Institute for National Security Studies

Institute for National Security Studies (Israel) is a think tank which was launched in October 2006, incorporating the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.

It is reportedly 'close to the military and security establishment' in Israel. It's current director is former IDF intelligence chief Amos Yadlin.

Background

The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) describes itself as 'an independent academic institute that studies key issues relating to Israel's national security and Middle East affairs'. It claims to be 'independent', 'non-partisan' and 'autonomous' in its research and expressed opinions, yet describes how its researchers come from not only academic and public policy backgrounds but also from military and government backgrounds. It also advertises a 'strong association with the political and military establishment'.

The INSS advertises that it 'is able to contribute to the public debate and governmental deliberation of leading strategic issues and offer policy analysis and recommendations to decision makers and public leaders, policy analysts, and theoreticians, both in Israel and abroad'. It describes as its areas of focus as: defense, security doctrine, politics, domestic trends and social processes.

In 2009, Foreign Policy listed the Institute as 3rd in the top 5 Think Tanks in the Middle East and North Africa

History

The Institute for National Security Studies was extablished in 2006 and is an external institute of Tel Aviv University. According to its website, it has 'a strong academic affiliation with the university' whilst 'maintaining financial and organization independence'. Its 'general budget' is described as being based on money from the INSS endowment, with matching funds coming from Israel's Council for Higher Education along with other outside contributions.

The institute was established through the incorporation of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, which the Institute describes as an independent academic institute founded in 1977 by Major General (res.) Aharon Yariv (for­mer head of Military Intelligence, government minister and member of Knesset) as a 'pioneer' of Israel which defined strategic studies and established defense and national security as research fields.

Activities

Research

The INSS's 2009 brochure lists the following as 'major areas of research':

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict | the Iranian threat | international terrorism | intelligence challenges | arms control and WMD proliferation | US-Israel relations | Israeli public opinion on national security | low intensity conflict | civil–military relations in Israel | the Syrian challenge | the Israeli home front | Israel’s defense budget | decision making processes | national security doctrine | the Middle East military balance | the energy sector | the Russian influence in the Middle East | cyber warfare | international law and national security.

These themes are organised within the following research programmes:

• Arms Control and Regional Security Program - Director: Emily Landau
• Military and Strategic Affairs Program - Director: Gabi Siboni
• Cyber Warfare - Directors: Isaac Ben-Israel and Gabi Siboni (sponsored by Philadelphia-based Joseph and Jeanette Neubauer Foundation)
• Program on International Law and National Security - Directors: Eyal Benvenisti and Yehuda Ben Meir (sponsored by Philadelphia-based Joseph and Jeanette Neubauer Foundation)
• Program on Israeli-Palestinian Relations - Director: Shlomo Brom
• Program on Terrorism and Low Intensity Conflict - Director: Yoram Schweitzer
• Program on Israeli Society and Public Opinion - Directors: Yehuda Ben Meir and Meir Elran
• Middle East Military Balance Project - Director: Yiftah S. Shapir
• Homeland Security Program - Director: Meir Elran
• American Policy in the Middle East

Media Spin

The Bronfman Program on Information Strategy examines Israel's strategic communications policy based on an approach that states "Israel must devise a strategy to impact positively on international and Arab public opinion and overall disseminate its message more effectively" - which Max Blumenthal summarises as "media spin". Its lead scholar is Hirsh Goodman and the programme is named after funding body Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies.

Awards

The INSS gives out the Tshetshik Prize for Studies on Israeli Security annually. The prize, worth 40,000 NIS ($10,000) is named after Lt. Col. Meir and Rachel Tshetshik.

The Roizman Prize in Intelligence Studies, worth 50,000 NIS ($12,500), is funded by Sari Roizman and Israel Roizman.

Work for government

INSS lists its activities as including "briefings to government ministers and public officials" and says it has worked "with the National Security Council on the Palestinian issue" and "with the National Emergency Authority of the Ministry of Defense on home front defense". In addition it has carried out simulations and research briefings for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and often hosts foreign ambassadors and diplomats.

Conferences and seminars

INSS (or its predecessor the Jaffee Center) has hosted or sponsored conferences with the Menahem Begin Heritage Foundation, the Heinrich Boell Foundation, the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, the China Institute for International Strategic Studies, NATO's Defence and Security Economics Directorate, the IDF Northern Command, Korea's Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS), the Council on Foreign Relations, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

In 2008 INSS played host to a delegation from the RAND Corporation, an influential North American think tank.

