New envoys were friends at Hasmo

TWO LONDON-BORN Israeli diplomats were appointed last week to senior ambassadorial posts.

Mark Sofer is to become Israel’s ambassador to Australia, while Jeremy Issacharoff has been appointed the next envoy to Germany.

The two were childhood friends who studied together at Hasmonean, a Jewish school in north-west London, and then at the London School of Economics, before making aliyah to Israel.

Ambassador Sofer, currently the head of the Asia department in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, has served in the past as ambassador to Ireland and India, where he presided over a period of intensifying security relations with the two countries.

He took three years of leave from the diplomatic service to serve as president of the philanthropic Jerusalem Foundation. He is the brother of Simon Hochhauser, the former president of United Synagogue.

Ambassador Issacharoff, currently the Foreign Ministry’s vice-deputygeneral and head of its Multilateral Directorate, served in the past as the ministry’s deputy director-general for strategic affairs.

He was also deputy mission chief at the Israeli Embassy in Washington and a member of the UN secretarygeneral’s Advisory Board for Disarmament Affairs.