Amotz Asa-El - Biography

Amotz Asa-El, the former Executive Editor of the Jerusalem Post, is an Israeli journalist and media developer. He is the Jerusalem Post's senior columnist, a staff columnist for the Wall Street Journal/MarketWatch, and a leading commentator on Israeli, Middle Eastern and Jewish affairs.

Having originally joined the Jerusalem Post as its Business Editor in 1995, Asa-El was later the Post's News Editor and Editor-in-Chief of its overseas edition, the International Jerusalem Post, before serving as the Jerusalem Post's Executive Editor.

In these positions, Asa-El led the Post's editorial line that blended economic conservatism, diplomatic pragmatism, political reform and cultural pluralism. At the same time, he oversaw the redesign of the daily Jerusalem Post, the remodeling of its weekend magazines and supplements, and the reinvention of the International Jerusalem Post as an independent news weekly.

Prior to joining the Post, Asa-El was a Foreign Correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Foreign Editor of the Hebrew-language financial daily Telegraph. In 2006-2008 Asa-El led the launch of McGraw/Hill's Hebrew edition of BusinessWeek, and in 2010 he founded the Shalom Hartman Institute's Hebrew-language journal of thought Dorsheni.

A co-founder of the Hebrew opinion journal Eretz Aheret, Asa-El is also a lecturer at the Shalem Center's Institute for Philosophy, Politics and Religion, focusing on the theory and practice of expository writing. At the same time, Asa-El continues as the Jerusalem Post's "Middle Israel" columnist.

"Middle Israel" (www.MiddleIsrael.com) appears regularly in the Jerusalem Post for the 16th year now, and is a unique attempt to present in English the average Israeli's view on anything, from politics and religion to business and culture. Asa-El and his column have been quoted or published along the years by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Economist, the New Republic, Le Figaro, the Daily Telegraph, L'Express, Azure, Harvard Political Review, the Wall Street Journal/MarketWatch, the Australian, the Australia Financial Review, Jornal do Brasil, the India Times, Politiken, and others.

Author of The Diaspora and the Lost Tribes of Israel, a history of the Jewish people's wanderings, Asa-El's writing on Diaspora affairs has been awarded twice (1998 and 2004) by Bnai Brith. His book was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal as "an engaging history of the Jewish experience" that "vividly captures the creativity and nomadic quality of the Jewish people." Asa-El is also an executive-board member of the Paris-based Alliance Israelite, the oldest international Jewish organization in the world, and an editorial-board member of the "Encyclopedia of the Diaspora," alongside Nathan Sharanski, Sir Martin Gilbert and Professors Jehuda Reinharz, Jonathan Sarna and Sergio DellaPergola.

Amotz Asa-El is a highly demanded speaker who has been invited on lecture tours to the US, Canada, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand where he addressed business leaders, diplomats, legislators, journalists, clergy and academic forums on issues relating to Middle Eastern, international and Jewish affairs. His lectures were sponsored among others by AIPAC, JNF, ADL, the American Jewish Committee, the Canada Israel Committee, the Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council, United Israel Appeal, Hadassah and Bnai Brith, as well as a variety of universities from Harvard and Columbia to the University of Melbourne and the Royal Military College of Canada.

Asa-El holds advanced degrees in journalism and history from Columbia University in New York and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and their three children.