​This week Israeli journalist and author Eldad Beck visited New Zealand.  Eldad Beck met with the Jewish community in Dunedin, and gave a lecture at the Political Science Department of Otago University, met the Friends of Israel in Christchurch, gave a briefing to Embassy staff, and attended a function in his honor as well as that for Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen. The New Zealand Institute of International Affairs put together a breakfast seminar at the Wellington Club where he spoke on the "Myths and Realities of the Arab-Israeli Conflict".

Eldad Beck is the Berlin-based correspondent of the Israeli daily "Yedioth Ahronoth" Since 2002, covering Germany, Central Europe and the EU. He is one of the rare Israeli journalists who reported from Arab and Muslim countries - such as Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan - about major events in the Middle East. Born 1965 in Haifa, Eldad studies Arabic and Islam at Sorbonne University in Paris. He was Middle East affairs correspondent of the IDF Radio and the newspaper "Hadashot", as well as Paris-based correspondent of the IDF Radio, the Jerusalem Report, the Jerusalem Post and Israel's Channel 2.
His first book "Beyond the Border" on his trips to Arab and Muslim countries was published in 2009 in Israel. "Germany, at Odds" was published in Israel in 2014. 

Eldads lecture here in New Zealand focused on "Myths and Realities of the Arab-Israeli Conflict." While large parts of the Middle East are falling into chaos and radical Islamic groups are taking over failing states, Israel finds itself under growing international pressure to take risks in order to enable the renewal of a peace process with the Palestinians. However, no serious effort was done in recent years by the international community in order to understand what made the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, Israelis and Arabs, collapse. What are the reasons for the failure of the peace process? What could be done to amend past mistakes? Is there a chance for peace in the Middle East? As Eldad has travelled to many Arab and Muslim countries, with which Israel had and has no connection, taking advantage of this knowledge of Arabic and Islam, he might have answers to some of those questions.