At a September 2008 event speakers from the Israeli government at a talk entitled 'Iran and the US Presidential Election' were joined via videolink by speakers from American lobby groups AIPAC and the American Jewish Committee as well as the Brookings Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Hudson Institute.

High profile individuals who have spoken at INSS events include numerous senior Israeli government officials, Günter Verheugen, then Vice President of the European Commission and the Secretary General of NATO Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

In January 2010 the American Friends of Tel Aviv University hosted a lavish reception and seminar in New York for "friends and supporters" of the INSS. Attendees included Martin Indyk and Dan Gillerman, both former ambassadors, Kenneth Bialkin and Harold Tanner, both former chairmen of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Sir James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank and billionaire Charles Bronfman who co-founded Taglit-Birthright.

Annual Conference

The INSS has held an annual conference - 'Security Challenges of the 21st Century' - in Israel since 2007 which top Israeli official including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak spoke at in 2012. According to the New York Times, the 2012 conference was attended by "about 200 of Israel’s leading security officials and intellectuals". Netanyahu's speech in May 2012 discussed Iran as a likely nuclear threat and also spoke of his desire to expel undocumented immigrant workers, referred to as "infiltrators."

Support for unilaterally imposed borders

Ehud Barak said in his speech at the INSS annual conference that Israel should consider unilaterally imposing the borders of a Palestinian state. This call was supported by retired general Shlomo Brom, head of the INSS's research program on the Palestinian conflict, who presented a paper calling “the unilateral route the only remaining course of action.” INSS Direct Amos Yadlin also offered support for such action, calling it “the best of all evils.” He stated: “We are going to shape the reality of the two states. Everybody believes in it. Let’s advance it without conditioning it on the agreement of the Palestinians. We have to take the initiative in our own hands.”

People

Board of Directors

In 2012, the Board of Directors is listed as:

Frank Lowy - Chairman | Professor Itamar Rabinovich - Deputy Chairman | Alfred Akirov | Zeev Feldman | Ambassador Martin Indyk | Professor Joseph Klafter | David Kolitz | David Lowy | Professor Aron Shai

Former Board Members

Dan Meridor - Vice Chairman | Peter Lowy | Professor Raanan Rein | Professor Manuel Trajtenberg

Board of Trustees

In 2012, The Board of Trustees is listed as:

Ambassador Alfred H. Moses - Chairman Jeffrey Silverman - Vice Chairman

Lord David Alliance | Howard Berkowitz | Charles Bronfman | Sir Trevor Chinn | Prof. Irwin Cotler | Lester Crown | Jeffrey Glassman | Gary Goldberg | Martin Goldberg | Martin Green | Martin Gross | Joseph Hackmey | Yair Hamburger | Roger Hertog | Joseph Neubauer & Jeanette Neubauer | Michael Perlman | Albert Pollans & Marilyn Pollans | Hermann Reich | Marcia Riklis | Israel Roizman | Gustavo Sapoznik | Michael Sonnenfeldt | Michel Steinberger | Guillermo Strauss | Rami Ungar | Martin Whitman | | Mortimer Zuckerman

Former Board Members

David Avital | Gilbert Baker | Alan Batkin | Stanley Chais | Arnold Chavkin | Sir Ronald Cohen | Bertram Cohn | Stewart Colton | Dov Gottesman | Jeffrey Stern | Eduardo Wurzmann | Gordon Zacks

Director

Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin: November 2011 - present

Former Directors

• Zvi Shtauber: Director 2005 - July 2008
• Oded Eran: July 2008 - November 2011

Experts

In July 2012, The Institute for National Security Studies listes their experts as follows:

• Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin - Director of INSS since November 2011. He served in the IDF for 40 years of service, for ten of these he was a member of the IDF General Staff. He served as Head of IAF Planning Department (1990-1993); in February 2002, he was named commander of the IDF Military Colleges and the National Defense College; from 2004-2006, he was IDF attaché to the United States and from 2006-2010 he was the IDF’s chief of Defense Intelligence. He is also a former deputy commander of the Israel Air Force and participated in the Yom Kippur War (1973), Operation 'Peace for Galilee' (1982) and Operation Tamuz – the destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq (1981). Yadlin was also the Kay Fellow on Israeli national security at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

• Ephraim Asculai - Senior Research Fellow joined the INSS in 1992 when it was the Jaffee Center. He previously worked for over 40 years with the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), worked for the IAEA in Vienna and was the Scientific Secretary of the International Chernobyl Project during 1990 to 1991. During the 1990's he undertook a sabbatical at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, D.C.

