Join J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami and JINSA President Michael Makovsky as they discuss the security challenges facing Israel and what the United States can do to help ensure the future security and safety for the Jewish homeland.

When: October 21, 2018 | 7:30PM
Where: Mandel JCC (26001 S Woodland Rd, Beachwood, OH 44122)

Moderated by Kevin Adelstein, CEO and publisher of Cleveland Jewish News

Jeremy Ben-Ami is the President of J Street, bringing to the role both deep experience in American politics and government and a passionate commitment to the state of Israel. Ben-Ami’s family connection to Israel goes back 130 years to the first aliyah when his great-grandparents were among the first settlers in Petah Tikva. His grandparents were one of the founding families of Tel Aviv, and his father was an activist and leader in the Irgun, working for Israel’s independence and on the rescue of European Jews before and during World War II.

His political resume includes serving in the mid-1990s as the Deputy Domestic Policy Advisor in the White House to President Bill Clinton and working on seven Presidential and numerous state and local campaigns. He was Howard Dean’s National Policy Director in 2004 and helped manage a Mayoral campaign in New York City in 2001. For nearly three years in the late 90s, Jeremy lived in Israel, where he started a consulting firm working with Israeli non-profit organizations and politicians. He was chosen by America’s weekly Jewish newspaper, the Forward, for three years as part of the Forward 50, their compilation of the most influential Jewish Americans. He was one of 50 “People of the Decade” selected by Ha’aretz, the influential Israeli daily newspaper, and the Jerusalem Post included him in its list of the 50 Most Influential Jews in the world. Ben-Ami received a law degree from New York University and is a graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Relations at Princeton University.

Michael Makovsky joined JINSA in 2013 as CEO. A U.S. national security expert, he has worked extensively on Iran’s nuclear program, the Middle East, and the intersection of international energy markets and politics with U.S. national security.

From 2006-2013, Makovsky was the Foreign Policy Director for the Bipartisan Policy Center where he managed projects on a new U.S. policy toward Iran’s nuclear development, a new U.S. strategy toward Russia, how to augment U.S. Government capacity in stabilizing fragile states such as Yemen, devising a new bipartisan U.S. foreign policy, and how to make strategic public diplomacy an effective tool of U.S. foreign policy in Egypt and elsewhere.

Makovsky served as special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and was Director of Essential Services in the Washington office of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the postwar Allied entity that governed Iraq, advising senior Defense, National Security Council and Energy officials on Iraqi and Middle Eastern energy policy. Prior to his work in the Pentagon, Makovsky worked as a senior energy market analyst for various investment firms, and is founder and president of MSM Consulting LLC, an energy and political risk consulting firm.

Makovsky has written articles, op-eds and editorials on U.S. national security issues primarily involving the Middle East as well as energy markets, related to Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Israel and Yemen for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Weekly Standard, and The New Republic, and been interviewed on CNBC, CNN, Fox, NPR, Voice of America (Persian), and other media. He is also author of Churchill’s Promised Land (Yale University Press), a diplomatic-intellectual history of Winston Churchill’s complex relationship with Zionism.

Makovsky has a Ph.D. in diplomatic history from Harvard University, an MBA in finance from Columbia Business School, and a B.A. in history from the University of Chicago.