MITZPE INSTITUTE — FELLOWS & ADVISORS
Cleared for editorial use. Full profiles: mitzpe.org/fellows
Media contact: press@mitzpe.org

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ALON PENZEL  (Fellow)
Founding Fellow, Mitzpe Institute
Headshot: Headshots/Alon Penzel Headshot.jpg

SHORT BIO
Israeli author, journalist, and former IDF foreign-press spokesperson, whose bestselling
Testimonies Without Boundaries anchors Mitzpe's commitment to firsthand sourcing.

FULL BIO
Alon Penzel is an Israeli author, journalist, television anchor, and spokesperson. At
twenty-five, he has published two books, served as an IDF spokesperson for the foreign
press within the Unit for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories
(COGAT), and traveled extensively to address campus audiences, diplomats, and
decision-makers on Israel's security posture and the rise of antisemitism. He holds the
paid appointment of Israeli delegate to the European Students' Union, representing 390,000
Israeli students in higher education, and is frequently called upon to represent the State
of Israel at global conferences.

Penzel published his first book at sixteen. He received the Ramon Award for excellence and
leadership, completed a negotiation course at Harvard University, and is currently reading
political science at the University of Haifa.

His second book, *Testimonies Without Boundaries: Israel, October 7th, 2023*, is the first
comprehensive, verified documentary record of firsthand accounts from the October 7
massacre. It draws on exclusive interviews and field documentation from survivors,
recovery and rescue forces, and medical and forensic teams. The book is a bestseller in
nine countries, is available in seven languages, and reached #1 on Amazon in multiple
categories. Mitzpe Press publishes a new edition as the fourth title in its launch
catalog, and the book keeps its own site at october7book.com.

Since October 7, Penzel has spoken at universities, parliaments, synagogues, and private
forums across North America, Europe, and Israel. His work addresses the documentary record
of the massacre, the rise of campus antisemitism, and the strategic case for Israel in
Western public discourse. He writes at alonpenzel.com.

Penzel's work at Mitzpe anchors the institute's commitment to firsthand sourcing. The
analytical floor of every Mitzpe publication rests on verified evidence over secondhand
narrative — and Penzel's fieldwork is one of the institute's primary demonstrations of
that standard.

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DANIEL CLARKE-SERRET  (Fellow)
Founding Fellow, Mitzpe Institute
Headshot: Headshots/Daniel Clarke-Serret Headshot.jpg

SHORT BIO
UK barrister and author of Pax Arabica, whose work on the vocabulary of the Middle East
carries Mitzpe's reporting into Britain and Western Europe.

FULL BIO
Daniel Clarke-Serret is a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, a teacher, and a public intellectual
who writes across Britain, Spain, and Israel. He is Senior Fellow and Democracy Analyst at
Section 1, a Canadian non-partisan democracy and civics think tank, where his brief covers
the United Kingdom, Western Europe, and Israel.

His book *Pax Arabica* inverts the anti-colonial account of the Middle East. Clarke-Serret
identifies an Arabized-Islamic imperial project, running through both pan-Arab nationalism
and Islamism, as the power structure that has suppressed the region's minorities, and he
reads Israel as the most serious obstacle to imperial uniformity. The book runs in two
movements. "Babel" diagnoses the enforcement system and treats it as a modern construction
carried by democratic institutions and NGO vocabulary. "Eden" sets out what stabilizes:
nation-states, deterrence, and accurate terminology. *Pax Arabica* carries a foreword by
Nachum Kaplan and contributions from Khaled Salih.

What the book recovers is the list of communities the Western account leaves out — Jews
across the Middle East and North Africa, Kurds, Yazidis, Druze, Christians, and Black
Africans under Arab rule. Mitzpe reviewed *Pax Arabica* in Israel Brief
(https://israelbrief.com/p/book-review-how-the-middle-east-was) in January 2026.

Clarke-Serret writes *Guerre and Shalom*, a Substack running to hundreds of pieces on
public affairs, geopolitics, and the present wars. He serializes books there as well: *Pax
Arabica* first reached readers in that form, and *Rooted Truth* has run there in serial
under Uri Zehavi's byline. He also writes *The Rage*, blogs at *The Times of Israel*, and
has written on Israel for Spanish media since October 2023.

He teaches French and Spanish, has worked in British and Spanish schools at primary and
secondary level, and has advised on mathematics instruction in both countries. His poetry
took Spillwords' Publication of the Month in July 2023 and a place on the shortlist for
its 2024 Publication of the Year.

Clarke-Serret's work at Mitzpe extends the institute's reporting into Britain and Western
Europe. Much of the argument over Israel there is conducted in vocabulary its own
participants have never examined, and recovering those definitions is prior to winning
anything with them. That is the work Clarke-Serret was already doing when Mitzpe found
him.

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CHERYL DORCHINSKY  (Advisor)
Founder & Executive Director, AIC
Headshot: Headshots/Cheryl Dorchinsky Headshot.jpg

SHORT BIO
Founder and executive director of the Atlanta Israel Coalition (AIC), of which the Mitzpe
Institute is an educational program, and an advisor to Mitzpe on diaspora community
mobilization.

FULL BIO
Cheryl Dorchinsky is the founder and executive director of the Atlanta Israel Coalition
(AIC), a nonpartisan, multi-faith grassroots organization she built from the ground in
2018 after two decades in corporate human resources and talent management.

Under Dorchinsky's leadership, AIC has organized more than 200 educational programs,
rallies, and international initiatives. Her signature projects include a multi-faith
Zionist mission to Israel, a virtual Israel tour series during the pandemic that reached
audiences globally, and a wartime solidarity mission in January 2024 that delivered a
community-painted mural to the fortified underground emergency hospital at Rambam Health
Care Campus in Haifa. She organized Atlanta's major pro-Israel solidarity rallies during
the 2021 conflict alongside then-Consul General Anat Sultan-Dadon and led AIC's rapid
community response after October 7.

Dorchinsky received the Zionist Legacy Award from the World Zionist Organization in 2023.
She writes for JNS and the Atlanta Jewish Times and speaks nationally on grassroots
coalition-building, antizionism in schools and progressive spaces, and community-level
advocacy strategy.

At Mitzpe, Dorchinsky advises on diaspora community mobilization and advocacy
infrastructure — the organizational ground game that translates institutional analysis
into community-level action.
