Dr. Mordechai Kedar will talk about the Middle East and where it is heading including the source of problems and struggles and some ideas about the way to solve them. Dr. Kedar is a renown Israeli scholar of Arabic literature and a lecturer at Bar-Llan University where he holds a PhD. and is director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam. He is an academic expert on the Israeli Arab population. He served for twenty-five years in Israeli Defense Forces Military Intelligence, where he specialized in Islamic groups, the political discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic press and mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena. He served as a lieutenant colonel and head of a branch in the hi-tech 8200 unit and was on active duty until 1995. The Los Angeles Times’ Edmund Sanders described him as “one of the few Arabic-speaking Israeli pundits seen on Arabic satellite channels defending Israel.” Dr. Kedar is the author of many publications including Clash of Values: Gender and Family Issues as Sources of Tension Between Islam and the West and Assad in Search of Legitimacy: Messages and Rhetoric in the Syrian Press under Hafiz and Bashar.