Join us for a two-part panel discussion with IsraAID and partners exploring the future of humanitarian assistance in an increasingly contested and conflict-ridden world. The first panel will examine how aid organizations deliver relief when access, neutrality, and safety are absent or precarious, drawing on IsraAID's experience responding to crises across the globe. The second panel will turn to the Middle East, focusing on the promise and practical challenges of Arab-Israeli cooperation in delivering humanitarian assistance to communities in need around the region.

AGENDA

3:30 - 4:00 PM: GATHERING AND REGISTRATION

4:00 - 4:10 PM: INTRODUCTION

Speaker: Larry Diamond (Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University)

4:10 - 5:05 PM: PANEL ONE — Delivering Humanitarian Assistance in 2026: Challenges and Opportunities

• Yotam Polizer (Global CEO, IsraAID)
• Sonali Korde (Senior Advisor, All Hands and Hearts)

Moderator: David Cornfield (Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine, Stanford University)

5:05 - 6:00 PM: PANEL TWO — Lessons from the Middle East: Arab-Israeli Cooperation in Humanitarian Aid

• Raphael Marcus (Deputy CEO, IsraAID)
• Dr. Yaroup Ajlouni (President, Jordan Health Aid Society International)
• Dr. Khaula Sawah (President, Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations-USA)

Moderator: Paul Wise (Richard E. Behrman Professor of Child Health and Society, Stanford University)

6:00 - 6:30 PM: Please join us for a light reception in the Coit D. Blacker Lobby of Encina Hall.

ABOUT IsraAID

Founded in 2001 as a coalition of Israeli organizations working in disaster relief and international development, IsraAID has grown into an independent NGO and the largest humanitarian aid organization in Israel. From earthquakes and hurricanes to epidemics and forced displacement, IsraAID has been at the forefront of responding to major humanitarian crises around the globe. They have worked in more than 60 countries and at any one time have around 300 staff members worldwide.

Israel's Declaration of Independence is its most important political text. It is, in fact, the only official text from Israel's founding moment that speaks to foundational subjects of statecraft: the nature of sovereignty, the relationship between religion and state, and the rights of citizens. This presentation will explore the history of drafting Israel's Declaration of Independence and the sometimes-clashing efforts of its multiple drafters to define Israel's character in 1948. It will pay special attention to the contribution of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who fundamentally transformed the proposed text of Israel's Declaration, producing a quite different final version in the days before May 14, 1948. Finally, it will consider whether Israel's Declaration of Independence might serve as a text of "civil religion" for Israel today.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Neil Rogachevsky is Assistant Professor in the Hamilton School, having previously taught at Yeshiva University. His research concerns Israeli political thought and history, comparative constitutionalism, and Jewish history.

With Dov Zigler, Rogachevsky is the co-author of Israel’s Declaration of Independence: The History and Political Theory of the Nation’s Founding Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2023), which won that year’s Concordia-Azrieli prize for Best Book in Israel Studies. He is currently at work on a new book on the political thought of David Ben-Gurion, which is slated to appear with Cambridge University Press in 2027.

Rogachevsky’s scholarship has also appeared or is forthcoming in Israel Studies Review, Shofar, The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, French History, and edited volumes on Michel Houellebecq’s political thought from Brill and diaspora politics in the United States from NYU Press. Rogachevsky also writes widely for general-interest and policy journals including the Wall Street Journal, Mosaic, Jewish Review of Books, The National Interest, The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, First Things, and American Affairs.

On October 27, 2026, Israelis will vote in national elections widely seen as perhaps the most consequential in the country's modern history. Why do Israelis view the 2026 elections in such dramatic, even existential, terms? Who are the main contenders and what are the main issues on which Israel will vote in the first national elections since the October 7, 2023 attack and subsequent wars? And what are the possible scenarios for the outcome of the elections? Join Amichai Magen and Masua Sagiv in conversation about these questions.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Dr. Masua Sagiv is a Senior Faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute and the academic advisor of its Center for Shared Society, as well as a senior fellow at the Helen Diller Institute, U.C. Berkeley. Masua’s work addresses the fundamental challenges facing both Israeli society and North American Jewish communities, from rising antisemitism and campus tensions to Jewish peoplehood and the complex relationship between Israel and world Jewry. Masua’s scholarly work focuses on the development of contemporary Judaism in Israel, as a culture, religion, nationality, and as part of Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state. Her research explores the role of law, state actors, and civil society organizations in promoting social change across diverse issues: shared society, religion and gender, religion and state, and Jewish peoplehood.

