from the Haganah. He went on to study painting in Israel before emigrating to Paris, where he created art, founded an arts centre, and was active in supporting the Palestinian struggle for independence. According to his friend Akiva Orr, Rilov was one of the few children to live in Nahalal, the first Zionist moshav in Palestine which had been established in 1922. There Moshe Dayan would become his childhood friend. Later, Rilov developed a close friendship with the Israeli poet, Hana Senesh, who had been a student at the Agricultural College for Girls in Nahalal. After emigrating to Paris in the early 1950s, he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and supported himself by working as a builder. The association holds a Nissan Rilov theatre festival every year, in honour of Rilov; the 2011 festival was also dedicated to the memory of Juliano Mer-Khamis.

Support for Palestinians In a 1984 France 3 documentary on the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Rilov described how he also helped in the expulsion of local Palestinians as early as 1936:"In one day, in order to start building [our homes] on this land, with bulldozers that existed then, primitive bulldozers unlike the ones that exist now, and with tractors, we destroyed the villages and kicked out all the Arabs out, and I remember something that has always struck me. It was how the children and the women threw themselves in front of the tractors and refused to leave. There was a strong resistance of the Palestinians against the destruction of their villages, and that had really touched me."

During the First Intifada, Rilov honoured the Palestinian peasant women who had thrown stones during the uprising by staging his exhibition, Stones.