• Yehuda Ben Meir - Principal Research Fellow and Director of the INSS's National Security and Public Opinion Project. Ben Meir's involvement with the INSS began in its Jaffee Center days in 1984. He has previously served as deputy minister of foreign affairs in the Begin and Shamir governments, whilst as a member of the Knesset between 1971 to 1984.

• Benedetta Berti - Research Associate specializing in terrorism and political violence in the Middle East, radical Islamic organizations, and Palestinian and Lebanese politics, previously a lecturer and researcher at Tufts and Harvard Universities, a legislative and policy assistant at the Office of Congressman Schiff on Capitol Hill, and a fellow at the Reut Institute.

• Shlomo Brom - Senior Research Associate. Originally joined the Jaffee Center in 1998 after what his bio describes as 'a long career in the IDF' (He was director of the Strategic Planning Division in the Planning Branch of the General Staff). His bio describes that he 'participated in peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Jordan, and Syria, and in Middle Eastern regional security talks during the 1990s' and 'continued to be involved in Track 2 dialogues on these subjects after his retirement from the IDF'. He became deputy to the National Security Advisor in 2000 and was a member of the Meridor committee established by the Minister of Defense (in 2005-06) where he reexamined the security strategy and doctrine of the State of Israel.

• Udi Dekel - Senior Research Fellow. A retired Brigadier General who was head of the negotiations team with the Palestinians in the Annapolis process under the Olmert government. He was previously head of the IDF's Strategic Planning Division in the Planning Directorate of the General Staff, and as a reservist he is head of the Center for Strategic Planning. He has been head of the foreign relations section in the General Staff, head of the Research Division in Lahak, Israel Air Force Intelligence and head of the Israel-UN-Lebanon committee following the Second Lebanon War and has headed a working group on strategic-operative cooperation with the United States on development of a response to the surface-to-surface missile threat and international military cooperation.

• Uzi Eilam - Senior Research Fellow who joined the Jaffee Center in 2002. He previously served as Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Defense Mission to Europe a post that his bio describes as 'the last in a long career in the service of the IDF, the office of the prime minister, and the MOD. His previous duties included undertaking military R&D at IDF headquarters. Eilam has also served as Director General of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission

• Giora Eiland - Senior Research Fellow. Eiland also has a long career in the IDF where he served as a Maj. Gen. He spent time serving Israel's National Security Advisor ('where he worked closely with the prime minister's office on major security and foreign affairs issues, including the disengagement and other aspects to Israeli-Palestinian relations, the Iranian nuclear threat, threats from Syria and Lebanon, terrorism, and relations with the US and key European states'). His service with the IDF also saw him undertake 'several command positions in the elite Paratroops Division'.

• Meir Elran - Senior Research Fellow and Director of the INSS's Israeli Society and National Security Program. Elran joined the Jaffee Center in 2003. He too is described as having served 'a long career in the IDF' where he was a Brig. Gen. with the Military Intelligence directorate (He served as Deputy Director of Military Intelligence between 1987-1989. He was also Assistant Director of the Research Division for Evaluation and Deputy Commander of the IDF's National Defense College). Elran also served as senior advisor to several Israeli ministries, including the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Internal Security, and the Israeli National Security Council. This was undertaken in the capacity of a private strategic consultant where he concentrated on social issues relating to national security.

• Oded Eran Senior Research Fellow who served as director of the INSS from July 2008 to to November 2011. This followed a 'long career in Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government positions'. He also now serves as an advisor to the Knesset Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs. Eran formerly served the World Jewish Congress (he was the Representative in Israel and Secretary General of the Israel Branch). He also previously served as Israel's ambassador to the European Union, which also covered NATO (2002-07). Other positions held included as Israel's ambassador to Jordan (1997-2000), head of Israel's negotiations team with the Palestinians (1999-2000), deputy director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the deputy chief of the Israeli embassy in Washington.

• Shmuel Even - Senior Research Fellow. He too has served a long career in the IDF when he was Colonel with the Intelligence Branch, He has also served as a strategic and economic consultant to government offices and leading private companies in Israel and is currently (2009) CEO of Multi Concept (Consultants) Ltd.

