The MEPIN 2025 Insight Seminar: A Deep Dive into Israel’s Strategic Challenges and the State of Israeli Society Today
September 7–15, 2025
Led by Dr. Eric Mandel, Founder and Director of MEPIN and Yitzhak Sokoloff, President of Keshet Educational Journeys
Dear Friends,
For over two decades, the annual MEPIN-Keshet Strategic Insight Seminar has provided a one-of-a-kind experience: an intensive, off-the-record opportunity to engage with Israel’s leading strategic thinkers and decision-makers. This program is designed for a small group of well-informed participants who are deeply invested in Israel’s future and eager to expand their understanding of the region.
Since 2017, our seminars have expanded beyond Israel to include Egypt, Jordan, the UAE (both before and after the Abraham Accords), Bahrain, and, most recently, Qatar and Oman in 2023.
A joint initiative of MEPIN (Middle East Policy Information Network), directed by Dr. Eric Mandel, and Keshet, led by Yitzhak Sokoloff, the seminar is intentionally intimate—many participants have returned year after year, some since 2005.
In response to strong interest, we are pleased to announce the 2025 Strategic Insight Seminar, taking place from September 7 to 15 in Israel.
This year’s seminar, see itinerary below, will feature a mix of high-level briefings and on-the-ground field visits, addressing Israel’s most pressing strategic dilemmas.
Topics will include:
- Preserving the moral standards of the IDF in unprecedented combat conditions
- Navigating the international and legal ramifications of current military operations
- Balancing the dual imperatives of defeating Hamas and rescuing hostages
- Countering threats from Iran and Syria
- Addressing rising concerns over settler violence and the Issue of Ultra-Orthodox Enlistment in the IDF
- What are Israel’s options going forward
We currently have 10 returning participants, all veterans of previous Insight Seminars. Due to the limited size of the group, we are opening a small number of additional spots to MEPIN members and Keshet alumni, beginning with those who joined recent solidarity missions.
Please note: the itinerary will evolve in response to the availability of our speakers and the fast-changing realities on the ground.
If you are interested in joining us for this exceptional opportunity,
please contact Dr. Eric Mandel directly at ermandelmd@gmail.com.
Provisional Program
Sunday, September 7: Shock, Trauma, and Heroism
❖ Visit to Kibbutz Kfar Aza for a personal testimony.
❖ Pay respects at the Nova Memorial Site.
❖ Lunch in Sderot, followed by a visit to the site of the former police station and a presentation on the battle that took place here on October 7
❖ Meet with COGAT, the army unit charged with the impossibly difficult mission of bringing humanitarian aid into Gaza without strengthening Hamas.
❖ Conclude our day in Rahat, a Bedouin Arab city in the Negev, where we will meet two residents who repeatedly plunged into the battle and saved dozens of Israelis at the Nova Festival (Time Permitting)
Overnight: Inbal or Orient Hotel, Jerusalem
Monday, September 8: To Be a Moral Army in an Immoral War- Is it possible?
❖ The Genocide Libel- Ambassador Avigail Frisch, Head of the Legal Department of the Foreign Ministry and former Israeli Ambassador to the ICC in The Hague.
❖ Meet with a group of combat veterans who experienced first-hand the dilemmas of combat in Gaza- the first war in history in which the weaker side has striven to drive up casualties among its civilian population purposely.
❖ Response to Ha’aretz accusations of Israeli war crimes with military historian Daniel Orbach of BESA, the strategic studies center of Bar Ilan University.
❖ Lunch on own
❖ Meet with the IDF Prosecutor’s Office to understand the practicalities and principles of applying international law to the battlefield in Gaza.
❖ Lt. Col. (Res.) Avital Leibowitz, Israel’s head of the American Jewish Committee. “The War in the mass media”
❖ Dinner with Asher Fredman, The Misgav Center for National Security and Director for Israel at the Abraham Accords Institute.
Overnight: Inbal or Orient Hotel, Jerusalem
Tuesday, September 9: Looking Inward- Can we heal if we don’t hear?
❖ The Hilltop Youth and the challenge of their violent fringe to law enforcement and the fundamental ethos of the settlement movement. Visit the outskirts of the Judean Desert to see first-hand some of the recent settlement activity, including representatives of hilltop youth. If possible, we will also meet with the “muhtar” of a Palestinian village in the West Bank for a different perspective.
❖ Lunch with Colonel (res.) Avichai Tanami, a veteran of Sayeret Matkal, was recently appointed to lead the project of coping with the fundamental ethos of the settlement movement.
