JINSA held its 2012 Spring Board Meeting on June 3-4 in Washington, DC. Highlights of the meeting included a briefing by Major General Gadi Shamni, the Israel Defense and Armed Forces Attaché to the United States & Canada. JINSA's Board also spent a day at the Pentagon as guests of the U.S. Special Operations Command.
On February 22, 2012, Farid Ghadry, co-founder of The Reform Party of Syria, briefed JINSA members via conference call on the situation in Syria. Mr. Ghadry discussed a post-Assad Syria including the role of Islamists in the civil war, prospects for sectarian violence, and anticipated changes in Syrian foreign policy.
On February 1, the JINSA New York Cabinet hosted Navy SEAL Leif Babin, who recently left active duty. Babin spent 13 years on active duty with the U.S. Navy, including nine years in SEAL Teams. He deployed three times to Iraq (2004, 2006, 2009-10) and supported forces deployed to Afghanistan and elsewhere.
On February 2, the JINSA Los Angeles Cabinet kicked off its 2012 programming with a briefing by Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal. Dubbing 2012 “the year of decision,” Mr. Stephens discussed the rise of Islamism and Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons against the backdrop of a weakening West.
Hosted by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs as part of C-SPAN's "Book TV" series, author Edwin Black discussed his book, British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement: The West's Secret Pact to Get Mideast Oil, in Washington, DC in November 2011. In this ground-breaking book, Black exposed the secret 1928 agreement signed by a consortium of oil companies that created a Western-controlled oil cartel in the Middle East.
On November 7, 2011 in Washington, DC, Admiral James G. Stavridis was presented with JINSA's Henry M. Jackson Distinguished Service Award. Admiral Stavridis is the NATO Supreme Allied Commander and Commander of U.S. European Command.
A statue of Commodore Uriah P. Levy was dedicated in mid-December at Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia, Pa. Commodore Levy was the first Jewish admiral to serve in the U.S. Navy. Joshua Landes, a member of JINSA's Board of Directors, was the Master of Ceremonies for the event.
On November 7, a panel of four experts addressed the Board of Directors on Iran. They included Michael Eisenstadt, director of the Military & Security Studies Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Ali Alfoneh, Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and; cyber security expert Henry Bar-Levav.
