Gold, Dore 1953–

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Gold, Dore 1953–

(Izidore J. Glosband)

PERSONAL:

Born 1953, in CT; immigrated to Israel, 1980; married; wife's name Ofra; children: Yael, Ariel. Education: Columbia University, B.A., 1975, M.A., 1976, certificate of the Middle East Institute, 1978, Ph.D., 1984.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Jerusalem, Israel. Office—Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 13 Tel Hai St., Jerusalem 92107, Israel. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, diplomat, ambassador, advisor, and foreign policy expert. Advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Jaffee Center for Strategic Defense Studies, Tel-Aviv University, director, U.S. foreign and development policy project and senior research associate, 1985-96; foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, 1996-97; Permanent Representative of Israel, United Nations, 1997-99; Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, president, 2000—. Worked at the Dayan Center for Near East Studies, University of Tel-Aviv; also served as a member of the Israeli delegation at the Wye River negotiations, 1998.

WRITINGS:

SDI: The U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative and the Implications of Israel's Participation, Tel-Aviv University (Tel-Aviv, Israel), 1985.

America, the Gulf, and Israel: CENTCOM (Central Command) and Emerging U.S. Regional Security Policies in the Mideast, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1988.

(Editor) Arms Control in the Middle East, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1991.

Israel as an American Non-NATO Ally: Parameters of Defense Industrial Cooperation in a Post-Cold War Relationship, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1992.

U.S. Policy toward Israel's Qualitative Edge, JCSS, Tel-Aviv University (Tel-Aviv, Israel), 1992.

After the American Elections: Preparing for Change in USA-Israel Relations: a Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies Working Group Report, edited by Joseph Alpher and Shai Feldman, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel-Aviv University (Tel-Aviv, Israel), 1993.

U.S. Forces on the Golan Heights and Israeli-Syrian Security Arrangements, JCSS, Tel-Aviv University (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1994.

Jerusalem, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel-Aviv University (Tel-Aviv, Israel), 1995.

Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism, Regnery Publishing (Washington, DC), 2003.

Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos, Crown Forum (New York, NY), 2004.

The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City, Regnery Publishing (Washington, DC), 2007.

Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas, and the Global Jihad: A New Conflict Paradigm for the West, edited by Daniel Diker, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (Jerusalem, Israel), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including Commentary, Daily Telegraph, Die Zeit, Asahi Shinbun, Ha'aretz, Jerusalem Post, New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian (London, England), and the Wall Street Journal.

SIDELIGHTS:

Dore Gold is a writer, diplomat, ambassador, and educator who has been closely involved in Israeli politics and diplomacy. Born in Connecticut in 1954, Gold grew up in a conservative Jewish-American family. He first visited Israel in 1976 and immigrated there in 1980, stated a biographer on the Jewish Virtual Library Web site. Gold has been an educator and researcher for organizations such as the Dayan Centre for Near East Studies of the University of Tel-Aviv and for the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, where he served as director of the U.S. foreign and development policy project and as a senior research associate. Gold is a leading expert on the Middle East and on American foreign policy in the region. He pursues a professional specialty in the relationship between the United States and Israel, as well as security in the Near East, stated the Jewish Virtual Library Web site biographer.

Gold has engaged in a lengthy political career that has placed him in contact with the highest levels of Israeli government and at the center of international diplomacy. He served as the eleventh Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations from 1997 to 1999. He has worked closely as an advisor to Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon. As an advisor to Sharon, Gold accompanied the prime minister to Washington, DC, and to the Aqaba Summit in 2003. He was a participant in the 1998 Wye River negotiations between Israel and the PLO. Gold "negotiated the Note for the Record, which supplemented the 1997 Hebron Protocol," reported a biographer on the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Web site. Gold also served as an important member of the 1996 negotiations between the United States, Syria, Lebanon, and France, which created the Monitoring Group for Southern Lebanon, the biographer noted.

A prolific writer, Gold is the author of numerous books on issues related to Israel, the United States, and the Middle East. He is a frequent contributor of articles and analytical pieces to newspapers and periodicals. Gold is currently president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

In Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism, Gold confronts and explains a difficult issue for the United States and its actions in the Middle East. For Gold, Saudi Arabia and the House of Saud, who are portrayed as American allies in the war against terror, are and have long been "the chief ideological and financial enabler of our most virulent enemies" in the Middle East, commented Alex Alexiev in Commentary. The author suggests that a confrontation with Saudi Arabia over this conflict of interest is inevitable in the near course of American and Saudi interaction. Gold "lays out the grounds for this looming confrontation more powerfully than any other recent writing on the subject. Gold's lucid, dispassionate, impressively researched narrative debunks much of the conventional wisdom, establishing in a systematic way the dark reality of Saudi involvement in fomenting terror," Alexiev stated. Gold points to Saudi-based Wahhabism, an extreme form of Islam that is the official Saudi religion, as a primary cause of Arab-based terrorism. He explains how Wahhabism has been instrumental in the development of Islamic extremism in the Middle East and around the world. He traces financial evidence that shows that the Saudis have been a critical financier of terrorist organizations since at least the 1970s. He reveals how, through a complex network of interrelated charities and other organizations, the Saudis have spent more than seventy billion dollars in support of terrorist groups. Alexiev called Gold's book an "outstanding contribution" to knowledge of terrorism, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. "For the general reader interested in the origins of Middle Eastern terrorism, Hatred's Kingdom, will shed a great deal of light; for policymakers in Washington, it ought to be required reading," Alexiev concluded.

