Watch Webinar – Israel Strikes Iran
Overnight, the Israel Defense Forces began conducting strikes targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities and senior Iranian officials. The preemptive attack kicks off Operation Rising Lion, which Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a “military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival.” Netanyahu vowed the operation would continue “as many days as it takes to remove this threat.”
JINSA hosted an emergency webinar featuring JINSA Distinguished Fellow IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror, Julian & Jenny Josephson Senior Vice President for Israeli Affairs IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish, JINSA Distinguished Fellow IDF MG (ret.) Amikam Norkin, and JINSA Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow John Hannah.
The webinar was moderated by JINSA President and CEO Michael Makovsky, PhD.
IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror is a Distinguished Fellow at JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy. MG Amidror was formerly the National Security Advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the head of Israel’s National Security Council from 2011-13. MG Amidror served as Commander of IDF Military Colleges, Military Secretary for the Minister of Defense, Director of the Intelligence Analysis Division, and as Intelligence Officer for the Northern Command. |
IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish MG Ayish served in the IDF for 36 years and retired in 2016, concluding an accomplished career during which he attained the rank of Major General. Throughout his distinguished service, he served in core and operational command positions in the IDF ground forces and in senior command and managerial positions in the IDF General Staff. In his last position, General Ayish served for four years as Israel’s Defense and Armed Forces Attaché to the United States in Washington, D.C. MG Ayish was previously the Head of the IDF General Staff Operations Branch where he was responsible for planning and managing the operational activities of the Israeli Defense Forces according to political and strategic guidelines. He was also a member of the IDF General Staff forum, a position that was filled with sensitive and complex managerial challenges and which encompassed multidisciplinary systems and functional dynamism in an era of changes in the characteristics of all the arenas and the army’s activities. |
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Major General (ret.) Amikam Norkin joined JINSA as a Distinguished Fellow in February 2023. MG Norkin is the Former Commander of the Israeli Air Force and a former member of the Israel Defense Forces General Staff. As the IAF’s Commander, he was responsible for all of the IDF’s aviation operations, including all air and space defense and offense activities, turning the IAF to the IDF’s leading strategic arm and leading this critical organization in a rapidly changing environment with various multiple challenges. As a member of the IDF’s General Staff Forum, he was a central figure in advising Israel’s Cabinet, including the Prime Minister on the most sensitive issues of national security. Under MG Norkin’s command, the IAF entered into the era of fifth-generation fighter jets, and the collaboration with the IDF’s difference branches and the defense industries was strengthened. |
IDF MG (ret.) Amikam Norkin
Michael Makovsky, PhD
Michael Makovsky, PhD is President and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), which he joined in 2013. A U.S. national security expert, he has worked extensively on U.S. policy toward Iran’s nuclear program, Israel, and the broader Middle East, as well as the intersection of international energy markets and politics with U.S. national security. Makovsky has written articles, op-eds and editorials for various publications on U.S. national security issues primarily involving the Middle East as well as energy markets. He is also author of Churchill’s Promised Land (Yale University Press), a diplomatic-intellectual history of Winston Churchill’s complex relationship with Zionism.
John Hannah
John Hannah is the Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow at JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy. John served in senior foreign policy positions for both Democratic and Republican administrations, including as former Vice President Dick Cheney’s National Security Advisor from 2005-2009 and as Vice President Cheney’s Deputy National Security Advisor for the Middle East from 2001-2005.