Speaker Biographies
June 27, 2005
Dore Gold is president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He was the eleventh permanent representative of Israel to the United Nations (1997–1999). Previously he served as foreign policy advisor to former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at which time he served as an envoy to Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and the Gulf States. He was involved in the negotiations over the 1998 Wye Agreement, the 1997 Hebron Protocol, and in 1996 concluded the negotiations with the United States, Lebanon, Syria, and France for the creation of the Monitoring Group for Southern Lebanon. In 1991, he served as an advisor to the Israeli delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference. Mr. Gold is the author of Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism (Regnery, 2003); and Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos (Crown Forum, 2004).
Maj. General (res.) Yaakov Amidror, project director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs (ICA) at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, commanded Israel's National Defense College and headed the research and assessment division of Israeli military intelligence. He also served as the military secretary to Israel's minister of defense and was involved in preparing for Israel's negotiations with its Arab neighbors. He was the Ira Weiner Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Since his retirement from the Israel Defense Forces, Gen. Amidror serves as an advisor on military and security matters to various governmental agencies.
Scott Lasensky directs Arab-Israeli research and study projects at the United States Institute of Peace. He has lectured and written extensively on the Arab-Israeli conflict and America’s role in the Middle East, and is the author of Paying for Peace: America, the Middle East Peace Process and the Limits of Foreign Aid (forthcoming, 2006). In January 2005, he served as an international election observer to the Palestinian presidential elections—as part of the National Democratic Institute/Carter Center mission. He has been a visiting assistant professor of international relations at Mount Holyoke College, and a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and the Brookings Institution. He has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, and studied and worked in Jerusalem. He is a frequent commentator on BBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR and other major media outlets, and has been published in Middle East Journal, Political Science Quarterly, the Jerusalem Post, A-Sharq Al-Awsat, the Beirut Daily Star, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, and the Middle East Review of International Affairs, among other publications.
Gen. John W. Foss (ret.) has held a variety of army command and staff positions, both overseas and in the United States. He has eight overseas tours including four in Europe and four in the Far East. General Foss served as a platoon leader in the 504th and 187th Airborne Infantry in both Germany and Lebanon and commanded a rifle company in the 3rd Battalion, 32nd Infantry in Korea. He served two tours in combat in Vietnam with the 4th Infantry Division as operations officer, 2nd Brigade, and as the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 12th Infantry. General Foss commanded the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division; the U.S. Army Infantry Center and School at Fort Benning; the 82nd Airborne Division; and the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg. While in command of XVIII Airborne Corps, he deployed corps units on emergency operational deployment to Honduras, Panama and the Persian Gulf. As Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Gen. Foss served as Commander of the Multinational Force of Observers (MFO) organization in the Sinai.
Richard Perle has been a resident fellow at AEI since 1987. Previously he served as chairman of the Defense Policy Board (2001–03); assistant secretary of defense for International Security Policy (1981–87); and served on the U.S. Senate staff (1960–1980). Mr. Perle writes frequently for the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, the Daily Telegraph (London), the Jerusalem Post and other publications. He appears on radio and television on matters of security and foreign policy. He is the coauthor of An End to Evil and author of Hard Line, a political novel.
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