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Emanuel Shahaf was born in Germany in 1954 and immigrated to Israel in 1972. From 1974 until 1980 he studied Aeronautical Engineering at the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), graduating with a B.Sc. and M.Sc. Between 1979 and 1986 he served as a staff officer in the Israel Air Force. He then spent two years in the US, studying for an MBA in Management of Technology at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, Upstate New York. In 1988 he returned to Israel and joined the Office of the Prime Minister in Tel Aviv in 1989, where he served in various positions both at home and abroad until his retirement in 2003. He then worked to develop Israeli business relations with Indonesia and became politically active in the Israel Labor Party competing for a place on Labor’s Knesset list in 2012. Emanuel regularly writes a blog and op-ed at the Times of Israel(www.timesofisrael.com). His personal website is at www.emanuelshahaf.co.il.
Israel and Indonesia are two nations whose relations―due to political circumstances―have yet to fulfill their enormous potential. Were there to be progress in peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, a window of opportunity could open for Indonesia’s new president to take practical steps that would begin to unlock this potential.
