The Santa Fe Jewish Film Festival and Santa Fe Middle East Watch are pleased to bring to Santa Fe one of Israel’s best known journalists and authors, MATTI FRIEDMAN. Freidman joins HALLEY FAUST for a conversation about the stories behind both Israel’s headlines and her enemies’ lines. Coinciding with Israel’s elections that will determine its next prime minister, the talk could not be more timely. In addition to discussing the Israeli elections that will have taken place the same day, Friedman and Faust will also discuss the influence Jews from Arab countries have had in Israeli politics, their role behind enemy lines when Israel was founded, and AP bias in media coverage of Israel.
A former Associated Press correspondent, Friedman’s work as a reporter has taken him from Israel to Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, the Caucasus, and Washington, DC, and his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Tablet Magazine, and elsewhere. His 2016 book Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War was chosen as a New York Times’ Notable Book and as one of Amazon’s 10 best books of the year. His most recent book, Spies of No Country, the story of Israel’s first intelligence agents in 1948, has received the 2018 Natan Book Award. Friedman was born in Toronto and lives in Jerusalem with his family.
Halley Faust, a 15 year resident of Santa Fe, was the founder of Israel’s first international venture capital fund, and he travels there frequently. Faust has been a board member of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Masorti Foundation for Conservative Judaism in Israel, and three Jewish Federations in communities where has lived in the US. He is currently the Chairman of Santa Fe Middle East Watch, and on the National Council of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.