Gold applies his firsthand knowledge as an ambassador to the United Nations in Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos. In this book, Gold "tackles the infrastructure of the organization and the many problems for which it has been responsible," noted reviewer Asaf Romirowsky in the Middle East Quarterly. Gold uses the biblical metaphor of the Tower of Babble to characterize what he witnessed at the United Nations, for there, as at the biblical tower, "chaos is the name of the game; everyone is on a different page in a different language," Romirowsky stated. He observes with some distaste that the U.N. appears to be more supportive of the Palestinian cause than Israel. He notes areas where the United Nations did not act, and where U.N. intervention might have been able to create a different outcome. For example, Gold states that the U.N. did not resist the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, nor did it deploy peacekeepers or other personnel in advance of genocidal killings in Bosnia and Rwanda. Gold even suggests that the United Nations has ties to terrorism, especially within the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a U.N. suborganization that he believes has been deeply infiltrated and compromised by terrorist agents. In conclusion, Gold suggests that democratic countries restrict their involvement with the U.N. and push for serious reforms within the organization.

The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City contains Gold's scholarly and in-depth historical assessment of the ongoing struggle of Jerusalem against Islamic and Palestinian forces that wish to destroy it, Western sources that display ingratitude and an apparent inability to interact properly with it, and a United Nations that has demonstrated that it is unable and perhaps unwilling to protect it. The author is sharp in his criticism and denunciation of Islamic fundamentalism, and sees it as the major contemporary threat to Jerusalem. For Israel to remain free, Gold states, it must remain under Israeli sovereignty and not as a protectorate of the United Nations or any other country or organization. Israel, and Jerusalem, Gold suggests, knows enough about itself to effectively protect itself. He also looks at many of the political troubles surrounding Jerusalem and Israel. He finds that Palestinian forces are attempting to eradicate evidence of ancient Israeli presence in Jerusalem, in an apparent attempt to eliminate any proof of Israeli claims to the area. Gold describes how the Israeli withdraw from Gaza only served to strengthen Palestinian extremists. And, he explains the ultimate futility of Palestinian and Israeli peace negotiations and how such talks have little hope of generating an agreement. An Internet Bookwatch reviewer called the book a "politically charged yet thoughtfully reasoned exhortation on how Jerusalem, a potential focal point of radical Islam's jihad against the West, can best be preserved for future generations." A Publishers Weekly critic named it "comprehensive and cogent," and suggested that it would be a "helpful resource to anyone interested in the historical and theological antecedents to today's political quagmire" in Israel.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Arms Control Today, March, 1992, Thomas L. McNaugher, review of Arms Control in the Middle East, p. 36.

Commentary, May, 2003, Alex Alexiev, "Among the Wahhabis," review of Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism, p. 70.

Defense News, November 11, 1991, Sharone Parnes, "Dore Gold; Director, U.S. Foreign & Defense Project, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies," p. 46; April 14, 1997, Steve Rodan, "Dore Gold: Israeli Foreign Policy Adviser," p. 30.

Internet Bookwatch, October, 2007, review of The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City.

Journal of Palestine Studies, winter, 1998, Michael Dumper, "Jerusalem: Final Status Issues," p. 96.

Middle East Journal, winter, 1992, review of Arms Control in the Middle East, p. 125; winter, 1994, review of Israel as an American Non-NATO Ally: Parameters of Defense Industrial Cooperation in a Post-Cold War Relationship, p. 161; summer, 2003, review of Hatred's Kingdom, p. 492.

Middle East Quarterly, winter, 2006, Asaf Romirowsky, review of Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos, p. 93.

National Journal, August 6, 2005, James Kitfield, "Left and Right Look at Gaza Pullout," p. 2534.

Orbis, summer, 1993, David Rodman, review of Israel as an American Non-NATO Ally, p. 488.

Publishers Weekly, January 29, 2007, review of The Fight for Jerusalem, p. 59.

Reference & Research Book News, June, 1989, review of America, the Gulf, and Israel: CENTCOM (Central Command) and Emerging U.S. Regional Security Policies in the Mideast, p. 32; May, 2003, review of Hatred's Kingdom, p. 43.

Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, January-March, 1993, W. Andrew Terill, review of Arms Control in the Middle East, p. 80.

Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2003, Hume Horan, "The Radicalism in Their Realm," review of Hatred's Kingdom, p. 7.