Rudy Rochman

Rudy Rochman was born in France and grew up moving around the world from Paris, Miami, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Israel, New York, and Singapore. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the IDF Paratroopers and served as a sniper in the 101st Airborne Brigade, which he still serves as a reservist today. 

After the army, Rudy completed his bachelor’s degree at Columbia University since it was listed as the #1 most anti-Semitic school in North America. There, he founded the grassroots pro-Israel movement on campus, which revolutionized campus discourse and quickly became a model for international Zionist movements worldwide. 

Rudy is considered a social media influencer with over 300,000 followers; creating educational viral content aimed at shifting the global, ideological, and political conversations regarding the Jewish People & Israel. 

His work primarily focuses on empowering Jews & allies, uniting sectors of Israeli society and generating innovative ways to combat anti-Semitism. He even got banned from Malaysia for being “too much of a Zionist”. 

In 2018, Rudy was chosen for the 36 Under 36 award of most influential Jews in the world for his work and activism. Rudy runs his own businesses and is a leader in several grassroots movements such as LAVI, VISION, and HaBayit, which focus on Jewish education and uniting Israeli & Palestinian local activists to craft a better collective reality for all inhabitants of the land without giving up on the aspirations of either population. Rudy also sits on the board of the American Zionist Movement (AZM) and on the board of The Israel Innovation Fund (TIIF), which showcases the story of Israel by promoting authentic Israeli culture and sustainable initiatives. 

In 2020, Rudy completed his MBA in Israel where he is now based and uses his background and expertise to inspire the next generation of Jews to narrate their own story and to write the next chapter of Jewish history. 

Eric Rozenman was communications consultant for the Washington, D.C.-based Jewish Policy Center, which he joined in 2016. From 2002 to 2016, Rozenman served as Washington director of CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.

Before joining CAMERA, Rozenman edited B’nai B’rith’s International Jewish Monthly magazine (1997 – 2002) and the Washington Jewish Week (1992 – 1997). He also worked as editor of Near East Report, the newsletter published in association with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a congressional press secretary and reporter for the Ohio Scripps-Howard Newspapers state bureau.

His work-related and freelance commentaries and analyses have appeared in dailies including The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today,Washington Post, Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post and periodicals such as the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism and Journal of International Security Affairs.

Rozenman earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University and a master’s in American history from Ohio State University. He has taught American history and Western Civ. II, Europe Since 1500 as an adjunct faculty member at Northern Virginia Community College. 

He is the author of Jews Make the Best Demons: “Palestine” and the Jewish Question, published by New English Review Press (2018). Rozenman is married and the father of two daughters. 

Alex Ryvchin is the author of two internationally acclaimed books of history and politics, "Zionism - The Concise History" (Connor Court Publishing, 2019) and "The Anti-Israel Agenda - Inside the Political War on the Jewish State", (Gefen Publishing House, 2017). 

He is the also author of the international bestseller, "A New Day" (Yogi Books, 2020) written during the Coronavirus Pandemic to help families overcome adversity.

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He writes for leading publications and speaks, debates and teaches around the world on the Arab-Israeli conflict, foreign and national affairs, antisemitism and the Holocaust, and religion and identity, and is a regular commentator on TV and radio.

In 2013, he joined the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Australia's premier representative and advocacy body for the Australian Jewish community, and was promoted to co-Chief Executive Officer in February 2018, becoming one of the youngest leaders in the Jewish diaspora. He is a member of the Jewish Diplomatic Corps.

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Alex was born in Kiev, Ukraine. His family left the Soviet Union as refugees and refuseniks in 1987, when Alex was 3 years old. He attended Sydney Boys High School and went on to study law and politics at the University of New South Wales.

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He worked for a member of the state legislature as a researcher and speechwriter before practising law at two of the world's largest law firms, first in Sydney and then in London. He served as a spokesman for the Zionist Federation UK, and was awarded a prestigious Israel Research Fellowship to work as a research fellow and staff writer at a Jerusalem-based think-tank.  

Topics:      

• The Anti-Israel Agenda – Inside the Political War on the Jewish State
• Abraham Accords – What they mean in the context of world history
• From Jewish refugee to Jewish advocate – my story
• The Holocaust in the Soviet Union
• Contemporary antisemitism analysed and explained
• Zionism: The justness, necessity and wonder of Jewish liberation

Batya Ungar-Sargon is the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek and

co-host of Newsweek's podcast "The Debate." Previously she served at

the opinion editor of The Forward. Her book "Bad News: How Woke Media

Is Undermining Democracy" will be out in October.

Ahdeya Al Sayed, is the first female President of the Bahrain Journalists Association. She won the 2019 Arab Female Journalist of the Year Award by the London Arabia Organisation for all her contributions towards the progress of her Arab media and promoting women's rights and empowerment.  

Al Sayed has been the most outspoken Bahraini journalist on the Abraham Accords and the peace agreements between Bahrain, Israel and the UAE, advocating for the importance of fighting against hate speech, extremist ideologies,  anti semitism and encouraging the press to play a positive role in achieving warm peace. 

