Would Israel be Better Off Without American Aid?

Ambassador Michael Oren served as ambassador of Israel to the United States from 2009 until fall 2013. He holds the chair in international diplomacy at IDC Herzliya in Israel and is a fellow at the Atlantic Council. Formerly, he was the Lady Davis Fellow of Hebrew University, a Moshe Dayan Fellow at Tel-Aviv University, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown. Ambassador Oren moved to Israel in the 1970s. Ambassador Oren has written extensively for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The New Republic, where he was a contributing editor. His two most recent books, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East and Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, were both New York Times bestsellers. Dr. Oren earned his PhD in Near East Studies from Princeton University.

Dr. Jonathan Schanzer is the executive director at FDD, where he oversees the work of the organization’s experts and scholars.

Jonathan previously worked as a terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he followed and froze the funding of Hamas and al-Qaeda. Jonathan has held previous think tank research positions at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Middle East Forum. He has written hundreds of articles on the Middle East and U.S. national security.

He is the host of the FDD Morning Brief, which delivers timely situational updates and expert analysis on the headlines shaping national security and the Middle East every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. His most recent book is Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and Eleven Days of War (FDD Press 2021). His other books are State of Failure: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Unmaking of the Palestinian State (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (Palgrave Macmillan 2008), and Al-Qaeda’s Armies: Middle East Affiliate Groups and the Next Generation of Terror (Washington Institute for Near East Policy 2004).

Jonathan testifies often before Congress and appears on television channels such as CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, BBC, and MSNBC.