Dan Diker was elected Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in June 2011, having served as Secretary General Designate since November 2010.
He previously served as Middle East Policy Advisor to the WJC since June 2009 and WJC Director of Strategic Affairs since June 2010.
From 2006 to 2010, Mr. Diker served as the Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, headed by Israel's former UN Ambassador, Dr. Dore Gold, where he also was Senior Foreign Policy Analyst since 2002.
He was editor and contributing author of the JCPA’s 2010 policy book, Israel’s Red Line Security Requirements Opposite a Prospective Palestinian State. He was also editor and contributing author of the JCPA’s policy book series, Iran’s Race for Regional Supremacy: Implications for the Middle East. In 2010, Mr. Diker was elected Fellow of the Jerusalem Center. Prior to joining the Jerusalem Center, Mr. Diker was Knesset Affairs reporter for Channel One English News. Mr. Diker’s analyses regularly appear in the Jerusalem Post, and the Israeli Weekly Makor Rishon. His articles have been published in the Middle East Journals Middle East Quarterly and Azure. Mr. Diker’s articles have also appeared in the Washington Examiner and the leading US political blog Power Line.
Mr. Diker also appears as a Middle East Affairs commentator for Israel’s Channel One English News, the Knesset’s Channel 99, (Israel’s CSPAN) and provides political commentary for international news networks CNN, BBC, Fox, and Arab networks Al Hurrah and Al Jazeera. He is also an Adjunct Fellow of the Washington DC based Hudson Institute.
Mr. Diker is a 1984 Graduate of Harvard University and immigrated to Israel in 1990.
Prior to his making Aliya in the middle of the first Gulf War in 1990, Mr. Diker, studied at the Harvard University Graduate School of Business, and had served as a marketing executive at the former Drexel Burnham Lambert and then as executive assistant to Peter J Solomon, former co-chairman of investment banking at Shearson Lehman Brothers.
World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder received the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, in New York. The two men agreed on the urgent need to relaunch peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. read more »
The International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians and the World Jewish Congress held a two-day conference in the Italian capital on the subject of the ‘Revolutions in the Middle East: the Iranian question, the Arab world and the West’. read more »
World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder has held talks with Prime Minister Mario Monti of Italy in Rome and thanked him for his "personal commitment to the safety and well-being of the State of Israel and the Jewish people." read more »
On the 20th anniversary of the bomb attack on Israel’s Embassy in Buenos Aires on 17 March 1992, orchestrated by Iran and the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, the World Jewish Congress is urging the international community to deploy more efforts to root out international terrorism. read more »
The implications of the 'One-State Conference: Israel/Palestine and the One-State Solution' at Harvard University are far reaching, argues WJC Secretary-General Dan Diker in an op-ed for the 'Jerusalem Post'. read more »
Israeli and Jewish leaders, including WJC Secretary-General Dan Diker, discussed relations between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora at the Herzliya Conference. read more »
In Jerusalem, the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus and the World Jewish Congress held the sixth edition of the annual ‘Night to Honor Our Christian Allies’. Awards were presented to US Bishop Daniel Williams and German Jürgen Bühler. read more »
A delegation of the World Jewish Congress led by WJC President Ronald S. Lauder and the president of the French Jewish community umbrella organization CRIF, Richard Prasquier, have had a discussion at the Elysée Palace in Paris with France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy. read more »
By falsely accusing Israel of apartheid crimes, the Russell Tribunal is exploiting the memory of real apartheid in South Africa and reinjects its poison into the minds and hearts of millions of fair-minded South Africans who have been trying to build an exemplary republic based on truth, justice and decency. read more »
Hamas on Tuesday morning released Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from more than five years in captivity. World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder called it "wonderful news for his family and for the entire Jewish people." read more »
The dramatic prisoner exchange between Israel and the Hamas government in Gaza speaks volumes about the culture of both sides. Israel’s readiness to pay a virtually unimaginable price is a testimony to the living influence of 3,000 years of Jewish law. read more »
