Yosef Kuperwasser

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Yossi Kuperwasser

Brigadier General (ret.) Yosef Kuperwasser is the former director general of the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs. He is a former senior officer in Israeli military intelligence (Aman). Following his retirement he served as vice-president of security consulting firm Global CST.[1][2]

Education

Kuperwasser holds a BA in Arabic Language and Literature from Haifa University and an MA in in Economics from Tel Aviv University.[3]

Early Career

Kuperwasser served as Assistant Defense Attaché for Intelligence at the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC from 1992 to 1994.[4]

He was the Intelligence Officer of the IDF Central Command from 1998 to 2001.[5]

Akiva Eldar reports the following account of Kuperwasser's role after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000:

Malka relates that about a month after the intifada began, was he was on his way to the Gilo neighborhood in Jerusalem, he asked Yossi Kuperwasser, at the time the intelligence officer of the Central Command (and today head of the research division), how many 5.56 bullets the command had fired that month. "Kuperwasser got back to me with number 850,000 bullets. My figure was 1.3 million bullets in the West Bank and Gaza. This is a strategic figure that says that our soldiers are shooting and shooting and shooting. I asked: `Is this what you intended in your preparations?' and he replied in the negative. I said: `Then the significance is that we are determining the height of the flames.'[6]

Aman Head of Research

Kuperwasser was the head of Aman's Analysis and Production Division for five years until June 2006.[7]

AIPAC case

During a trip to Washington in January 2002, Kuperwasser briefed US diplomats about the seizure of the Karine A in the Red Sea. He also briefed Steve Rosen of AIPAC the same day.[8]

Rosen's lawyer Abbe Lowell would later seek access to a memo about the diplomatic briefing in order to prove that Israel was itself circulating the information that Rosen was accused of obtaining in the AIPAC spy case.[9]

disagreement with Shin Bet

UPI reported in December 2003, that Kuperwasser had differences with Shin Bet over analysis of Hamas:

Aman, Israel's military intelligence, believes that over the past 100 days, Hamas has refrained from carrying out terror strikes against Israeli civilians west of the Green Line. Aman research boss Brig. Gen. Yossi Kupperwasser sees this as a significant shift from Hamas' earlier policy of attacking all Israelis. Not so, says Shin Bet, the Israeli counter-intelligence and internal security service; according to its data, Hamas militants have recently participated in numerous attempted terror attacks, but the Shin Bet and Israel's Defense Forces thwarted them. While Aman numbered 27 foiled suicide bombings since October, it contends that none of them was a Hamas plot.[10]

Gaza withdrawal

According to former Shin Bet advisor Dr Matti Steinberg, Kuperwasser and Aman head Aharon Zeevi Farkash ignored assessments in 2005 that suggested the planned unilateral withdrawal from Gaza would strengthen Hamas. However, Kuperwasser's wife Zionit Kuperwasser co-authored a document that suggested the military preferred a withdrawal under an agreement.[11]

Iran

Kuperwasser warned that Iran was intent on obtaining nuclear weapons in May 2006, hours before a UN Security Council meeting on on sanctions, the Jerusalem Post reported:

"Iran is interested not only in turning into a superpower, but also in changing the world order," Brig.-Gen Yosef Kuperwasser said at a conference entitled "Power Projection - The Needs and Challenges" at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies in Herzliya.[12]

Brookings Institution

From October 2006 to January 2007, Kuperwasser was the Andrea and Charles Bronfman visiting fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.[13]

In November 2006, Kuperwassser gave a talk at the Saban Center on the conflict with Lebanon in July/August that year.[14]

Strategic Affairs Ministry

In his post at the Strategic Affairs Ministry, Kuperwasser has supported the development of an Military Intelligence department focussed on international political activists considered to support the delegitimization of Israel.

The unit has the support of Brig. Gen. (res. ) Yossi Kuperwasser, the director general of the Strategic Affairs Ministry and a previous head of MI's research division. During the second intifada, he pushed for the intelligence community's large-scale involvement in public advocacy and diplomatic matters, a stance that was criticized by other MI officers.[15]

Affiliations

Career

  • 1992-1994 - Assistant Defense Attaché for Intelligence at the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC
  • 1998-2001 - Intelligence Officer of the IDF Central Command
  • 2001-2006 - Head of the Analysis and Production Division of the IDF Directorate of Military Intelligence

He had a significant role in determining Israel’s coping methods with terror as well as regional developments, and sharing such analysis with the US and other foreign entities [16]

  • Director General of the Ministry of International Affairs and Strategy, 2009-14

He had a significant role in determining Israel’s coping methods with terror as well as regional developments, and sharing such analysis with the US and other foreign entities. Kuperwasser authored a wide variety of publications on the Middle East, terrorism and intelligence and he is an opinion contributor to the Israeli daily paper Haaretz. It is reported he turned ‘the ministry into Israel’s command centre for what he calls the battle against BDS’.[17]

Current:

  • Director, Project on Intelligence Methodology, Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC)
  • Yosef Kuperwasser is a senior project manager at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Other Roles:

  • Brig. Gen. (Res.) Kuperwasser was the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Visiting Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution (2006-2007).
  • Following his retirement, Brig. Gen. (Res.) Kuperwasser was VP of Global CST, a security consultancy firm.

Notes

  1. ↑ About Us, American Center for Democracy, accessed 31 July 2009.
  2. ↑ Brigadier General (res.) Yosef Kuperwasser (pdf), Jewish United Fund, accessed 21 March 2011.
  3. ↑ About Us, American Center for Democracy, accessed 31 July 2009.
  4. ↑ About Us, American Center for Democracy, accessed 31 July 2009.
  5. ↑ About Us, American Center for Democracy, accessed 31 July 2009.
  6. ↑ Akiva Eldar, Popular misconceptions, Haaretz, 11 June 2004.
  7. ↑ About Us, American Center for Democracy, accessed 31 July 2009, archived at the Internet Archive.
  8. ↑ Josh Gerstein, Defense for AIPAC spy suspects: Data at core of case was not really 'top secret', Haaretz, 3 November 2008.
  9. ↑ Josh Gerstein, Defense for AIPAC spy suspects: Data at core of case was not really 'top secret', Haaretz, 3 November 2008.
  10. ↑ UPI hears..., United Press International, 22 December 2003.
  11. ↑ Akiva Eldar, Military Intelligence: Never expected Hamas victory in 2006, Haaretz, 15 January 2009.
  12. ↑ Yaakov Katz and Sheera Claire Frankel, Iran will have bomb by 2010, Jerusalem Post, 10 May 2006.
  13. ↑ About Us, American Center for Democracy, accessed 31 July 2009.
  14. ↑ Engaging the Enemy: Lessons Learned from the Israel-Hezbollah War, Brookings Institution, 2 November 2006.
  15. ↑ Barak Ravid, Military Intelligence monitoring foreign left-wing organizations Haaretz, 21 March 2011.
  16. ↑ Kuperwasser, Yossi (Brig. Gen. Res.), ict.org.il, archived on 3 Feb. 22 at https://archive.ph/wip/Yacoq
  17. ↑ Nathan Thrall The Guardian.

External Resources

Notes

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