Ken Abramowitz and Itamar Marcus
Also Honored
New York — The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is holding its annual national gala Louis D. Brandeis award dinner on Sunday, November 19, 2006 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. The reception is at 5:30PM, dinner at 6:30PM. Please call the ZOA at 212-481-1500 to make reservations and for more information.
We are pleased and privileged to announce that Mortimer B. Zuckerman will be receiving the Louis D. Brandeis award, ZOA’s highest honor. Mr. Zuckerman is co-founder and chairman of Boston Properties, chairman of U.S. News & World Report and the New York Daily News. He is a trustee of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute, New York University, and the Aspen Institute. He is a member of the JP Morgan National Advisory Board, the Council on Foreign Relations, and was awarded the Commander De L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France. He is a past chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. He is a graduate of McGill University, Wharton Graduate School of Business and Harvard Law School. Mr. Zuckerman is an active supporter of Zionist and international Jewish causes, and a strong advocate of Israel on security matters and expresses these views in his columns, speeches and as a regular guest on TV’s “The McClaughlin Group”.
The co-chairs of the dinner are Ronald Lauder and James Tisch, both former chairmen of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Mr. Lauder is the national president of the Jewish National Fund and has been a major force in resurrecting Jewish schools, camps and community centers in eastern Europe. He has served as former U.S. Ambassador to Austria, and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy. Mr. Lauder serves as Director of the International Board of Governors of the International Society for Yad Vashem; member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, Board of Directors of the Jewish Theological Seminary; member of the Board of Trustees of the ADL, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Sakharov Archives at Brandeis University and member of the International Board of Governors of the Tel Aviv Museum, Chairman of the Museum of Modern Art, member of the Board of Governors of the Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and member of the Visiting Committee of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Lauder graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and studied at the University of Paris and University of Brussels.
Mr. Tisch is the CEO of Loews Corporation. He is past chairman of the Board of United Jewish Communities, and past President of UJA-Federation of New York, a Trustee of the Mount Sinai Medical Center, a member of the Board of Overseers of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. Mr. Tisch serves as Chairman of the Board of the Educational Broadcasting Corporatoin (parent of WNET Channel 13 and WLIW Channel 21) and si also a member of the Board of Directors of The New York Public Library. Mr. Tisch is a graduate of Cornell University and the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania.
The keynote speaker for the evening is R. James Woolsey, who is a former director of the CIA. He has held important Presidential appointments in two Democratic and two Republican administrations. He served as Ambassador to the Negotiations on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, and UnderSecretary of the Navy. He is a trustee of the Smithsonian Institute and a member of the National Commission on Terrorism and the President’s Commission on Strategic Forces. As an expert on the subjects of intelligence, defense, and foreign affairs, he has been an authoritative voice in warning of the dangers of appeasement when confronting terrorism and its state sponsors. He and the former Secretary of State George Shultz are co-chairmen of the Committee on the Present Danger. Mr. Woolsey has also written numerous articles supportive of Israel in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. R. James Woolsey graduate from Stanford University, received his M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and an LL.B. from Yale Law School, where he was Managing Editor of the Yale Law Journal.
ZOA’s Distinguished Leadership Award is being presented to Kenneth S. Abramowitz. Mr. Abramowitz is Managing Partner and co-founder of NGN Capital and a prominent figure in the healthcare industry. He was former Managing Director of the Carlyle Group. He is chairman of American Friends of Likud, is on the Board of Friends of the IDF, on the Executive Committee of the Open University of Israel and on the Board of the Israel Heart Fund. He is a tireless advocate of Israel, and publishes insightful analyses promoting Israel. With his wife Nira, they fund The Abramowitz Israeli Prize for Media Criticism, which “encourages the Israel media to open itself to criticism.” Mr. Abramowitz is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Business School.
The Ben Hecht Award for Outstanding Journalism in the Mideast is being given to Itamar Marcus, founder and Director of the Palestinian Media Watch, which analyzes the Palestinian Authority through the PA’s media and schoolbooks. Its reports and studies have changed the way the world sees Palestinian society and its war against Israel. He represented Israel in the negotiations with the Palestinians on the Trilateral Anti-Incentive Committee. He has appeared before numerous US Congressional Committees and Parliaments in Britain, France, Canada, Australia and the European Union. Mr. Marcus was born in the US, made aliyah over 30 years ago to serve in the IDF, and is a graduate of CCNY with a Master’s from NYU.
Dr. Alan Mazurek, chairman of ZOA’s Executive Committee will be the Master of Ceremonies.