Our first Sylke Tempel Fellowship trip to Israel took place in September 2022.
For the past couple of years, it was not possible for us to travel to Israel with our fellows, due to the pandemic. We were all the more delighted to finally be able to meet in Israel with fellows from three cohorts. After a long period of digital meetings, this was the first opportunity for our 2020, 2021 and 2022 Fellows to meet and exchange ideas in person.
Together with our partner organization ELNET Germany and a group of 17 Fellows, we spent five days in Israel. We visited Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the north of the country. The program included discussions with Israeli media professionals, briefings by experts on China and Iran, and visits to media outlets and the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation.
We were particularly pleased to welcome our two patrons as well as the former Israeli Ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff to a roundtable discussion with our Sylke Tempel Fellows in Jerusalem. Together we talked about the impact of the "Zeitenwende" in Europe, the influence of China in the Middle East and the future of German-Israeli relations.
Our trip gave room to face-to-face exchange and discussion. In addition to the program and input, it was great to finally bring our Fellows together and hear their different perspectives and thoughts on foreign policy issues in Germany and Israel.
The Sylke Tempel Fellowship is a program of the German-Israeli Future Forum Foundation. Our cooperation partners are the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Bar-Ilan Universit, the European Leadership Network (ELNET), the foreign policy magazine Internationale Politik (IP) and Women in International Security Deutschland e.V (Wiis.de). The program runs under the auspices of former Federal Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel in his role as chairman of Atlantik-Brücke e.V. and former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
Would you also like to participate in the Sylke Tempel Fellowship? The next Fellowship year will kick off in spring 2023. The call for applications will be published on our website, at the beginning of the year. Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook and Instagram to receive regular updates about the Fellowship.