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During Israel’s 75th year, (2022-2023), CIE produced three dozen webinars, content analyses, and programs about Zionism and Israel’s past and future. Materials are listed by topic, with contributors and length.

This document is the only known official written transcript of the Begin-Carter discussion held at the end of the 1978 Camp David negotiations about any moratorium on Israel’s future settlement building. This record shows that Begin made no mention of a moratorium on settlement building for longer than three months. However, President Carter publicly, and Secretary of State Vance, in his memoirs, Hard Choices disagreed, believing the time mentioned was five years. For the remainder of Carter’s presidency, and for the rest of his post-presidency, the ‘building of Israeli settlements’ became a key point of contention in shaping his relationship with Israel.

View article at Israel State Archives

In this 32-minute video recorded July 24, 2023, Mauricio Friedman, the head of Jewish education at Mexico City’s Hebraica University, and Steven Bayme, a longtime American Jewish Committee official, address the ongoing importance of Zionism as a unifying factor for the Jewish people and explain why we are not in a post-Zionist era in a […]

Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s chief political adviser, warned the president to halt the administration’s anti-Israeli actions. Nonetheless, they continued to diminish Carter’s support among American Jews through the 1980 re-election campaign.

Proceedings of a conference concluded that while pre-war intelligence was plentiful and accurate, there was a massive US intelligence failure. Misinterpretation layered on top of preconceived notions of Arab military ineptitude and faith in diplomacy were at the core of the failures.

Dr. Yedidia Stern, President, Jewish People’s Policy Institute July 28, 2023 (By posting a guest’s views, CIE does not take a position on the contents, nor verify facts nor the assumptions presented.) Israel’s political center is in a state of profound upheaval. Until the beginning of this year it had been hibernating, but in the […]

Economist Paul Rivlin of the Moshe Dayan Center and entrepreneur Moran Mizrahi, co-founder and COO of fintech startup Rebillia Platform, speak with CIE Vice President Tal Grinfas-David about the history of Israel’s economy, the workings of the Startup Nation, risks and opportunities in the future, and the Israeli mindset that makes it all possible. This […]

As the October 1973 came to an end, Israeli and Egyptian leaders decided that respective generals from both sides should disentangle the war’s realities. Israel was keen to have her POWs returned and Egypt did not want to see Israel clober the Egyptian Third Army that it had surrounded in the second week of the war. General Yariv who had been head of military intelligence in earlier years recalls in detail his cordial meetings with the Egyptian Chiefof Staff, General Mohamad al-Gamasy. Yariv’s recollections pair almost identically to the ones given by others who participated in the talks or were on the Kissinger negotiating team at the time. These negotiations came to be known as the Kilometer 101 talks; they were the first direct Israel-Egyptian public negotiations since the late 1940s. The talks were collusived halted by US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, as agreed upon with Golda Meir and Anwar Sadat. What followed was the December 1973 Geneva Middle East Peace conference. It was a public display and intentionally a truncated meeting, with no substance discussed. Kissinger sidelined the USSR, though they were co-chairman of the conference as the US choreographed the post war diplomacy extending over the next six years into the Carter administration. The Yariv- al-Gamasy negotiations became the core basis for the January 1974 Israel-Egyptian – Disengagement Agreement.

In just under an hour, Herzog emphasized the special US-Israeli relationship, citing common values between the two democracies, noting, “when the US is strong, Israel is stronger. And when Israel is strong, the US is more secure.” He cited Israel’s domestic and foreign policy challenges in its 75th year.

En los comentarios de apertura de Moshe Dayan explicando los Acuerdos de Camp David, omitió decirle al parlamento que el presidente Carter, de hecho, aplicó una presión considerable a Israel, especialmente durante los dos últimos días de las negociaciones de Camp David. Dayan restó importancia a la presión de Estados Unidos para ganar los votos de la Knesset a favor de los Acuerdos de Camp David.

Isaac Herzog, el undécimo presidente de Israel, se convirtió en el segundo presidente israelí en dirigirse a una sesión conjunta del Congreso. Herzog proporcionó en poco menos de una hora una apasionante revisión de los desafíos de la política interior y exterior de Israel.

Alan Dowty, “Israeli Foreign Policy and the Jewish Question,”  Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 3 No. 1, March 1991. View PDF

Mordechai Kidron served in the Israeli Foreign Ministry during and after the October 1973 War. He touched on the war, its aftermath and the unfolding of the Sinai I – Egyptian-Israeli military negotiations and short military talks that took place after the war. He thought that the December 1973 Geneva conference was going to be a long process, not knowing that the conference was stage managed by Kissinger, Sadat, and Meir. Meir was deeply emotional about having Israeli POW’s returned. He notes that Foreign Minister Abba Eban, whom he called an optimist … “was not really altogether founded in reality.”

Nabil Shaath was a close adviser to Arafat particularly in the tumultuous 1998-1993 period when the PLO was buffeted by events and bad choices. Shaath praised Secretary Baker, President Bush and Yitzhak Rabin, and was pleased that Palestinians were participating in the Madrid Conference. He hoped for an end to the conflict with Israel in 1992, based on land for peace but held out for the right of Palestinian return for that to happen. In 2023 he is a foreign policy adviser to Mahmoud Abbas.

