Raphael Israeli


Raphael Israeli is Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern, Islamic and Chinese history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as a research fellow at Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in Jerusalem.
Israeli was born in Fes, Morocco and emigrated to Israel at the age of 14. Graduate of Nahalal. For 12 years he was a career officer in the Israeli Defence Force in Military Intelligence, whereafter he switched to Academia.
He received a degree in Arabic and History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and became a fellow of the Center of Chinese Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned an M.A. degree in East Asian History and a Ph.D in Chinese and Islamic History. Israeli's working languages are: Hebrew, English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Russian.
Israeli has taught for 30 years at the Hebrew University and was a visiting professor at universities in the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, and Europe. He is the author of over 40 books and many scholarly articles on the Modern Middle East, Islamic radicalism, Islam in China and Asia and the opening of China by the French.
In 2017, Israeli published a book in Hebrew titled The Arab Minority in Israel, Open and Hidden Processes, in which he calls the Arab minority a "fifth column", who receive more from the state than they contribute and expresses regret that they are not confined to camps like Japanese Americans were in WWII.

Publications