Ofra Bengio

Professor Ofra Bengio heads the Kurdish Studies program at the Moshe Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University.

She is an Associate Professor of Department of History of the Middle East and Africa at Tel Aviv University, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her fields of specialization are contemporary Middle Eastern history, the history and politics of Iraq and Turkey, the Kurds and the Arabic language.

During her academic career, Ofra Bengio also served as a Visiting Professor at Emory University (Atlanta, USA), Yıldız University (Istanbul, Turkey), Boğaziçi University (Istanbul, Turkey), and Beijing University (Beijing, China).

She is the author of numerous books and articles on the modern Middle East, Kurdistan and the Arab-Muslim world’s relationship with the Jewish state, including “The Kurdish Revolt in Iraq” (Kibutz Hameuhad Press, 1989), “Saddam Speaks on the Gulf Crisis: A Collection of Documents” (Syracuse University Press, 1992), “Saddam's Word: Political Discourse in Iraq” (Oxford University Press, 1998), “The Turkish-Israeli Relationship: Changing Ties of Middle Eastern Outsiders” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), and “The Kurds of Iraq: Building a State Within a State” (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012). She is also the editor of “Minorities and the State in the Arab World” (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999) with Gabriel Ben-Dor, “The Sunna and Shi'a in History: Division and Ecumenism in the Muslim Middle East” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) with Meir Litvak, and “Kurdish Awakening: Nation Building in a Fragmented Homeland” (University of Texas Press, 2014).

Ofra Bengio has a B.A. in Modern History of the Middle East and English Literature, a M.A. in Modern History of the Middle East on “The Kurdish Struggle for Autonomy in Iraq 1970-1974”, and a Ph.D. in Modern History of the Middle East on “The Political Discourse of the Ba’thi Regime in Iraq” from Tel Aviv University.