Chris Silver
Acting Director

Chris Silver serves as Acting Director of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues where he is responsible for developing strategic direction, designing programming to heighten awareness of issues facing Israel's Arab citizens, working with foundations to leverage resources for effective solutions and directing research efforts. He comes to the Task Force from the American Islamic Congress where he led program planning initiatives and directed fund development including grant writing (government and private foundations) and major donor solicitation.

Prior to that he worked at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution where his research focused on global security, counterterrorism and the resurgence of the Taliban. In the past he has lived and worked in Israel and studied Arabic in Morocco and Egypt.

Chris holds a Bachelors degree in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.  Contact: chris.silver@jdcny.org.

Avivit Hai
Program Associate, Israel

Avivit Hai is the Program Associate in Israel for the Inter Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues.  In this capacity she is the "eyes and ears" of the Task Force on the ground, liaising with local players - from government offices to Arab, Jewish and joint NGOs - in order to maintain up to date acquaintance with the field, assisting our members in their missions and educational programs and leading a number of information-sharing and coalition-building efforts.

Avivit joined the Task Force after having initiated and held numerous positions at the Economic Cooperation Foundation (ECF) in Tel Aviv from 1998 until 2008.  Her work involved managing and implementing a wide array of Israeli-Palestinian civil society projects in the spheres of social welfare, education and cross border cooperation. In 2000, Avivit founded and managed ECF's activities on internal Israeli Jewish-Arab issues and between 2002-2005, under the umbrella of the ECF, Avivit has served as the Senior Research Assistant to Shira Herzog, Executive Vice President of the Kahanoff Foundation in Canada, in a large-scale research examining cooperative Israeli-Palestinian civil society activities in the 90s.

Between 2004-2008, while living in Cremona, Italy, Avivit continued her work with the ECF as a project writer, translator and consultant. She has also worked with the Italian Center for Peace in the Middle East (CIPMO) in Milan where she consulted on Israeli-Palestinian and internal Israeli issues. Avivit holds an interdisciplinary MA from Tel Aviv University in Politics, Law and Society, is the author of several publications on Israeli-Palestinian issues and is fluent in Hebrew, English and Italian.  Contact: AvivitH@jdc.org.il

Michal Cohen
Administrative Assistant

Michal graduated with a B.A. in History from Columbia University where she was an active member on campus. She served on the student executive board of the Columbia/Barnard Hillel as the education coordinator, where she organized university-wide Jewish educational programming. Michal volunteered with various community service organizations and was involved in cross-cultural community building on campus. She has interned with a variety of non-profits in the past, including affordable housing organizations Common Ground Community and Pathways to Housing, as well as Jewish Federations of North America, where she did research for the Community Development and Capacity Building Department and served as the OTZMA intern. Contact: michal.cohen@jdcny.org.