Avi Beker

Avi Beker was born in Tel Aviv in 1951.[1] After completing military service in the Israel Defense Forces, he pursued higher education in Israel and abroad, graduating from Tel Aviv University and subsequently earning a doctorate in political science from the City University of New York.[1]

Beker served as a member of Israel's Permanent Mission to the United Nations from 1977 to 1982.[1][3] He later wrote extensively about Israel–UN relations. His 1988 book, The United Nations and Israel: From Recognition to Reprehension, published by Lexington Books, examined the changing relationship between Israel and the world body.[2][4]

In 1985 Beker joined the World Jewish Congress, where he spent nearly two decades in increasingly senior roles.[1] He served as executive director of the WJC's Israel office until 2001 and as the organization's international relations director from 1998 to 2001.[1] The WJC Plenary Assembly, meeting in Jerusalem, appointed him secretary-general in November 2001, making him the organization's most senior staff member.[1] In a 1998 conference participant appendix, Beker was listed as a WJC director.[5]

Beker helped establish the Israel Council on Foreign Relations, a foreign-policy think tank operating under WJC auspices, and served as its first executive director.[1] He also headed the Institute of the World Jewish Congress from 1994 to 2003 and left the WJC in November 2003.[1]

After departing the World Jewish Congress, Beker moved into academic and policy work. He headed the Jewish Public Policy Project and the UN–Israel Institute at Tel Aviv University's Hartog School of Government and Policy.[1] He taught international diplomacy to master's students at Tel Aviv University and international law at Ono Academic College.[2][6]

Beker held the Goldman Visiting Professorship in Georgetown University's Department of Government before returning to Tel Aviv University's master's program in diplomacy after approximately two years.[1][7] He also testified before the U.S. Congress about Jewish refugees from Arab countries.[2]

Beker's publications addressed international politics, United Nations affairs, Holocaust restitution, and Jewish identity.[2][4] His 1988 volume The United Nations and Israel: From Recognition to Reprehension included the chapter “Peacekeeping and Peace-unmaking.” A further chapter, “The United Nations and Security Regimes: The Unfulfilled Vision,” appeared in Security Regimes in the Middle East, edited by Efraim Inbar and published by the State University of New York Press in 1995.[4]

In 1997 Beker authored Movements of Nazi Gold: Uncovering the Trail, issued as Policy Studies no. 9 by the World Jewish Congress in Jerusalem. The 28-page study appeared amid renewed attention to Holocaust-era asset recovery following the collapse of communism.[4][8] His chapter “Perpetuating the Tragedy: The United Nations and the Palestinian Refugees” appeared in The Forgotten Million: The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Countries in 1999 and addressed the United Nations' differing treatment of Palestinian and Jewish refugees.[2]

Beker also edited or co-edited several reference works. With Yaacov Ro'i, he edited Jewish Culture and Identity in the Soviet Union, published by New York University Press in 1991; the cataloged chapter “The Jewish National Movement in the Soviet Union: A Profile” appears on pages 27–41.[9][10] He edited Jewish Communities of the World, published by Lerner Publication Co. in 1998.[11]

In August 2014 he published “UN Peacekeeping Forces: Preventive Diplomacy and Its Limitations” in Military and Strategic Affairs (volume 6, number 2). The article examined the legal and political ambiguities of UN peacekeeping, its role along and beyond Israel's borders during and after the Cold War, and the limits of transforming peacekeepers into an intervention or defensive mechanism through technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicles.[12]

Beker's The Chosen: The History of an Idea and the Anatomy of an Obsession was published by Palgrave Macmillan in April 2008.[13] In it, he presented chosenness as a central, often unspoken theological and psychological tension in Jewish-Gentile relations and as an important factor in the history of antisemitism.[13][14] He argued that conventional economic, sociological, political, and scapegoat theories were insufficient on their own and emphasized the religious roots of anti-Jewish hostility. These were Beker's interpretive arguments rather than settled historical conclusions.[13]

Avi Beker died in June 2015 at the age of 64 following a battle with cancer.[1] WJC President Ronald S. Lauder stated that Beker was “instrumental in implementing the WJC's efforts for the restitution of property looted from Jews by the Nazis during World War II.” Lauder also credited him with promoting dialogue and understanding between the United States and Israel and providing practical counsel on international diplomacy.[1]

Beyond his WJC and academic roles, Beker served on the boards of Beit Hatfutsot—the Jewish Diaspora museum in Tel Aviv—and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.[1] He was also an Amuta member on NGO Monitor's Board of Directors.[3] He was described as a key figure in campaigns for Holocaust-asset restitution, efforts against antisemitism, and international recognition of the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab lands.[3]