Masua recently returned to Israel after four years in Berkeley, California, where she was a senior faculty member for the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and the Koret Visiting Assistant Professor at the Helen Diller Institute at UC Berkeley. Prior to her tenure in the Bay Area, Masua was the Academic Director of the Menomadin Center for Jewish and Democratic Law at Bar-Ilan University and taught at the Schools of Law at Bar-Ilan University and Tel-Aviv University. She co-led a leadership program for high-school students, for which she received the Israeli Hope in Academia Prize from former Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, and was awarded the Gorney Prize for Young Scholar in Public Law. Her book, Radical Conservativism (in Hebrew), on the Halachic Feminist struggle in Israel, was published by Carmel Publishing House in 2024.

On January 4, 2023, the newly elected government led by longtime Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, unveiled its “judicial reform”: a plan to legislate four constitutional amendments that would effectively dismantle the existing checks on the power of the executive.

Despite having a solid majority in parliament, just one of these amendments passed into law — and was quickly struck down by the Supreme Court. The four amendments were introduced as the reform’s “first phase;” a second phase was never announced.

At the core of this achievement was a small, ad-hoc group of concerned former public servants and activists. Under the group's leadership, initial anti-government protests quickly metastasized into the largest protest movement in Israel’s history. The small leadership group became the Protest Headquarters — a well-oiled protest machine with a full-time staff and thousands of volunteers from 200 organizations. At its peak, the movement had 400,000 people marching in the streets of a country with a population of 10 million.

What were the keys to the Protest Headquarters’ success? In this panel, we ask this of three key members of the Protest Headquarters. We will discuss the mechanisms that enabled its growth, the challenges and lessons learned from the movement, and the future prospects for Israeli democracy, with attention to dilemmas as Israelis return to the polls in late 2026.
 

More About the Speakers:

Yossi Kucik previously held several senior positions in the Israeli public sector, including Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office, Commissioner of Wages at the Ministry of Finance, and Director-General of the Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption, among other key roles. Following his public service career, Kucik transitioned into the private sector. He currently serves as Chairman of Direct Insurance Group, one of Israel’s leading financial groups. In addition, he owns two consulting firms: one specializing in Media strategy and the other focused on compensation and wage consulting. Kucik is also extensively involved in public and social initiatives. He serves as Chairman of Beit Yigal Allon and is a member of the Presidium of the Israel Democracy Institute, among several other public leadership roles. In January 2023, Kucik, together with Orni Petruschka, Dan Halutz, and Yehuda Eder, established the headquarters of the protest movement opposing the Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial overhaul, which they viewed as a threat to Israeli democratic institutions. Joined by additional public figures and activists, the headquarters played a pivotal role in the movement, bringing millions of Israelis to the streets in protest and successfully halting significant parts of the proposed legislation affecting Israel’s democratic framework. Kucik holds an MBA from the Hebrew University, is married to Nirit, a father of three, and a grandfather of four.

Orni Petruschka works to make Israel an open, liberal, and democratic society for all its citizens. In recent years, Orni has been a social entrepreneur. He co-founded the Resistance Headquarters against the current Israeli government; initiated several activities to promote philanthropy, especially for supporting liberal-democracy causes; and was involved in activities for advancing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In addition, Orni co-chairs the Abraham Initiatives, an NGO which promotes equality and inclusion for Israel’s Arab citizens, and serves as Chairman of the Board of Molad — the Center for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy. Previously, Orni served as a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, studied electrical engineering at the Technion and at Cornell University, and had a career as a technology entrepreneur, having started and managed two successful telecom equipment companies that were successfully acquired, one of which was considered a landmark transaction for Israeli high tech. Orni lives in Ramat Gan; he is married and a father of 3 daughters.