WJC President Ronald Lauder condemned the recent desecration, destruction and burning of mosques, cemeteries and holy Muslim books in the Galilee and in Jaffa as a disgrace to the "core values of Judaism". The WJC also condemned ongoing attacks against Jewish holy sites by Palestinians. read more »
As the UN Security Council takes up discussion Monday of the Palestinian bid for statehood, President Obama has some tough decisions to make about how to proceed with the peace process in the Middle East. read more »
Following dramatic speeches by Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN, many key states are determined to get the sides back to the negotiating table. However, last week’s furious and sincere behind the scenes diplomatic efforts by the Middle East Quartet are being undermined by several obstacles. read more »
The World Jewish Congress warned the United Nations that accepting the Palestinian petition for endorsement of unilaterally declared statehood, which was presented by Mahmoud Abbas to the UN last week, would deal a fatal blow to the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians and gravely undermine the principles on which the UN was founded. read more »
The tenth anniversary of the controversial Durban World Conference Against Racism has been marked at the United Nations in New York, with 14 Western countries refusing to attend in protest against the parley’s constant focus on Israel. World Jewish Congress leaders Ronald Lauder and Dan Diker spoke at a high-level counter-event, also held in New York. read more »
The dramatic images of Egyptian student demonstrators climbing up to the 17th floor of a Cairo high-rise building to assault and possibly lynch the six remaining Israelis holed up in the Jewish state's Embassy conjured up the stark images of the Iranian revolution of 1979. However, the situation is more complex than meets the eye. read more »
World Jewish Congress Secretary General Dan Diker has said at a press briefing by the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians and the WJC at the United Nations in New York that UN recognition of a Palestinian State could lead to a civil war between competing Palestinian political factions and a possible increase in attacks against Israel. read more »
Ahead of the critical vote at the United Nations later this month which looks set to have serious repercussions for Israel and the wider Jewish community, the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians – a partner organization of the World Jewish Congress – is holding a series of meetings in New York City and Washington. read more »
PA President Mahmoud Abbas has ruled out the possibility of the Palestinians accepting Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. World Jewish Congress Secretary General Dan Diker and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said this showed the true intentions of the Palestinian leadership. read more »
Ronald S. Lauder and Dan Diker have called on the international community to step up efforts against terrorism in the Middle East, following a series of attacks against civilians in southern Israel committed by Palestinian terrorists from Gaza. read more »
Israel's parliament and the World Jewish Congress relaunched the Knesset Forum on International Relations with a statement embracing the democratic spirit driving the Arab Spring. WJC Secretary General Dan Diker said: "The forum is a critical venue to export Israel’s message of freedom and democracy." read more »
A group of 55 Jewish lawmakers from 22 countries gathered in Jerusalem for a consultation of the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians, organized by the World Jewish Congress. Italian MP Fiamma Nirenstein, vice-chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, was elected as new ICJP head. read more »
A Palestinian bid for statehood was a “fundamental offensive” in the assault on Israel’s most basic legal and diplomatic rights and could have dire consequences for international diplomacy, World Jewish Congress Secretary-General Dan Diker told a forum of Jewish parliamentarians visiting Jerusalem. read more »
Jews and passengers carrying any non-Islamic article of faith such as bibles will reportedly not be able to fly code-share flights from the US to Saudi Arabia under Delta Air Lines' new partnership with Saudi Arabian Airlines. WJC Secretary General Dan Diker urged Delta not to become “complicit with what appears to be an anti-Semitic policy.” read more »
The World Jewish Congress has confirmed the appointment of Dan Diker as the organization's secretary general. read more »
The meeting of the WJC Governing Board in Jerusalem discussed a united Jewish perspective on the 'Arab Spring' and Palestinian plans for a unilateral declaration of statehood. Statesmen including Shimon Peres and Tony Blair spoke at the meeting. read more »
At a conference at the Italian Chamber of Deputies in Rome WJC Secretary General Designate Dan Diker has urged the European countries to oppose the planned endorsement by the United Nations of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. read more »
