Dore Gold

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Ambassador Dore Gold (* 1953) is a former Israeli diplomat. He also served as President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs as well as an advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

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[edit] Early life

Dore Gold was born in 1953 in Hartford, Connecticut, and was raised in a Conservative Jewish home. His primary education was spent at the Orthodox school The Yeshiva of Hartford. In the 1970s, Gold attended Mount Hermon School (Class of 1971) and then Columbia University where he received a BA from Columbia College in 1975, an MA in Political Science in 1976, and a Certificate of the Middle East Institute in 1978. In 1980, Gold made aliyah to Israel.

In 1984, he received a PhD in Political Science and Middle East Studies from his alma mater. He studied literary Arabic and specialized in International Law, and his doctoral dissertation was about Saudi Arabia. This research later formed the foundation for his 2003 New York Times bestseller, Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism. In the book, Gold argues that the Saudi kingdom actively funds terrorism by supporting the enemies of the U.S. and attacking its allies. Today, Gold lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Ofra, and his two children, Yael and Ariel.

[edit] Career

Dore Gold's political career began in 1985 when Gold served as senior research associate at Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Centre for Near East Studies. Later, he was appointed Director of the U.S. Foreign and Defense Policy Project at the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.

In 1991, Gold was an advisor to the Israeli delegation at the Madrid Peace Conference. From June 1996 to June 1997, he served as Foreign Policy Adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During the period in which Mr. Netanyahu served as the head of the Israeli opposition, Gold was instrumental in forging the relationship between the Likud Party leadership and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in response to the strategic ties that were growing between Israel's Labor government and the PLO under Yasser Arafat. Gold accompanied Netanyahu to meetings with the Jordanian leadership in 1994 and 1995 in London, Amman, and in Aqaba. As the Foreign Policy Adviser under Netanyahu after the 1996 elections, Gold worked with the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Jordan and others in the Arab world. He was also involved in negotiations leading up to the Hebron Agreement and the Note for the Record.

Gold himself has not written about the period in which he served as an envoy to the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world; nonetheless, a number of revelations have been disclosed by other authors. According to Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin (Yasser Arafat: A Political Biography, p.175), Gold and Netanyahu advisor Yitzhak Molcho were the first envoys of the newly -elected Likud government to meet with Yasser Arafat in the Gaza Strip on June 27, 1996. Dennis Ross relates to the "Abu-Mazen-Dore Gold" talks that ensued afterwards as a result of which the Palestinians closed down offices in East Jerusalem that Israel had argued were a violation of the Oslo Agreements (The Missing Peace, p. 263). This was the price that Arafat had to pay for his first meeting with Netanyahu. It was a hard concession for the Palestinians, according to Ross, for it was viewed by them as a "symbolic retreat on East Jerusalem."

On the Syrian negotiating track, former Israeli ambassador to the US, Itamar Rabinovich, describes how he concluded with Gold an understanding over the Monitoring Group for Southern Lebanon, which was followed by a direct discussion between Gold and the Syrian ambassador to the US, Walid Muallam (The Brink of Peace: The Israeli-Syrian Negotiations, p.234). According to the French journalist, Charles Enderline (Shattered Peace pp. 47-49), Gold secured a commitment from Secretary of State Warren Christopher that the Rabin "deposit" on the future of the Golan Heights did not bind the State of Israel. This effort also included obtaining a new US commitment from the Clinton administration to the September 1975 Ford letter, in which it was stated that the US would give great weight to Israel remaining on the Golan Heights. According to the Israeli Hebrew daily, Maariv (December 31, 1999), Christopher wrote this re-newed commitment in a formal letter of assurances to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 19, 1996.

From 1997 to 1999, Gold was the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. In 1998, Gold served as a member of the Israeli delegation at the Wye River negotiations between Israel, the PLO, and then U.S. President Bill Clinton at the Wye River Plantation in Maryland.

Since 2000, Gold has served as president of the non-profit institute, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. From 2001 to 2003, Gold served as an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, most notably at the Aqaba Summit with President George W. Bush. During this period, Gold regularly appeared on US network television programs on behalf of the Sharon government, including Meet the Press, The Today Show, CNN's Late Edition, as well as on Fox and Friends. In July of 2003, Gold testified as an expert before the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs on Saudi Arabia's alleged role in providing ideological and financial support for international terrorism.

[edit] Positions held

  • 1985-1996 - Senior research associate, Dayan Centre for Near East Studies. Director, US Foreign and Defense Policy Project at the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.
  • 1991 - Advisor, Madrid Peace Conference.
  • 1996-1997 - Foreign policy advisor, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
  • 1997-1999 - Israeli ambassador, United Nations
  • 1998 - Israeli delegation, Wye River negotiations
  • 2000 - Present - President, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
  • 2002-2004 - Advisor, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

[edit] Publications

[edit] Books

  • The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City (ISBN: 0786147849 / Publisher: Regnery, Blackstone Audiobooks / Date: Jan 2007)
  • Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos (Crown Forum, November, 2004). ISBN 1-4000-5475-3
  • Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism (Regnery, 2003). ISBN 0-89526-135-9
  • American Military Strategy in the Middle East: The Implications of the US Regional Command Structure (CENTCOM) For Israel (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Publications), 1993.
  • Israel as an American Non-NATO Ally: Parameters of Defense and Industrial Cooperation (Boulder: Westview Press), 1992.

[edit] Selected articles

[edit] Quotes

"We intend to show that Israel needs a security process as well as a peace process" [1]

"To continue with the old diplomatic approach would be like hammering square pegs into round holes." [2]

"...the West's campaign has overlooked a critical component of terrorism -- that is, the precise source of the terror, the ideology that motivates individuals and groups to slaughter thousands of innocent people, and perhaps even to take their own lives."[3]

"Unfortunately Israel has to lose more innocent civilians to prove to the world the necessity and justice of the fence."[4]

[edit] Reaction and criticism

[edit] Harris Schoenberg, Director of UN Affairs for Bnai Brith

"He was forceful, he was eloquent. He was dramatic," said the director of United Nations affairs for Bnai Brith, Harris Schoenberg, on Ambassador Gold's maiden address at the UN (The Forward, July 18, 1997). The Forward, itself, which reported the address, called Gold "a skilled debater."

[edit] A.M. Rosenthal, New York Times

Writing in his weekly column on Israel not belonging to a regional group in the U.N., New York Times op-ed writer and former editor, A.M. Rosenthal, noted on October 8, 1999: "Dore Gold, leaving soon after a tour of duty as one of the best U.N. representatives Israel ever had, points out that membership in regional groups is a requirement for nomination to the Security Council."

[edit] Prince Bandar bin Sultan

In response to Dore Gold's testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Subcommittee, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Ambassador to the United States, remarked, "It should be known that Dore Gold is not an expert on Saudi society, faith or culture. He is simply hatred's scribe.

"Dore Gold seeks to instill fear and animosity among friends and allies. While others are working to eliminate incitement and promote peace, Dore Gold works to perpetuate hate and conflict. He has opposed virtually every major peace initiative over the past two decades.

"Dore Gold has carried on a campaign of lies, and unsubstantiated accusations. His goal is to malign the Saudi government and drive a wedge between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Ironically, this is the very same objective shared by Osama bin Laden." [5]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Gad Yaacobi		 Israeli Ambassador to the UN
1996-1999		 Succeeded by
Yehuda Lancry