• Yair Evron - Principal Research Fellow who has taught international relations at Tel Aviv University, where he was chairman 1987-1990 and established the graduate program on Security Studies which he headed from 1994-1998. He previously taught at Sussex University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has been a Visiting Professor or Visiting Fellow at several universities including Harvard, UCLA, MIT and Oxford. He has 'published extensively on international politics, strategic affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, nuclear proliferation, arms control, and international security regimes' and is the author of Israel's Nuclear Dilemma (Cornell University Press, 1994). He has also served as a member of the academic advisory committee and on the Board of Directors of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.

• Yoram Evron - Research Associate specializing in China's security policy and Israel-China relations. He is also a faculty member in Asian Studies at Haifa University.

• David Friedman Senior Research Fellow. Friedman is another expert with a long history with the IDF (almost 25 years). He served as a colonel and was involved with the Israel Ministry of Defence's R&D (Research and Development) into 'chemical / biological defense', what we would commonly call chemical and biological warfare. He retired from this post in 1994 and went on to serve as Special Assistant for Bio/Chem Defense in the office of the Assistant Minister of Defense.

• Shlomo Gazit - Adjunct Senior Research Fellow. Following 33 years of service in the IDF, Gazit joined the Jaffe Center in 1988. He served as Coordinator of Israeli Government Operations in the Administered Territories following the Six Day War and became head of IDF Military Intelligence following the Yom Kippur War.

• Hirsh Goodman - senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. Founder of the Jerusalem Report (in 1990), previously vice-president of the Jerusalem Post (1999 - 2001), correspondent for the Sunday Times of London and contributing editor to US News & World Report and a contributor to The New Republic.

• Yoel Guzansky - Rsearch Fellow who joined INSS in 2009 after coordinating work on the Iranian nuclear challenge at the National Security Council in the Prime Minister's Office (2005-2009). He is the editor of Studies in Deterrence (2009), published by the National Security College and the National Security Council, and co-editor (with Meir Elran) of Vision and Reality in the Middle East: Security Challenges of the 21st Century (INSS, 2010). He also contributes to Israeli newspaper Maariv.

• Mark A Heller - Principal Research Associate. He first joined the Jaffee Center in 1979. Previously editor of INSS Insight and Tel Aviv Notes, Heller has also been Coordinator of Research at the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security (in 1991), was visiting Professor of Government at Harvard University (in 1992) and was Research Associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (in 1999).

• Ephraim Kam - Principal Research Fellow and Deputy Director, he joined the Jaffee Center in 1993. Kam previously served as colonel in the Research Division of the IDF's Military Intelligence (until 1993), where he served as assistant director of the Research Division for Evaluation and senior instructor at the IDF's National Defense College.

• Anat Kurz - Director of Research and Senior Research Fellow. She has lectured and published extensively on insurgency-related issues, terrorism as a mode of warfare, the Palestinian national movement and revolutionary Islamic organizations and movements. She taught in the Security Studies program of the Political Science Department at Tel Aviv University and is a regular participant in ongoing Track II dialogues on Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution. Her most recent book is Fatah and the Politics of Violence: The Institutionalization of a Popular Struggle (Sussex Academic Press and JCSS, 2005).

• Yoram Schweitzer - Senior Research Fellow and Director for the INSS's Program on Terrorism and Low Intensity Conflict. Schweitzer is described as having 'a distinguished career in the Israeli intelligence community' and serves as a private consultant for government ministries. He has served as Head of the Counter International Terror Section in the IDF, been a consultant on counter-terror strategies to the prime minister's office and the Ministry of Defense and was a member in a Task Force dealing with Israeli MIAs at the Prime Minister's Office. Other positions have included serving as a researcher and head of Educational Curriculum at the International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism (ICT) at the Inter Disciplinary Center in Herzliya. He is the founder of Strategic Consulting firm Labat (see Labat:about us) and is a senior consultant to NATO on matters of terrorism

• Yiftah Shapir - Senior Research Fellow and Director of INSS's Military Balance Project. Former officer in the Israeli Air Force, Shapir also spent more than 10 years as co-editor of Middle East Military Balance.

• Gabriel Siboni - Research Fellow and Director of the INSS's Program on IDF Force Structure. Siboni is described as having an 'extensive IDF career' where he served as Colonel. He also serves as co-editor of the military publication The Wisdom of Action and is vice head and chief methodologist of the Research Center for Force Utilization and Buildup – Experimentation Laboratory. His other positions include acting as 'a consultant in 'a wide range of fields, including operational systems and military technology; risk management; information systems; and water, energy and environmental engineering'.