Al Sayed is also a member of the board of the Dubai-based Arab Women Federation, an NGO dedicated to serving women empowerment in the Arab world. In 2004, she became a founding member and spokesperson of the Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society. 

Ahdeya also worked as media and international news advisor and political analyst for the Ministry of Cabinet Affairs and Media Advisor at the Ministry of Information. She also served as spokesperson for Bahrain's  parliamentary and municipal elections in the year 2006.

Natan Sharansky was a leader in the struggle for the right of Soviet Jewry to immigrate to Israel and a spokesperson for the human rights movement in the Soviet Union. He has won the Israel Prize, the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and recently, the 2020 Genesis Prize recognizing his lifelong commitment to world Jewry.

A former minister and deputy prime minister in Israeli governments and the former Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Mr. Sharansky is a natural bridge builder between Israel and the diaspora.

Having authored four best-selling books, Mr. Sharansky is widely recognized for his fight against antisemitism. He is the author of the "three D" test - a set of criteria to distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from antisemitism.  He has also written, Fear No Evil, The Case for Democracy, Defending Identity and Never Alone: Prison Politics and My People (Co-Authored with Gil Troy).

Mr. Sharansky was arrested on trumped up charges of treason and espionage. He was convicted in a Soviet court and served nine years in the Gulag as a prisoner of Zion. Following massive public campaigns by the State of Israel, World Jewry and leaders of the free world, Mr. Sharansky was released in 1986, making Aliya on the very day of his release.

In his first few years in Israel, Mr. Sharansky established the Zionist Forum to assist Soviet Olim in their absorption in Israel. In the 1990's, he established the Yisrael B'Aliyah party in order to accelerate the integration of Russian Jews.

Leor Sinai is a thought-leader in the field of Education Diplomacy. Originally from New York, Sinai made Aliyah (moved to Israel) with his family in 2011. Seminal to his approach to education is bridge-building and motivating influential actors to collaborate towards advancing Global Jewish – Israel relationships, as well as Jewish and Israel relations with the Arab world following the Abraham Accords. 

Sinai has traveled around the world building bridges through his role as a strategic influencer, most recently serving as co-CEO and Chief Institutional Advancement Officer at the international Alexander Muss High School in Israel (AMHSI). 

In 2009 Sinai received his rabbinic ordination and Master’s Degree, and is currently pursuing his doctorate in Education Leadership. He founded Sinai Strategies, LLC where he consults educational non-for-profits and executives on campaign building and strategic alliances. His infectious passion for people-to-people alliances motivates others to reveal their greatest potential. Sinai claims education is the greatest cause of our time. 

Sinai’s topics include:
Education Diplomacy as the second coming of Advocacy: preparing our youth in a globalized society, Global Jewish – Israeli relations, Youth to Youth Abraham Accords advancement, Zionism & Jihad – a vehicle for the spiritual manifestation of our physical state 

Khaled Abu Toameh, an Arab Muslim, is a veteran award-winning journalist who has been covering Palestinian affairs for more than three decades. 

He studied at Hebrew University. Since 2002, he has been writing on Palestinian affairs for The Jerusalem Post. Since 2009, he has also been serving as a Distinguished Senior Fellow with Gatestone Institute.

Abu Toameh also works for the international media, serving as the 'eyes and ears' of foreign journalists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. His articles have appeared in numerous newspapers around the world, including The Wall Street Journal, US News & World Report and The Sunday Times of London. For 26 years, he served as a senior producer for NBC. 

Foreign & Strategic Affairs Editor for the Indo-Asian News Service and previous  Senior Assistant Editor for Times of New Delhi, Aarti Tikoo has reported some of the biggest news stories in a tough region of the world.  

She has reported exclusives which had major policy implications on Kashmir and Pakistan. Strong foreign, security and economic policy background combined with field knowledge of terrorism, war, politics and governance. 

Tikoo can speak on critical strategic issues that happen behind the headlines. Equipped with a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University, Tikoo has garnered many awards, fellowships and prestigious awards that have rocketed her to be one of the foremost voices in media circles in India.  

Mike Wagenheim is the Senior U.S. Correspondent for the Israeli i24NEWS global TV network. Mike reports on American government, business, cultural and religious affairs that affect Israel and the Middle East, giving viewers a broad perspective on how Israel’s global connectedness to the Gulf, Africa and Asia are affected by matters in the U.S. He interviews top governmental policymakers and headliners, while also covering the United Nations and the American Jewish community as part of his regular beats.

Now based out of New York, Mike was previously an i24NEWS Diplomatic Correspondent in Israel, where he reported on the Knesset, Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and important political and religious issues of the day. His live field reporting took him all over Israel. 

Mike has covered Purim in Hebron, Christmas in Bethlehem, Hanukkah in Shechem and the reopening of Jesus’ tomb at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, in addition to political protests, rocket attacks and Supreme Court trials. He also was the Israeli press panelist on "The Spin Room," providing insight on how different media outlets on the spectrum of the Israeli press covered the week’s big events. 

Mike has lectured to numerous Jewish organizations and synagogues in America, and has served as a presenter in university settings. He lives in Brooklyn with his Israeli wife, Hila, and their two young girls, Ella and Libi. He writes for The Media Line and The Jewish Press.