Adv. Dina Zilber, former Deputy Attorney General of Israel, is regarded as one of the country’s leading jurists. During her eight-year tenure as Deputy Attorney General (2012–2020), Adv. Zilber was responsible for providing ongoing legal counsel to the government and its various ministries on a wide range of complex, sensitive, and highly consequential matters, and for shaping the Attorney General’s positions across many areas within her responsibility. Prior to this appointment, Adv. Zilber served for 16 years as a senior attorney in the High Court of Justice Department at the State Attorney’s Office, where she represented the State before the Israeli Supreme Court in more than 1,600 petitions concerning major public importance. Adv. Zilber has authored two books: Bureaucracy as Politics (2006) and In the Name of the Law: The Attorney General and the Affairs that Shook the State (2012). She also initiated and edited an additional volume titled Roots in Law, published in honor of Israel’s 70th anniversary — a panoramic collection surveying the development of Israeli legal practice from the founding of the state to the present day, written by legal professionals from across all generations and departments of the Ministry of Justice. Adv. Zilber has received numerous public honors and awards, including the “Women at the Forefront” Award in the Government and Politics category (2017); the Leon Charney Award of Recognition from the Deborah Forum – Women in Foreign Policy and National Security (2018); the Transparency Shield Award from Transparency International Israel (2019); the Gorny Award for Public Sector Jurists (2020); and the Knight of Quality Government Award in the Executive Branch category (2020). Adv. Zilber holds an LL.M. with honors from Tel Aviv University. Over the years, she has taught undergraduate and graduate law students at various academic institutions. She lectures extensively in public and professional forums, and regularly publishes both legal scholarship and opinion articles in the press. Since the onset of Israel's judicial overhaul, she has also served as a key member of the Protest Headquarters Advisory Board.
 

The Jan Koum Israel Studies Program at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law invites you to a seminar with Yossi Melman, one of Israel's most prominent intelligence journalists and a New York Times bestselling author, for a conversation on the lessons emerging from Israel's recent intelligence challenges. Melman will draw on decades of reporting on Mossad, Shin Bet, and Military Intelligence while exploring the failures, adaptations, and ongoing dilemmas facing Israel's intelligence community in the wake of the Gaza war, the confrontation with Iran, and the conflict in Lebanon.

The structured conversation — led by Or Rabinowitz and introduced by Amichai Magen — will be followed by a Q&A, offering participants the opportunity to engage directly with one of the foremost analysts of Israeli security.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Yossi Melman is one of his country's leading investigative reporters, as well as a security and intelligence commentator for the daily newspaper Haaretz.

He has written 10 books on his subject matters. One of them, Every Spy a Prince, was a New York Times bestseller. His book Spies Against Armageddon, a history of Israel's intelligence community, was published in the US in 2012. (Read his tips for writing about espionage and military intelligence in How To Write a History of Something Secret).

He is the recipient of the Sokolov Award, Israel's most prestigious journalism gong, and a few other Jewish American awards. He has also created and written Hebrew and English scripts for film documentaries. One of them, Inside the Mossad, is a four-part Netflix series.

On Wednesday, May 13, the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is pleased to welcome Matthew Levitt — an expert on counterterrorism and intelligence — to discuss the war with Iran and the aftermath in the Middle East.

On Wednesday, May 6, the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and the Hoover Institution's Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on the Middle East and the Islamic World are pleased to welcome Izabella Tabarovsky for a talk titled From Soviet Antisemitism to Contemporary Antizionism.

Izabella Tabarovsky is a scholar of Soviet antizionism and contemporary antisemitism, a sought-after speaker and lecturer, and the author of Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide (Wicked Son). She is a fellow with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC; senior fellow with the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities in Palo Alto; and a fellow with the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and the Comper Center for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at the University of Haifa.

A contributing writer at Tablet, she has also published in Newsweek, Sapir, Quillette, The National Interest, Fathom, The Forward, and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Her essays have appeared in several edited volumes, including October 7: The Wars over Words and Deeds (Academic Studies Press); The Rebirth of Antisemitism in the 21st Century: From the Academic Boycott Campaign into the Mainstream (Routledge); Mapping the New Left Antisemitism: The Fathom Essays(Routledge); Sionismo y antisionismo: Un debate necesario (RiL editores); and Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People (Wicked Son). Her work has been translated into Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Polish, Russian, Czech, and other languages.

Follow her on X @IzaTabaro

On Wednesday, February 25, the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is pleased to welcome Judea Pearl to present the 2026 Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture. He will discuss his latest book, Coexistence and Other Fighting Words: Selected Writings of Judea Pearl.

The Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture honors the life of Daniel Pearl (Class of '85), who was a journalist, musician, and family man dedicated to the ideals of peace and humanity. In 2002, Daniel was kidnapped and killed by terrorists in Pakistan while working as a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.

The 2026 Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture is presented by the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program in partnership with Hillel at Stanford.