Zvi Mazel

Zvi Mazel was born in 1939 in Bnei Brak

Zvi Mazel was born in Bnei Brak on 4 March 1939. He served in the IDF from 1956 to 1958.

He studied political science in France at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and graduated in 1963. There he met his wife, Michelle, a writer.

He joined the Foreign Ministry in 1966 as a researcher. He later served in embassies in Madagascar, Paris and Cairo, and headed the ministry's Eastern Europe division. He was ambassador to Romania from 1989, during the Romanian Revolution.

In 1992 he became Deputy Director of the Foreign Ministry for African affairs, a period when relations with 19 African countries were renewed. He was ambassador to Egypt from 1996 to 2001 and to Sweden from 2002 to 2004. In January 2004 in Stockholm, he damaged an art installation by Dror Feiler that showed a picture of the Maxim restaurant suicide bomber, and the Swedish Foreign Ministry summoned him over the incident.

He retired from the foreign service in April 2004. He is a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and writes opinion columns on Israel's relations with Egypt and Turkey.