Former commander of the IDF’s Galilee Division. Served as leader of the National Religious Party in the Knesset and a member of the foreign affairs and defense committee, and as Minister of Housing and Minister of National Infrastructures in the Sharon governments, and a member of the security cabinet. Serves as a member of the “Nagel Committee” on Israel’s defense budget, appointed by the Prime Minister
Robert Greenway is the Director of the Allison Center for National Defense at The Heritage Foundation, where he is responsible for the development of policies which promote a strong national defense safeguarding American freedom and prosperity. He previously served as President and Executive Director of the Abraham Accords Peace Institute. Mr. Greenway has more than 30 years of experience in public service, culminating as the senior U.S. government official responsible for developing, coordinating and implementing U.S. government policy for all of the Middle East and North Africa on the National Security Council. Prior to service on the NSC, he served as a Senior Intelligence Officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and a combat veteran of the United States Army Special Forces.
While Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director of the National Security Council’s Middle Eastern and North African Affairs Directorate, he planned and executed the United States’ most significant economic sanctions since the Cold War as part of a broad strategy for Iran. He was a principal architect of the historic Abraham Accords, the most significant diplomatic breakthrough in Middle East peace since 1994. He personally supervised the development of the first-ever presidentially approved strategies for Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon and Israel, and was instrumental in the removal of the world’s most dangerous terrorist leaders. He coordinated the implementation of a comprehensive strategy to defeat ISIS, resulting in the liberation of the 20,000 square miles of territory it controlled, and the elimination of its leadership in Syria and Iraq.
Before being assigned to the NSC he served at the Defense Intelligence Agency as a Senior Intelligence Officer in U.S. Central Command. Mr. Greenway retired from active duty prior to joining the DIA having commanded Special Forces units at every level from Team through Battalion. He holds a master’s degree with Honors from Webster University and a bachelor’s degree from the Virginia Military Institute.
Prof. Yisrael (Robert) Aumann joined the mathematics department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1956 and has been there ever since. In 1990, he was among the founders of the Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University, an interdisciplinary research center centered on game theory. He is the author of more than a hundred scientific papers and seven books, and has held visiting positions at Princeton, Yale, Berkeley, Louvain, Stanford, Stony Brook, and NYU.
In 2005, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Prof. Aumann was born in 1930 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany to a well-to-do Orthodox Jewish family. The family fled Nazi persecution and emigrated to the United States in 1938, settling in New York. In the process, his parents lost everything, but nevertheless gave their two children an excellent Jewish and general education. Aumann attended yeshiva elementary and high schools, obtained a bachelor’s degree from the City College of New York in 1950, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT in 1955.
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences (USA), the British Academy, the Academia Europaea and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Chicago, Bonn, Louvain, City University of New York, Bar Ilan University, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and the University of Paris II (Pantheon-Assas). He is married and had five children; the oldest was killed in IDF service in Lebanon in 1982. Also, he has twenty-one grandchildren, and thirty-eight great-grandchildren.
27/05/2024
Monday | 12:30–15:30 IL time | Live on INSS digital platforms
A joint conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy. The conference will be broadcast live on the digital platforms of both INSS and the Misgav Institute.
12:30 – Opening Remarks
Brig. Gen. (res.) Udi Dekel, Head of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict Program, INSS
Ronen Levi (Maoz), Senior Fellow, Misgav Institute
12:50 – Special Interview | Head of the National Security Council, Tzachi Hanegbi
Interviewer: Tal Schneider, Political-Military Correspondent, Times of Israel
13:20 – How to Advance Normalization After October 7?
Dr. Yoel Guzansky, Head of the Gulf Program and Senior Researcher, INSS
Asher Fredman, Senior Managing Fellow, Misgav Institute
Aryeh Lightstone, Former US Special Envoy for Economic Normalization
Ruth Wasserman Lande, Senior Fellow, Misgav Institute
Moderator: Maj. Gen. (res.) Udi Dekel
14:05 – Normalization and the Peace Countries
Dr. Moran Zaga, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Mitvim Institute
Eitan Naeh, Ambassador of Israel to Bahrain
Dr. Ofir Winter, Senior Researcher, INSS
Mena Ta-Shma, Head of the Regional Division, Directorate of Defense Research and Development, Ministry of Defense
Moderator: Fleur Hassan-Nahum, Senior Fellow, Misgav Institute
14:50 – Regional Normalization: Iran, Iraq, and the Palestinians | Panel Discussion
Maj. Gen. (res.) Tamir Hayman, Executive Director, INSS
Meir Ben Shabbat, Head of the Misgav Institute
Amb. O’Brien, co-founder and chairman of American Global Strategies LLC, served as the 27th US National Security Advisor (NSA) from 2019 – 2021, serving as the President’s principal advisor on all aspects of American foreign policy and national security affairs.
During O’Brien’s tenure, the United States orchestrated the historic Abraham Accords in the Middle East, brokered economic normalization between Serbia and Kosovo, achieved significant defense spending increases among NATO allies and increased cooperation with America’s allies across the Indo-Pacific.
Prior to serving as NSA, O’Brien was the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs with the personal rank of Ambassador. He was directly involved in the return of over 25 detainees and hostages to the United States. O’Brien previously served as Co-Chairman of the U.S. Department of State Public-Private Partnership for Justice Reform in Afghanistan under both Secretaries of State Rice and Clinton.
Earlier in his career, O’Brien served as a Senior Legal Officer for the UN Security Council commission that decided claims against Iraq arising out of the first Gulf War. He was a Major in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the U.S. Army Reserve.
O’Brien is the recipient of the National Security Medal, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the National Defense Medal, the Legion d’honneur (chevalier), the Republic of China (Taiwan) Order of the Brilliant Star with Special Grand Cordon and the Kosovo Presidential Medal of Merits.
In July 2022, O’Brien was elected as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Richard Nixon Foundation. O’Brien is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy and a Carnegie Distinguished Fellow at the Columbia University Institute of Global Politics. He serves as the Chairman of the Global Taiwan Institute (GTI) Task Force on US-Taiwan Relations. He is also a co-chair of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Commission on Hostage Taking and Wrongful Detention.
O’Brien holds a J.D. from the U.C. Berkeley School of Law. He received his B.A. degree in political science, cum laude, from UCLA.
Meir Ben Shabbat and Ambassador Robert C. O’Brien