WJC Secretary General Designate Dan Diker, and Director General of Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs Yossi Kuperwasser assessed the policy issues raised by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama in Washington DC. You can listen here to the recording of the briefing. read more »
The World Jewish Congress’ Dan Diker tells '20 Questions' his reactions on Obama’s address to the State Department. read more »
The WJC has condemned Monday's vicious anti-Semitic attack against the director of an Orthodox Jewish school in Buenos Aires. Rabbi Moshe Cohen was accosted by a man who yelled “Dirty Jew” and other insults against him and hit him on the head with a nunchaku, an oriental martial-arts weapon. read more »
The World Jewish Congress expressed outrage at the agreement between the main Palestinian government rivals, Fatah and Hamas, signed in Cairo on Wednesday. "The Fatah-Hamas agreement is a prize for terror and a setback for peace," said WJC President Ronald Lauder. read more »
The leadership of the World Jewish Congress has strongly condemned last week’s killing by a Palestinian security officer of Ben Yosef Livnat at Joseph’s Tomb near the West Bank town of Nablus. Four other Israeli pilgrims were injured in the shooting. All were unarmed. read more »
Justin Bieber, the hottest pop music sensation on the planet, just spent a week in Israel. It could have been a public diplomacy bonanza for the Jewish nation-state, argues WJC Secretary General-Designate Dan Diker. read more »
In an interview with the British weekly 'The Jewish Chronicle', the secretary-general designate of the World Jewish Congress talks about Israel's relations with the Jewish Diaspora and its security needs. read more »
A delegation of the World Jewish Congress and the Latin American Jewish Congress led by WJC President Ronald S. Lauder met in Bogotá with the president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos Calderón, who told them that he admired Israel and would not follow the example of other Latin American countries who had prematurely recognized a Palestinian state. read more »
In an interview with the WJC's Dan Diker, Rafael Bardaji, former national security advisor to Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, says Israel's challenges are mounting and its international isolation is growing. read more »
Murder of five members of Jewish family in Israeli community Itamar read more »
Israel has positioned itself as the only state whose very legitimacy is perceived as inextricably connected to its readiness to make territorial concessions, writes the WJC's secretary-general-designate. read more »
World Jewish Congress Secretary General-Designate Dan Diker has urged Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, to support the call for the referral of the Iranian regime to the UN Security Council for incitement to genocide. Huckabee was in Israel on a solidarity visit and was a special guest of the Knesset Immigration and Absorption Committee. read more »
At a hearing by a committee of the Knesset, WJC Secretary-General Dan Diker has warned about the repercussions the premature recognition of a Palestinian state by several South American states might have for Jewish communities there. read more »
Daniel Diker, a noted foreign policy and media expert, was nominated as the next Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress (WJC). He will succeed Michael Schneider, who is to step down after forty years of service in Jewish public life, at the next WJC Governing Board meeting to be held June 2011 in Jerusalem. read more »
B. Daniel Diker, a foreign policy and media expert, was nominated to serve as secretary general of the World Jewish Congress. read more »
Daniel Diker will be the next secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress, the organization announced on Tuesday. read more »
Diker remplacera le Secrétaire général sortant du CJM, Michael Schneider. read more »
The Executive Committee of the World Jewish Congress has nominated B. Daniel Diker, a noted foreign policy and media expert, as new secretary general of the organization. He will succeed Michael Schneider in June 2011. read more »
A fluttering Palestinian flag in Washington may help convince some that direct talks will lead to peace. read more »
Dan Diker, foreign policy fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, has been appointed WJC Director of Strategic Affairs. read more »
Israel has positioned itself as the only state whose very legitimacy is perceived as inextricably connected to its readiness to make territorial concessions, writes the WJC's secretary-general-designate in the 'Jerusalem Post'. read more »
"The Arab-Israeli Conflict and the Assault on Israel's Legitimacy" by Dan Diker, Secretary General Designate of the World Jewish Congress at the Herzliya Conference 2011 read more »
In the Hall of Columns of the Italian House of Representatives, a conference entitled "Never Again? Who plans the extermination of the Jews today?” was held. read more »
