Speakers & Members of the Board * Mr. Ammar Abdulhamid Founder and Director of the Tharwa Foundation and a leading Syrian human rights and pro- democracy activist. He is a former Fellow of the Saban Centerfor Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute and co- founder of the Hands Across the Mideast Support Alliance (HAMSA). A known poet and author, he was a Fellow at the International Institute for Modern Letters in Las Vegas. He holds a BA in History from the University of Wisconsin. Mr. Aharon Abramowicz Former General Director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Currently a partner in the law offices of Lipa Meir and Co., he previously served as General Director of the Israeli Ministry of Justice. He was General Director of the Jewish Agency. He served as legal advisor to a number of organizations, such as the Jewish Agency, the World Zionist Federation, the World Jewish Restitution Organization and the United Israel Appeal. He holds an LLB from the Hebrew University. Mr. Elliott Abrams Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). As a member of the George W. Bush administration he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Middle East Affairs as well as the Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs. During the Reagan administration he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, and later Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs. He received his JD from Harvard Law School. Prof. Oded Abramsky Chairman of the National Council for Civilian Research and Development. He is a Professor of Neurology and holds the Israel Wexler Chair at the Hebrew University. He was formerly the Dean of the Medical School at the HebrewUniversity and the Chairman of the Union of Medical School Deans of Israel. He previously served as Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Health and as Chairman of the Medical Research Administration. He also held the position of Director of the Neurology Department and of the Neuro-Immunological Unit at the Hadassah University Hospital. In 2002, he was named “Outstanding Personality in Medicine” by the Israel Lions Organization. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and an Honorary Fellow of the British Royal College of Medicine. He is also a visiting Member of the Institute of Medicine of the American National Academy of Sciences. He holds an MD and a PhD in Medicine from the Hebrew University. Mr. Ido Aharoni Israel’s Foreign Ministry Official responsible for the Ministry’s “Israel Branding” project. He held senior positions in the Foreign Ministry, mainly in the fields of Communications and Information, including Israeli Consul for Communications and Information in the USA, Israeli Consul for Communications in the South-West USA, and Political Adviser to the General Director of the Foreign Ministry. He also served as the Media Adviser to the Foreign Minister. He holds an MA in Mass Communications from Emerson College, Boston. Prof. Nimrod Aloni Professor of Educational Philosophy at the Seminar HaKibbutzimCollege and the Head of the Institute for Educational Thinking. He holds the UNESCO Chair for Humanistic Education at the Seminar HaKibbutzim College. He serves as Chairman of the Tel Aviv Conference on Advanced Education and as Director of the Field of Educational Ethics at the Center for Ethics in Jerusalem. His publications include various books and articles in the fields of Humanistic Education and Ethical Education. He was awarded a prize for quality government by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, and the Education Prize of the City of Tel Aviv. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Columbia University. Prof. Pinhas Alpert Head of the Porter School of Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on Climate Changes. He is the former Head of the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Studies at the Faculty of Exact Sciences of Tel Aviv University. He founded and served as Head of the Regional Center for NASA EOSDIS in Israel, in cooperation with NASA. He previously worked for NASA and at the Laboratory for Atmospheres in Maryland. He was also a visiting professor at Penn State, Reading (U.K.) and Oklahoma University. He earned his PhD in Meteorology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Mr. John (Ioannis) Antoniadis CEO of Rosebud Energie Deutschland GmbH, a company involved in development and ownership of renewable and conventional energy projects. He leads the company’s investment in mega algae farms to mitigate CO2 emissions and produce biofuels. The former CEO of Future Telecommunication Networks in Greece, he was a partner in Eunice Energy. Prof. Yitzhak Apeloig Former President of the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa. Currently serving as the Head of Chemistry Department at the Technion, he has held other key positions there that of Dean of the Chemistry Department. Having been a visiting professor at numerous universities around the world, he is the recipient of various prizes for his scientific achievements. He earned his PhD in Chemistry from the Hebrew University and completed his post-graduate studies at Princeton University. Mr. Eyal Arad Chairman of the Euro Israel Group. A Founding Partner of Arad Communications, some of his previous positions include having served as spokesman for the Israeli Delegation to the United Nations, as assistant to the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister for Information and Media, as well as General Director of “Constitution for Israel”. He holds an MA in Theology from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Dr. Uzi Arad National Security Adviser to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Head of the National Security Council in the Prime Minister’s Office. The former Director of the Institute for Policy and Strategy and former Expert Professor at the Lauder School of Government of the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, he established the Annual Herzliya Conference Series on the Balance of Israel’s National Security and Resilience. He served as Adviser to the Defense and Foreign Relations Committee of the Knesset and is the Founding Chairman of the Israel Atlantic Forum. He served in the Mossad for over 25 years in Israel and abroad, his last position being Director of Intelligence. He served as policy adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu during his first term of office. Prior to his government career he was a member of a professional team at the Hudson Institute in New York as well as a Research Fellow at the Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. A Fulbright Scholar, he holds a PhD in International Relations from Princeton University. Dr. Ronald D. Asmus Executive Director of the Transatlantic Center and Strategic Planning of the German Marshall Fund of the US. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs and has been a senior analyst and fellow at Radio Free Europe, RAND and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Opening Nato’s Door. He has been decorated by the US Department of State as well as by the governments of Estonia, Georgia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden. He holds a PhD in European studies from The Johns Hopkins University. Prof. Shlomo Avineri Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He served as the Director General of the Foreign Ministry in Yitzhak Rabin’s first government. He held many academic administrative positions, including that of Head of the Political Science Department, Director of the Eshkol Institute for Research on Economic, Policy and Society in Israel, Dean of the Social Sciences Faculty and Director of the Institute for European Studies. He was a visiting lecturer at Yale University, Cornell University, the University of California, Oxford University, the Central European University in Budapest, and in a number of research institutes around the world. He is the 1996 Israel Prize Laureate. He has published many books, including The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, The Making of Modern Zionism and Herzl - An Intellectual Biography. He studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the London School of Economics. MK Daniel Ayalon Deputy Foreign Minister and Member of Knesset for the Israel Beitenu Party. He formerly served as the Israeli Ambassador to the United States and was a political adviser to the former Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. He holds an MBA from Bowling Green State University. a Aznar Former Prime Minister of Spain. Executive President of the FAES (The Foundation forםMar יPresident Jos Social Studies and Analysis) and a Distinguished Scholar at Georgetown University, where he teaches various seminars on contemporary European politics, he is also the Honorary Chairman of the Partido Popular. He is the Former President of the Centrist Democrat International (CDI) and Vice-President of the International Democrat Union (IDU). The author of five books on Spain and his years in government, he has been awarded honorary doctorates by various universities around the world in addition to his law degree from Complutense University and his qualification as an Inspector of State Finances. Mr. Aharon Azulai General Director of the Israeli Ministry for Pensioners’ Affairs. He previously served as Managing Director of the Economic Corporation for the Development of Kiryat Ata Ltd. as well as Chairman of the Kiryat Ata Municipal Youth Center. He is a lawyer by profession and was a senior partner in a law firm. He is a graduate of the Bar Ilan University School Law. Dr. Yosef Bachar Chairman of Israel Discount Bank. The former General Director of the Israeli Ministry of Finance, he served temporarily as Director of the Israeli Tax Authority. He initiated the Bachar Reform which recommended a separation between the banks and the provident and trust funds in order to reduce the banks’ power.