He is a professor emeritus of Middle Eastern, Islamic and Chinese history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,[2] as well as a research fellow at the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace[3] and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
[4] Israeli was born in Fes, Morocco[2] and emigrated to the new state of Israel at the age of fourteen.
[5] For twelve years he was a career officer in the Israeli Defence Force in Military Intelligence, whereafter he switched to Academia.
[citation needed] He received a degree in Arabic and History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and then studied at the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned a Ph.D in Chinese and Islamic History.
[2] In 2017, Israeli published a book in Hebrew titled The Arab Minority in Israel, Open and Hidden Processes, in which he calls the Arab minority a "fifth column", who receive more from the state than they contribute and expresses regret that they are not confined to camps like Japanese Americans were in WWII.