❖ Briefing and demonstration on the new frontier of Drone Warfare at a special IDF school established to train new drone operators with Chai Sokoloff.
Haredim and the Draft
❖ Visit to a haredi hesder yeshiva in Gan Yavneh that sends its students to combat units in the IDF.❖ Meet Rabbi Yonatan Reis, founder of the “Hedvata” network and/or the Hashonaim Brigade, a new combat unit created to accommodate the needs of the Haredi community.
❖ Dinner in Tel Aviv with Major General (res.) Yoss Kuperwasser, former Commander of the Research Department of the IDF Intelligence Corp and the Director-General of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.
❖ Overnight: Carlton Hotel, Tel Aviv
Wednesday, September 10: Thinking Out of the Box after October 7
❖ Major General Giora Eisland (Res.)- Former Head of the National Security Council and one of Israel’s best-known creative thinkers on strategic issues (past Seminar participant).
❖ Major General (Res.) Gershon Hacohen, former Commander of the Northern Corps, and the General Staff Corps and military commander of the disengagement from Gaza.
❖ Meet UAE Ambassador His Excellency Mohamed Al Khaja for a frank conversation on what an Israeli-Palestinian relationship might look like in the light of the Abraham Accords.
❖ Mini Seminar at the INSS, the Institute of National Security Studies of Tel Aviv University. Meet with Dr Raz Zimmt, the director of the INSS Iran program, or Yoel Guzansky, formerly head of the Iran desk at the NSC and INSS expert on Syria and the Palestinians.
❖ Dinner in Tel Aviv with journalist Avi Issacharoff
Overnight: Carlton Hotel, Tel Aviv
Thursday. September 11 The View from the North
❖ Drive to the Golan Heights for briefings on Israel’s new positions in Syria.
❖ The pitfalls and potential of Israeli-Syrian Relations with the Alma Institute❖ Visit to Druze families in Magdal Shams, whose children were caught on a soccer field by a Hezbollah attack.
❖ Visit to the reconstructed synagogue of Ein Keshatot
❖ Conversation with Elit and Major General (Res.) Effie Eitam in their home on the Golan Heights. Effie Eitam played a central and heroic role as a young soldier on the Golan during the Yom Kippur War and went on to become a Brigade and Division Commander in the IDF and the Minister of Infrastructure. Eitam’s son-in-law is the Commander of the Nahal Brigade, and their son is a Battalion commander in Givati. Both have served virtually non-stop in Gaza since October 7
❖ Dinner with Col. (Res.) Eyal Dror, former Commander of the Israeli Field A hospital that operated inside Syria during the height of the civil war.
Overnight: Galei Kinneret Hotel, Tiberias
Friday, September 12, To Jerusalem
❖ Return to Jerusalem via Ra’anana, where we will meet with General Yaakov Amidror, former head of the National Security Council and a veteran of past MEPIN seminars and (hopefully) with Naftali Bennett, former and currently aspiring Prime Minister of Israel.
❖ Arrive in Jerusalem to prepare for Shabbat.
❖ Musical Kabbalat Shabbat.
❖ Festive Shabbat dinner with journalist and Middle East expert Jonathan Spyer.
❖ Overnight: Inbal or Orient Hotel, Jerusalem
Shabbat, September 13 Shabbat in Jerusalem
Concluding Conversations with Professor Gil Troy and Seth Franzman of the Jerusalem Post.
Havdala and dinner with Dr. Raphael Ben Levi, director of the Churchill Program for Strategy, Statecraft, and Security of the Argaman Institute, and a research fellow at The Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy.
Overnight: Inbal or Orient Hotel, Jerusalem, Sunday, September 15.
Le’hitraot
❖ Breakfast with Yoaz Handel, former Government Minister and M.K. and founder of the “Miluimnik Party”, an attempt to revitalize the Israeli political system with veterans of the current war.
❖ Meet Rachel Goldberg, whose husband Avi was killed in action while serving as the rabbi of an IDF infantry unit in Lebanon. During the Shiva, Rachel stipulated that members of Knesset must come together with a member of a rival party or not come at all.
❖ Meet Avi Spitz, an IDF soldier grievously wounded in Gaza whose miraculous rehabilitation and no less miraculous determination to live a whole life are an inspiration to us all.
❖ TBA- flexible time for schedule adjustments and substitutions
❖ Summary and Final Dinner.
❖ Departure for Ben Gurion Airport.