Dr. Einat Wilf is the co-author of "The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace" (St. Martin’s Press) and a leading thinker on matters of foreign policy, economics, education, Israel and Zionism. 

She was a member of the Israeli Parliament from 2010-2013, where she served as Chair of the Education Committee and Member of the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

Born and raised in Israel, Dr. Wilf served as an Intelligence Officer in the Israel Defense Forces, Foreign Policy Advisor to Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres and a strategic consultant with McKinsey & Company.

Dr. Wilf has a BA from Harvard, an MBA from INSEAD in France, and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cambridge.  She speaks regularly to global audiences and is a natural bridge builder between Israel and the diaspora. 

Books By Dr. Wilf:

Dr. Wilf is the author of six books that explore key issues in Israeli society: "Back to Basics: How to save Israeli Education (at no additional cost" (published in Hebrew); "Its NOT the Electoral System, Stupid” (published in Hebrew); "Winning the War of Words" that compiles her key essays on Israel and Zionism; and her two most books are "telling Our Story" – a collection of Wilf’s essays on Israel, Zionism and the path to peace, and "The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace".

Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon was born in Kiryat Haim in 1950 and is a founding member of Kibbutz Grofit in the Arava.

In 1968 he enlisted in the IDF as a paratrooper and participated in the 'Attrition War'. In October 1973 ('Yom Kippur War') Gen. Ya’alon’s Paratrooper brigade was the first to cross the Suez Canal and continued the fight with the Egyptian forces in Suez. In 'Litani Operation' in 1978, he commanded the Paratroopers' Reconnaissance Squadron. In the 1982 Lebanon War, he served as commander in Sayeret Matkal. In 1990 he became Commander of the Paratrooper Brigade and later Commander of the forces in Judea and Samaria. 

In 1993 he was appointed commander of the IDF training base and an armored division commander, and shortly after was promoted to Major General and put in charge of Military Intelligence. Gen. Ya’alon then became commanding officer of Israel’s Central Command. Between 2002 until 2005, he served as Israel’s Chief of General Staff (commander of the IDF) during the harrowing days of the war against Palestinian terror. He succeeded in quelling what is also known as the "Second Intifada."

After retiring from the IDF, Gen. Ya’alon spent some time at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington DC, and became a senior fellow at the Shalem Centre in Jerusalem.

In 2008, Yaalon announced his entrance into Israeli politics as a member of the Likud party. The following year, he was appointed as Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Strategic Affairs. In 2013, he was appointed Minister of Defense, a position from which he resigned in May, 2016.

Three years later, Ya’alon founded 'Telem', the National Statesmanship Party, and only a few weeks later merged with Benny Gantz’s 'Israel Resilience' Party. On Feb. 2019 Ya’alon and Gantz joined together with Yair Lapid’s 'Yesh Atid' and the 'Blue and White' ('Kahol Lavan') Party was formed. He left 'Blue and White' with his party ('Telem'), when Benny Gantz decided to join Netanyahu's government.

Ya'alon served in the Knesset between 2009 - 2016 and between 2019 - 2021.Ya'alon has dedicated a lifetime of public service to the State of Israel.  Gen. Ya’alon studied at the British Army’s Camberley Staff College and earned a BA in Political Science from the University of Haifa. 

Critical Discussion Points: 1. The Iranian aspirations for nuclear weapons and regional hegemony: how to address the challenge? 2. What should the U.S., Israel and the free world do in front of the most severe crisis in the Middle East since the birth of Islam? 3.  Can terrorism be defeated and how? Personal experiences. 4. The U.S.- Israel relations at a crossroad; 5.  The Israeli- Palestinian Conflict – a different paradigm.

Sivan Yaari is the founder and CEO of Innovation: Africa, a nonprofit that brings Israeli solar, agricultural and water technologies to African villages. 

She was born in Israel, raised in France, educated in the United States with degrees in Finance from Pace University and a masters in International Energy Management and Policy from Columbia University. 

Sivan has been working in Africa for over 20 years and over the past decade, using Israeli technologies, has brought clean water and light to nearly 3 million people across 10 African countries. 

Sivan and her organization, Innovation: Africa, have received multiple awards including the Innovation Award from the United Nations. 

Sivan has been recognized as one of the most "Inspiring Israeli this Decade" by Grapevine, one of 50 "Most Influential Women in Israel" by Forbes, one of the 'Top 10 Most Influential Israelis in International Business, Science, and Culture" by NoCamels, and one of the 'Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life" by Algemeiner. 

Shelley Zalis, CEO of The Female Quotient, is an internationally renowned thought leader, movement maker, and champion of equality. She is a pioneer for online research, becoming the first female chief executive ranked in the research industry’s top 25. 

Today, as CEO of The Female Quotient, Zalis works with Fortune 500 companies and mission-oriented organizations to advance equality in the workplace. 

Through its signature pop-up experience, the Equality Lounge®, along with FQ Next Gen and FQ Global Pack, The Female Quotient has created a multi-generational, international community of women rising up to catalyze change. A firm believer in giving back with generosity, Zalis is a proud mentor to women around the world.