• Nachman Tal - Adjunct Senior Research Fellow. Tal served as a senior official of the General Security Service (GSS) for 40 years before joining the Jaffee Center research staff in 1996. His duties at the GSS included heading the GSS Arab section and he was also GSS commander of the Gaza Strip and Sinai district.

Other experts include: Anat Kurz - Director of Research and a senior research fellow | Emily Landau - senior research associate who is also Steering Committee member of EuroMeSCo (Euro-Mediterranean consortium of research institutes) and of the Expert Advisory Group for Euro-Mediterranean affairs | Zaki Shalom - Principal Research Fellow

Former staff

• Roni Bart - Research Associate. Previously served with the IDF where he was colonel and chief-of-staff of an armored reserve division.

• Aryeh Shalev - Adjunct Senior Research Fellow. He previously served 33 years in the IDF (his final posting was Military Governor of Judea and Samaria).

• Imri Tov - Adjunct Senior Research Fellow. Tov's biography describes him as being 'the Economic Advisor to the Israeli defense establishment from 1988-2000, before which he was a senior economist at the Bank of Israel. He teaches defense economics at Tel Aviv University, and has served on the boards of several leading Israeli corporations'.

• Aharon Ze'evi Farkash - Senior Research Fellow and Director of INSS's Roizman Program in Intelligence Studies. Farkash is another INSS expert with a 'long career in the IDF' where he was a Maj. Gen. and head of Military Intelligence. Other positions in the IDF included serving as chief of the Logistics and Technology Branch, a role as assistant chief and deputy chief in the Planning Branch and as a commander of Unit 8200, Israel Sigint National Unit.

• Daniel Byman of the Brookings Institution was a Visiting Research Fellow at INSS in 2008.

Funding

The INSS describes its 'general budget' as being based on money from the INSS endowment, with matching funds coming from Israel's Council for Higher Education along with other outside contributions.

The Neubauer Program is a joint research program of the INSS and Tel Aviv University sponsored by the Joseph and Jeanette Neubauer Foundation based in Philadelphia. It consists of two areas of research: cyber warfare and international law and national security.

The Bronfman Program on Information Strategy is named after funding body Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies.

The Friedrich Ebert Foundation sponsored at least two annual German-Israel Strategic Dialogue conference (in 2007 and in 2005 when the INSS was called the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies). Personell from the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik attended on the German side.

The institute's weekly two-page policy analysis, INSS Insight, published in English and Hebrew and distributed as an e-publication is assisted by a grant from Sari Roizman and Israel Roizman. In 2007 the Roizmans were sponsoring the Roizman Program in Intelligence Studies which seems to have since been reorganised.

Affiliations

INSS claims to maintain a "strategic dialogue" with a number of other policy institutes in North America, Europe and elsewhere:

• Council on Foreign Relations (US)
• Center for Strategic and International Studies (US)
• Chatham House (UK)
• International Institute for Strategic Studies (UK)
• Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Germany)
• China Institute for International Strategic Studies.

Publications

• The INSS publishes Strategic Assessment, a quarterly written by INSS researchers, invited academics and public figures and published in Hebrew and English, distributed in Israel and abroad.
• It also launched a journal, Military and Strategic Affairs, in 2009, examining military issues facing Israel.
• An annual INSS publication, Strategic Survey for Israel, emerged from its Middle East Strategic Balance series, and "surveys major developments that impact on Israel's strategic environment" and suggests responses.
• In February 2012 the INSS started producing a weekly summary of what it considers important social media activity in the Middle East.

Recent books and chapters by experts at the institute include:

• Brom, S. and Elran, M. (eds.), (2007), The Second Lebanon War: Strategic Perspectives, Tel Aviv, Institute for National Security Studies.
• Tira, R., (2009), The Nature of War: Conflicting Paradigms and Israeli Military Effectiveness, Brighton, Sussex Academic Press and Tel Aviv, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University
• Kurz, A., and Brom, S. (eds.), (2011), Strategic Survey for Israel 2011 Tel Aviv, Institute for National Security Studies
• Ben Meir, Y. and Alterman, O. (2011) "The Delegitimization Threat: Roots, Manifestations, and Containment" in Kurz, A., and Brom, S. (eds.), (2011), Strategic Survey for Israel 2011 Tel Aviv, Institute for National Security Studies pp. 123-139

Contact

The Institute for National Security Studies

40 Haim Levanon Street

Tel Aviv 61398

Israel

Phone No. +972-3-6400400

Fax No. +972-3-7447590

E-mail: info@inss.org.il

Website:

http://www.inss.org.il