Yuval Rotem

Rotem was born in Tel Aviv; a 2010 profile described him as 51 years old at the time.[9] He entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after military service and studies, joining the diplomatic corps in the mid-1980s.[9][6]

Rotem’s early diplomatic work included heading the public-relations operation of Israel’s mission to the United Nations, where he first met Benjamin Netanyahu while Netanyahu was serving as Israel’s UN ambassador.[9] He subsequently served as a Foreign Ministry chief of staff, working under several foreign ministers, including Ehud Barak and Netanyahu.[9]

From September 1999 to August 2004, Rotem served as Israel’s consul general in Los Angeles.[4] His public advocacy during that posting included a May 2001 opinion article in which he wrote, “Negotiation and education for peace are the only means forward.”[10] He argued for negotiations and peace education while rejecting an equivalence between Palestinian attacks and Israel’s response to the violence of the period.[10]

Writing about his five years in Southern California, Rotem recalled driving the 10 freeway from Venice through the Pico corridor, Koreatown, West Adams, and East Los Angeles, and making friends in each community.[4] He portrayed Los Angeles as a place where diverse communities lived alongside one another and expressed respect for “the other.”[4]

In 2003, Netanyahu, then foreign minister, appointed Rotem to the rank of ambassador, making him one of Israel’s youngest-ever ambassadors.[11] Rotem served as Israel’s envoy to Australia and New Zealand from 2007 to 2013.[11] During that posting, he visited a Maori community in Auckland in 2008 that had expressed interest in Judaism and Kabbalah.[5] He and embassy staff were welcomed with songs, dances, greetings in Maori, and the hongi, a traditional greeting involving pressing noses.[5] About 90 members of the community studied Kabbalah and met weekly by videoconference with the Kabbalah Center in Los Angeles; Rotem said he was moved by the encounter.[5] His public advocacy also included an opinion piece published opposite one by Gregor Henderson in the Sydney Morning Herald in November 2012.[12]

By October 2016, Rotem headed the Foreign Ministry’s Public Diplomacy Directorate and had accumulated approximately thirty years of diplomatic experience.[6] Following Dore Gold’s resignation that month, Rotem was designated his replacement and became acting director-general.[6][1] Netanyahu made the appointment permanent on December 29, 2016, announcing it at a farewell event for Gold.[1]

As director-general, Rotem handled diplomatic exchanges with foreign governments, including a May 2017 telephone call to Turkish ambassador Kemal Okem following President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comments about Israel and Jerusalem.[13] Netanyahu requested the call, which the ministry termed a “clarification conversation”; Rotem’s message echoed a ministry statement issued the previous evening.[13]

Rotem also supported expanding relations with Africa.[14] After the postponement of an Israel-Africa summit planned for Togo in 2017, he said that fourteen African presidents had indicated their intention to attend and that Israel remained committed to strengthening ties with the continent.[14] Addressing the possibility that preparations required more time, he said, “we will do it.”[14]

At a January 2018 Tel Aviv International Salon event for new immigrants, Rotem argued that the Middle East’s conflicts extended beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[15] He linked Israel’s concerns about Iran’s regional influence to growing relations with some Arab states.[15] In October that year, he accompanied Netanyahu to Oman alongside Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and National Security Council head Meir Ben-Shabbat.[3]

In February 2018, during Israeli-Polish discussions concerning Poland’s Holocaust law, Rotem called the agreement to continue dialogue a significant achievement after ongoing discussions.[16] He led Israel’s delegation in the March talks with Polish diplomats.[17] Before those talks, he called for preserving historical truths and protecting freedom of research and speech, describing Holocaust memory as “a core issue cutting to the essence of the Jewish people.”[17] He also said the delegation would raise concern about an observed increase in antisemitic manifestations.[17]

Rotem’s approach to the ministry’s organization emphasized adapting to changing international priorities.[7] In a May 2018 interview about recruitment and assignments, he argued that foreign ministries needed flexibility and change to remain relevant, and that Israel should identify regions likely to become important in five or ten years and invest in them early.[7] He identified Asia and Africa as areas receiving attention, naming Kenya, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, and said a ministry committee had agreed to open an Israeli mission in Rwanda.[7]

