Uzi Arad

Uzi Arad was born in 1947 in Tiberias

Arad was born in Tiberias in 1947 to Rachel and Yaakov Bloomer, a leader of Hashomer Hatzair in Romania. He grew up in Kibbutz Shamir and Kibbutz Zikim, and his parents left the kibbutz after a political split. He attended Tichon Hadash in Tel Aviv and joined his parents on postings to France and Mexico.

He was drafted in 1966 and served in the Israeli Air Force as a meteorologist. In 1971 he earned a bachelor's degree from Tel Aviv University. As a Fulbright fellow at Princeton, he earned an M.A. in 1973 and a Ph.D. in 1975.

From 1972 he worked at the Hudson Institute on nuclear strategy, arms control and energy. In 1975 he joined the Mossad, where he later headed the Research Division. From 1997 to 1999 he was foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya he founded the Institute for Policy and Strategy and chaired the annual Herzliya Conference. He founded the EU-Israel Forum in 2000 and the Atlantic Forum of Israel in 2004. From 2009 to 2011 he headed the National Security Council.

In 2011 he returned to the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. Media reports linked his departure to a leak, which he denied, and a deputy attorney general said in 2012 that no leak was ever attributed to him. In 2013 he co-founded the Forum for Israeli Grand Strategy.