Roundtable “Russian Meddling in the Middle East: The Jerusalem Perspective”

Date of publication: April 2, 2024

Prague Centre for Middle East Relations (PCMR) of CEVRO with Association for International Affairs (AMO) organized a closed roundtable “Russian Meddling in the Middle East: The Jerusalem Perspective” with Vladimir (Ze’ev) Khanin, expert on Israeli-Russian relations and politics and Russian-speaking Jewish community in Israel and in diaspora. The event took place on March 18, 2024 at CEVRO.

The debate was moderated by Pavel Havlíček, Analyst at Association for International Affairs (AMO).

The event was held under the Chatham House Rules.

Dr. Vladimir (Ze’ev) Khanin is an Israeli expert on Russian-speaking Jewish community in Israel and the Diaspora, the Israeli society and the Israel-FSU relations and politics. He got his Ph.D. in Political Science/Contemporary History from Moscow Institute for African Studies, the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1989, and in 1991 completed post-Doctoral studies in the Institute for Russian and Soviet Studies at the University of Oxford, U.K. Since his Aliya to Israel in 1992 and till 1999 he worked, as a lecturer and researcher, at the Department of Middle Eastern and African History and the Cummings Center for Russian and East European Studies, Tel-Aviv University. In 1998-2012 and again since 2022 he lectures Political Studies (currently as Adjunct Professor), and currently heads the Post-Soviet Conflicts Research Program at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University. In 2012-2020 (since 2013 as Associate Professor) he taught Political and Jewish Studies at Ariel University, and in 2009-2022 he also served as Chief Scientist (chief scholarly expert and Deputy Director-General for research) of the Israeli Ministry of Aliya and Integration. Since 2018 Prof. Khanin also serves as the Academic Chairman of the Institute for Euro-Asian Jewish Studies, established by the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress.

He gave visiting courses and public lectures in Israeli and the FSU Government, Politics and Society in a few Universities and other academic establishments in the Great Britain, the USA, Germany, Romania and the FSU (including London, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, Potsdam, Bucharest, Cluj, Moscow, Kiev, Lvov, Kharkov, Riga, Minsk and Baku) and served as a political commentator at the Israeli Channel Nine TV, The Voice of Israel Radio, Radio Liberty and the BBC Russian Service. His interviews and articles often appear in various Israeli, USA and European, as well as the FSU printed and electronic media.

His academic publications include 9 books, 8 edited collections, several monographs, and numerous articles on Israeli, East European, Jewish, and African politics and society. Among the books are: Documents on Ukrainian Jewish Identity and Emigration (London, 2004); “Russian” Israelis at “Home” and “Abroad”: Migration, Identity and Culture (Ramat-Gan, 2011); Post-Soviet Jewish Youth (Moscow and Ramat-Gan, 2013); Political Party Systems and Electoral Trends in Israel of the Early 21st Century (Moscow, 2014); “The Third Israel”: Russian-speaking Community and Politics in the Contemporary Jewish State (Moscow, 2015); From Russia to Israel… And Back? Contemporary Transnational Russian Israeli Diaspora (Berlin and Boston, 2022), The Jews of Contemporary Post-Soviet States: Sociological Insights from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Kazakhstan Berlin and Boston, 2023). Since March 2022, Prof. Khanin serves as co-editor of the academic series Post-Soviet Jewry in Transition at the De Gruyter-Brill academic publishers.