The ministry also pursued direct communication with Arab audiences through social media.[18] In May 2018, it launched a Facebook page for people in Iraq, conceived as a kind of “digital embassy.”[18] Rotem said the initiative responded to growing Arab interest in Israel and used social media to reach neighboring populations.[18] Ministry Arabic-language content had received about fifty million views in Iraq during 2017, a figure provided by the ministry’s head of Arabic-language digital diplomacy.[18]

Staffing and budgets formed another substantial part of Rotem’s work.[19] In January 2018, negotiations reduced proposed closures of overseas missions from twenty-two of Israel’s 103 missions to seven, with the closures to be phased over three years beginning in 2019.[19] Rotem helped persuade the Finance Ministry to abandon a plan to eliminate 140 headquarters positions, although fifty positions were still to be cut.[19] The negotiations concerned approximately forty million shekels in costs connected to overseas employees’ salary agreements and included a proposed addition of 175 million shekels for ministry activities.[19] In December 2018, he chaired the ministry committee that selected a series of proposed heads of missions, whose appointments remained subject to government approval.[20]

In December 2019, Rotem led an interministerial delegation to Dubai and signed the official agreement for Israel’s participation in Expo 2020.[21] The delegation met Emirati officials and discussed whether Israeli citizens could travel to Dubai for the event.[21] Israel’s participation had been approved with an investment of seventy million shekels, including fifteen million from KKL-JNF and five million from the Knesset, with the balance allocated among government ministries.[21]

During the coronavirus outbreak in February 2020, Rotem told Israeli diplomatic delegations in China, Japan, and South Korea that public health took priority.[22] He also said Israel would seek to limit harm to diplomatic relations and maintain dialogue.[22] The ministry planned to add staff to a Ben-Gurion Airport command room to assist tourists barred from entering Israel.[22]

In May 2020, Rotem urged Finance Ministry officials to study a State Comptroller report on the Foreign Ministry’s resources, arguing that Israel needed a strong, properly funded ministry to address major political challenges.[8] The audit findings included a fourteen-percent decline in the ministry’s budget since 2015, during a period when the overall state budget increased by twenty-five percent.[23] For 2019 specifically, the ministry’s budget had fallen by about fifteen percent while the state budget increased by 4.3 percent.[8] Amid a severe operational crisis, the ministry warned of an approximately eighty-percent drop in the promotion of economic activity.[8]

In June 2020, Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi chose Alon Ushpiz to replace Rotem as director-general.[2] Rotem had requested to conclude his service after a handover period and a lengthy tenure in the ministry.[2]

Rotem advocated a larger Foreign Ministry role in Israel’s national resilience.[24] In an April 2018 interview, he described Israel as capable of containing many different people and traditions, and argued that its international work required greater courage, vision, and investment.[24] He maintained that the country’s future resilience would increasingly involve the international arena as well as domestic affairs.[24]

A November 16, 2020 announcement identified Rotem as a prospective member of the public council of JReady, a Jewish emergency-response network.[25] His participation was planned to follow his retirement from the foreign service in December.[25]

During Rotem’s ambassadorship, Australia summoned him in 2010 over allegations that suspected Mossad operatives had used stolen identities and forged Australian passports in connection with the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai.[26] Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Australia was dissatisfied with the explanation it had received and would defend the integrity of its passport system; Israel maintained that there was no evidence of Israeli involvement.[26] Australian-Israeli relations were also tested when details emerged in 2013 about Australian-Israeli Ben Zygier’s death in Israeli custody in 2010.[27] These episodes concerned allegations about Israeli activities, not established findings about Rotem’s personal role.[27]

The 2018 Polish Holocaust law raised a significant dispute over historical speech: Israel feared it would inhibit discussion of the Holocaust, while Polish officials affirmed their commitment to truth about the Holocaust and Polish-Jewish history.[17] The law criminalized certain statements assigning responsibility to Poland for Holocaust-era crimes.[16]

Other debates concerned Rotem’s assessment of diplomatic opportunities.[14][15] Analysts questioned whether the Arab-Israeli rapprochement he described in 2018 was overstated or remained dependent on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[15] Reporting on the postponed Togo summit identified domestic unrest and Arab pressure as possible factors, without settling their relative importance.[14]