April 5th with Alex Traiman and April 7th with Efraim Inbar
"Understanding the Labyrinth of the Israeli Electoral Process"
Featuring Alex Traiman, Managing Director and Jerusalem Bureau Chief of JNS.org
Date: April 5, 2021
Time: 12:00 PM EDT
On March 23rd, the people of Israel went to the polls for the fourth time within two years. As I write these words, no clear and decisive electoral victory has been determined for any one candidate. Although Prime Minister Netanyahu maintained a decisive lead over all of his challengers, because of the electoral process in Israel, a coalition must be formed in order to reach a majority, consisting of that magic number of 61, out of 120 Knesset seats.
Please join us when we feature Alex Traiman, Managing Director and Jerusalem Bureau Chief of JNS.org, who will help explain the rather convoluted process of “horse-trading” and what goes into forming a coalition government. Hopefully, he will help answer some rather gnawing questions, including: Are the people of Israel doomed to go to a 5th election within two years? Is the system so broken it cannot be fixed? If it can be fixed, how do Israelis go about doing it? Does this system condemn both personal and ideological rivals to sit together within the same coalition?
Alex Traiman is the Managing Director and Jerusalem Bureau Chief of JNS.org. Alex has his finger on the pulse of everything that is happening in Israel and within the Israeli Knesset. He has written scores of articles and had directed and produced major films, such critically acclaimed as “Iranium” and “Honor Diaries.”
“Is Israel on a Collision Course with the Biden Administration?”
Featuring: Efraim Inbar, President of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security
Founding Director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies
When: April 7, 2021
Time: 12:00 PM, Eastern Daylight Time
As the old saying goes, “where you stand has a great deal to do with where you sit.” While the Biden administration has said reassuring words that they want to negotiate a “longer and stronger deal with Iran”, to those who are forced to live in the Middle East, this might sound incurably naïve. The latest offer from the United States to lift some sanctions in order to get the Iranians to sit down at the negotiating table was summarily rejected by the Iranians.
To many observers, it appears that the United States is anxious to “just make a deal” with the Iranians, and that they do not understand Tehran’s history of negotiations. However, many who are forced to live in the Middle East, have looked at the results of the 2015 negotiations with the Islamic Republic, and may well believe that we, here, have little appreciation of the very real existential threat that Israel and our Gulf allies are under. That threat will only be enhanced if the talks, for any of a multitude of reasons begin to go awry.
For the United States, which is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean on our East, and the Pacific on our West, and which is over 7,000 miles away from Tehran, this might appear to be an “academic” issue, but for Israel and our Gulf Arab allies, this constitutes a very real, existential threat.
Here to discuss this and what the Israelis might well feel that they have to do to be able to survive is Professor Efraim Inbar.
About Prof. Efraim Inbar:
Prof. Efraim Inbar is President of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. He was a Professor in Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University and the founding Director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies.
Inbar’s area of specialization is Middle Eastern strategic issues with a special interest in the politics and strategy of Israeli national security. He has written over 100 scholarly articles. He has authored five books: Outcast Countries in the World Community (1985), War and Peace in Israeli Politics. Labor Party Positions on National Security (1991), Rabin and Israel’s National Security (1999), The Israeli-Turkish Entente (2001), and Israel's National Security: Issues and Challenges since the Yom Kippur War (2008). He has also edited fourteen collections of articles.
Inbar was educated at the Hebrew University (B.A. in Political Science and English Literature) and at the University of Chicago (M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science). He served as visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University, at Georgetown University, at Boston University, as visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington) and at the (London) International Institute for Strategic Studies. Prof. Inbar was appointed as a Manfred Warner NATO Fellow and was the recipient of the Onassis Fellowship.
Prof. Inbar was a member of the Political Strategic Committee of the National Planning Council and the Chair of the Committee for the National Security Curriculum at the Ministry of Education. He served on the Academic Committee of the History Department of the IDF and as the President of the Israel Association of International Studies. He is widely quoted in the international press.
