Amit Mekel

Amit Mekel was born in 1980 in Daliyat al-Karmel

Amit Mekel was born Amit Makalda on 20 February 1980 in the Druze village of Daliyat al-Karmel. At 14 he moved to Haifa to attend the Hugim High School.

He served in the IDF as a paratrooper for 5 years. He then earned a bachelor's degree in diplomacy and strategy at Reichman University and a master's degree in diplomacy and security at Tel Aviv University. He is studying for a doctorate at Claremont Graduate University in the United States.

After joining the Foreign Ministry, he served at the embassy in Cairo and was evacuated with his family after the 2011 attack on the embassy. He later served as vice consul general in São Paulo, as an adviser in the Israeli delegation to the European Union and NATO in Brussels, and as deputy director of the ministry's European International Division. As deputy consul general in Los Angeles, he was the first non-Jewish Israeli diplomat to serve in the southwestern United States.

In 2024 he was appointed ambassador to Paraguay and presented his credentials to President Santiago Peña on 6 November 2024. He has been married to Keren since 2010, has 3 children, and raised them as Jewish. In 2024 he published his book The Journey to Israeliness.