Gidi Grinstein

Who is Gidi Grinstein?

Gidi Grinstein is the President and Founder of the Reut Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit strategy group that aims to sustain significant and substantive impact on Israel and the Jewish World under the banner of 21st Century Zionism. Reut catalyzes deep transformations in the underlying values and mindset of different actors to address critical challenges to national-security, socioeconomic development, and the Jewish World. Specifically, Reut specializes in identifying critical gaps, creating new knowledge, offering an innovative and exciting vision, and successfully catalyzing its systemic integration. In March 2010, it was described as "one of the premier Israeli policy research centers" by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

Before founding Reut, Grinstein served as Secretary and Coordinator of the Israeli negotiation team on the Permanent Status Agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the Office and later in the Bureau of Prime Minister Ehud Barak. He was the youngest member of the Israel delegation at the time. On the night of July 17–18, 2000, at the 2000 Camp David Summit, he used the Heimlich maneuver to dislodge a peanut from Barak's throat.