ZFA Plenary Conference
The Zionist Federation of Australia will hold its Plenary Conference on Sunday 21 November, online. The conference will gather Jewish leaders including student and Zionist youth movement leaders from around the country to discuss challenges facing the Australian Jewish community and the State of Israel.
Dr Tal Becker
The conference will include two keynote sessions:
The Global Peoplehood session will bring together guest speakers representing Jewish and Zionist communities from Russia, South Africa, Italy, UAE and Israel, in what will be a fascinating series of conversations on what connects us as Jewish people and the centrality of Israel in Jewish life.
The panellists are Pnina Agenyahu (Director, Partnerships Division, Jewish Agency for Israel), Rowan Polovin (National Chairman, South African Zionist Federation), Noemi Di Segni (President of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities), Rami Teplitskiy (Diplomat in the Israeli Embassy in Moscow, former Russian Jewish community shaliach in Melbourne) and Sarah Ben Shimol (leader of the Jewish community in Dubai).
Our second, in-camera session, will feature Mohammad Darawshe and Tal Becker in conversation. They will explore issues within Israeli society, particularly relating to Jewish – Arab coexistence.
Mohammad Darawshe is a leading expert on Jewish-Arab relations. He is a Shalom Hartman Institute faculty member and Director of Planning, Equality and Shared Society at Givat Haviva Educational Center. He previously served as Co-Director of The Abraham Fund Initiatives and as Elections Campaign Manager for the Democratic Arab Party and later The United Arab List.
Dr Tal Becker, who is an Australian who made Aliyah, is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He previously served as the senior policy advisor to Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, was a lead negotiator in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and was one of the main architects of the Abraham Accords. He has served as director of the International Law Department at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, at Israel’s UN Mission in New York, and in the IDF’s Military Advocate General’s Corps. He holds a doctorate from Columbia University. His recent book, Terrorism and the State won the Guggenheim Prize for Best International Law Book.