Paul Rivlin, “The Ukraine War, Rising Prices and Food Insecurity in the Middle East,” Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University The war in Ukraine is causing severe food price inflation in the Middle East and elsewhere. This is affecting nutrition and damaging children’s health, possibly permanently. In July, President Sisi of Egypt told a conference […]

Ziv Rubinovitz and Gerald Steinberg, “Not so reluctant: Menachem Begin and the Israel-Egypt peace negotiations,” Fathom Journal, June 2019, with permission of the authors. View PDF

How has Israel through its 75 years managed its relationships with superpowers, neighbors and other countries while trying to survive and thrive in an often hostile neighborhood? Why is the U.S. relationship essential? What is developing in Asia, including India and China? An elite panel of practitioners and scholars examines the past, present and future […]

Speaking within hours of the passage of legislation upending the reasonableness standard used by the Israeli Supreme Court to review laws, Hadassah Academic College Professor Doron Shultziner explains features of the protest and counterprotest movements active in Israel since January 2023, what distinguishes them, and how the current movements compare with civic movements of the past 75 years. This […]

Earlier in 1947, Great Britain turned the future of the Palestine Mandate over to the newly established United Nations. Then in August 1947, the UN suggested that establishing an Arab and Jewish state with a federal union would be the best solution for the communal unrest there.

August 1, 2023 Assembled by Ken Stein and Wendy Kalman, Center for Israel Education Adnan Abu Amer, “Analysis: Can Islamic Jihad survive Israel’s assassination drive?,” Al-Jazeera, July 7, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/7/analysis-can-islamic-jihad-survive-israels-assassination-drive  Farris Almarri, “Jordanians Favor De-escalation in the Region, But Sentiment Against Israel Remains,” Poll, Washington Institute for Near East Studies, June 9, 2023, https://t.co/yMEuoaMYoU  Jimmy […]

Recounting events at the Egyptian-Israeli-American negotiations, a dozen (American, Israeli, and Egyptian participants recollected those thirteen days of negotiations. Negotiators from both sides agreed that they pursued success through ‘constructive ambiguity’ some at high levels so the respective sides could agree, for example in using the term ‘modalities’ to describe a future element that could not be defined in a more tangible way. President Carter and Israel’s Attorney General at the time of Camp David disagreed at the conference with what Prime Minister Begin promised on the duration of a settlement moratorium. (p34). William Quandt the NSC official acknowledged that there was no written record of a a Begin promise for three months; Carter claimed the promise was in his diary notes, but others who saw Carter’s diary said no such promise was made or was in Carter’s notes.

The Prime Minister presented the view that his coalition carried out a necessary step to ‘restore a measure of balance’ between governmental institutions. He indicated that discussions about the other elements of the proposed judicial overhaul would take place between now and November. Specifically he asked members of the Israel Defense Forces to remain outside of the current political controversies.

Dayan made the case to the knesset that it should vote in favor of the Camp David Accords stipulating why doing so would be in Israel’s long term interest. He stated specifically that there was no promise for a Palestinian state, IDF forces would remain in the West Bank, negotiations for a peace treaty would continue, and these agreements were signed by the President of Egypt and the President of the US.

The Camp David accords culminated after thirteen days of intense negotiations between Israeli, Egyptian, and American delegations. Egyptian and Israeli leaders met with President Carter where after difficult negotiations they signed two accords, one an outline for an Egyptian-Israeli Treaty and one for Palestinian self-rule. The negotiations continued for another six months until the Egyptian-Treaty was signed in March 1979, after considerable bad feeling was tossed back and forth between Israeli and American negotiators.

With less than three dozen Israeli settlements in the territories taken in the June War, the proposal is not for a vast settlement increase, but for economic, infrastructure, and industrial development of the areas.

Ambassador Joseph Sisco was an integral member of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s team that put together three military disengagement agreements after the October 1973 War. Sisco has high praise for Sadat’s wisdom and courage and insight in working with Kissinger to turn Egypt away from Moscow and into agreements with Israel.

Sam Lewis was US Ambassador in Israel when Menachem Begin was Prime Minister; his influence was most significant in keeping a taught and fraught Israeli – US relationship from unravelling in the face of the Carter administration’s negative outlook toward Israel, Menachem Begin’s immovable ideologies in the period, and from the weight of Anwar Sadat’s powerful motivations to reach an agreement with Israel where Sinai would return to Egyptian sovereignty. Lewis’s recollections and conclusions are enormously incisive.

Ashraf Ghorbal represented Egypt to the US for four years from 1968 to 1972 until Egypt restored diplomatic relations with the US in the wake of the October War. Ghorbal was Sadat’s Ambassador in Washington for 11 years until 1984. He credits Sadat with foresight in setting out and fulfilling his diplomatic objectives; breaking from the USSR, aligning Cairo with the US, harnessing US diplomacy under Kissinger and Carter to secure Sinai’s return to Egyptian sovereignty, and even if that meant signing agreements and recognizing Israel.

Dr. Rachel Schonberger, a leader in Hadassah’s medical work in Israel; Alan Wolk, the head of JNF-USA’s committee investing in innovation in Israel’s periphery; and Moran Mizrahi, a co-founder of fintech startup Rebillia Platform, join HR/staffing expert Dana Neiger, a member of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta’s innovation committee, to discuss what makes Israel a global hub of innovation. This 19-minute […]