Israel Studies Teaching Supplement

Zion Evrony is a retired diplomat and academic with over forty years of experience and a broad knowledge of global strategic issues, the Middle East, Israel, Iran, human rights, the Vatican, and Jewish-Christian relations. Past posts include Ambassador to the Vatican, Ambassador to Ireland, Consul General in Houston, and Head of the Policy Planning Bureau of Israel’s Foreign Ministry. He edited “Jewish-Catholic Dialogue: Nostra Aetate, 50 Years On” (Urbaniana University Press, 2016). Ambassador Evrony received his Ph.D. from Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1989).

Charles Freilich is a long-time senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center. His areas of scholarly interest are Israeli national security strategy and decision-making. He previously taught political science at Harvard, Columbia, NYU and Tel Aviv University. Professor Freilich is a frequent commentator on US-Middle east policy, especially US-Israel relations, and Middle Eastern affairs generally. He is the author of, “Zion’s Dilemmas: How Israel Makes National Security Policy” (Cornell Press 2012), “Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change” (Oxford Press 2018), and “Israel and the Cyber Threat: How the Startup Nation Became a Global Cyber Power” (forthcoming). Professor Freilich received his Ph.D. from Columbia University (1992).

Elai Rettig, currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University, taught an Israel Studies Teaching Supplement at Washington University in St. Louis, where he previously also served as a teaching fellow. He specializes in energy security and energy geopolitics in Israel and the Middle East. Dr. Rettig examines the use of energy resources as a foreign policy tool and their effect on regional cooperation and conflict. He has previously taught at Rice University and was a Research Fellow at the Haifa Research Center for Maritime Policy and Strategy and the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). Dr. Rettig received his Ph.D. from the University of Haifa (2019).

Meir Elran is a Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Homeland Security Program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Elran is also the Founder and Head of the MA program for national security with the Department of Public Policy at Sapir Academic College. His main academic interest is societal resilience in the context of protracted terrorism against Israel. He has published numerous papers on these subjects and edited several memoranda and volumes, among these: The Second Lebanon War: Strategic Perspectives (with Shlomo Brom, published by Yediot Ahronot and INSS in 2007); Societal Resilience (with Alexander McLellan, published in 2012 by the Homeland Security and Analysis Institute in the US); and The IDF Strategy in the Perspective of National Security (with Siboni and Michael, published in 2016 by INSS). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Haifa (2017).