Politicsרדא מנצור

Reda Mansour

Reda Mansour is an Israeli Druze poet, historian and diplomat who served as Israel's ambassador to Ecuador, Brazil and Panama.

born 1965Hebrew poetry by a Druze writerIsraeli ambassador in Latin AmericaArab and Jewish dialogue

Occupation: poet, diplomat, writer, historian
Education: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of Salamanca

Reda Mansour was born in 1965 in Isfiya

Reda Mansour was born in 1965 in Isfiya, a Druze village in northern Israel. From 1977 to 1983 he went to school in Haifa, at the Leo Baeck Middle School and then at the Technion's Basmat High School. As a young man he was active in youth groups such as CISV, BBYO and Habonim Dror.

He earned a doctorate in Middle East history at the University of Haifa in 2009. He completed a master's degree in public administration at Harvard in 1999 as a Wexner Israel Fellow. He also studied Spanish at the University of Salamanca and spent a semester at the Hebrew University. His research deals with intellectual history in modern Syria.

Mansour joined the Foreign Ministry in 1990. He served as consul in San Francisco, deputy chief of mission in Lisbon and consul general in Atlanta, and became ambassador to Ecuador at 35. He was ambassador to Brazil from 2014 to 2016 and to Panama from 2018 to 2021.

He is described as the first non-Jewish poet in Israel to write only in Hebrew. He received the Miller Award for poetry, and his story "Jumblat in the Negev" was chosen as a recommended story in the Haaretz contest in 1997. In 2023 he published a book on diplomacy.