Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies

The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, founded in 1977, (as the Center for Strategic Studies) at the initiative of Tel Aviv University. It added the word 'Jaffee' in 1983 in honour of Mr. and Mrs. Mel Jaffee. It was a key Israeli think tank in the 1980s and was also central to the international Invisible College or terrorism think tanks and institutes. It is now known as the Institute for National Security Studies after being absorbed in October 2006.

In its former incarnation it employed a number of people who are now connected to neoconservative networks such as Dore Gold.

According to the account of Edward Herman and Gerry O'Sullivan, the 'most important' institute addressing the issue of terrorism in Israel in the 1980s was 'the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, which is affiliated with the University of Tel Aviv. Its links to the government include its head, Major General Aharon Yariv, former director of Israeli intelligence, and editorial board members Brigadier General Aryeh Shalev and Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin. Walter Laqueur of CSIS and JINSA is also on the editorial board.'

Herman and O'Sullivan note:

The center sponsors books, monographs, and conferences on a number of subjects, with a strong emphasis on terrorism. It has provided a base for Dr. Ariel Merari, one of Israel's leading analysts of terrorism and coauthor, with Shlomi Elad, of 'The International Dimension of Palestinian Terrorism' (Westview, 1986). [...] The center's 1979 conference on terrorism in Tel Aviv attracted an international group, including Brian Jenkins, J. Bowyer Bell, Yonah Alexander, and Robert Kupperman from the United States, Robert Moss and Paul Wilkinson from Great Britain, and Hans Joseph Horchem from West Germany. There was no departure in the published record of the conference from the Western format and identification of terrorists and victims. Its most interesting feature was the fact that twenty-one of the forty-six participants were state officials.

People

Directors

• 1997-2005 Shai Feldman
• 2005-2008 Zvi Shtauber

Staff circa 1997

• Zeev Maoz Head of JCSS. Joined JCSS in 1994 as Head of Center. Formerly professor and chairman of the Department of Political Science at the University of Haifa, director of the Center of Policy and Security Studies, and the MA program in national security of the National Defense College of the IDF.
• Ephraim Kam Deputy Head of JCSS. Colonel in the IDF Military Intelligence until 1993.
• Yehuda Ben Meir Headed the Bar-Ilan University Psychology Department until 1971. From 1971 to 1984 he was a Member of Knesset for the National Religious Party, and from 1981 to 1984 was Deputy Foreign Minister.
• Abraham Ben-Zvi Past Chairman of the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University.
• Shai Feldman Dr. Feldman is on leave of absence from JCSS.
• Dore Gold PhD in Political Science at Columbia University in 1984.
• Moshe Grundman Established the JCSS Information and Documentation Center in February 1978 and has been its director ever since.
• Mark A. Heller Joined JCSS in 1979, and served as Deputy Head of Center from 1984-1986.
• Aharon Klieman Former Chairman of the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University.
• Anat Kurz Headed the Center's Project on Low Intensity Warfare since 1989. *Emily Landau Currently a PhD candidate in the Department of International Relations at the Hebrew University.
• Ariel Levite BA in Political Science at Tel Aviv University, and MA and PhD in Government at Cornell.
• Gil Merom Joined the JCSS in 1996.
• Aryeh Shalev Before joining JCSS, Brigadier-General (res.) Shalev served for 33 years in the IDF, where his final posting was Military Governor of Judea and Samaria.
• Yiftah Shapir Joined in 1993 as an associate of the Center's Project on Security and Arms Control. Recently, he took charge of the Middle East Military Project. Before joining the Center, Mr. Shapir served as an officer in the Israeli Air Force, in various posts of instruction and analysis.
• Ariel Sobelman Dr. Sobelman joined the JCSS research team in 1997. For several years he has been involved at the Weizmann Institute of Science in the area of advanced high-speed computer network performance, modeling, and development of real-time routing algorithms.
• Zeev Eytan (1929-1995) Colonel in the IDF until 1980. Former member of staff.

Funding

In 2007 the Center carried the following information about funding on its website:

The JCSS budget is based largely on the annual interest that accrues from an endowment fund established by the Association of American Friends of Tel Aviv University from contributions made primarily by the Jewish community of the United States. This is supplemented by foundation support and contributions dedicated to specific projects In this way JCSS seeks to ensure for itself the financial independence necessary for its research and other activities.

Resources

Contact

Internet Archive holdings of tau.ac.il/jcss/ 1997-2007.

Powerbase

• Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, extract from The "Terrorism" Industry
• Terrorexpertise:Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies