Our Experts

The International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare

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​Dr. Daphné Richemond-Barak is an Assistant Professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichman University, and a Senior Researcher at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism. Her monograph, Underground Warfare, was published in 2018 by Oxford University Press. She co-founded the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare. 

 
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​LTC Henk Oerlemans served for 37 years in the Royal Netherlands Army. His first experience with Urban Operations was in the early 90's when he became member of the at that time existing NATO FIBUA MOUT WG. He has been member of this WG and its successors for some 20 years. In 1996 he became responsible for the policy part of the development of a Dutch UO education and training unit and facilities. In 2006 he was elected as chairman of the NATO UO Task group under NATO ACT. Since retiring, he advises on Military Operations and Urban Operations. His interest lies in training for underground operations.

 

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​Major Ron Alcala is a Major in the United States Army.  He is an Assistant Professor and an Academy Professor of Law in the Department of Law at the United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y.  Before joining the faculty, Major Alcala served in the Office of the Judge Advocate General at Headquarters, Department of the Army.  

 

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​Col (ret.) Randall (Randy) Bagwell is a Senior Director of International Services for the American Red Cross in Washington, DC. Randy served for more than thirty-five years in the U.S. Army as a legal officer, infantry officer and infantry soldier, and deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

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​Prof. William C. Banks is a Syracuse University College of Law Board of Advisors Distinguished Professor and SU Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs. Banks is an expert in national security and counterterrorism law and policy.

 

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​Col. (ret) Adv. Pnina Sharvit Baruch is a Senior Research Associate at INSS. She retired from the Israel Defense Forces in 2009, after serving in the International Law Department there for twenty years, five of which she spent as head of the department. In this capacity, Adv. Sharvit Baruch was a senior legal advisor responsible for advising IDF commanders and decision makers on issues of international and administrative law.

 

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​Prof. Yishai Beer is a Professor of Law at the Radzyner Law School. Prof. Beer also serves as a Major General (res.) in the Israel Defense Forces. He served as a (3-5 IDF army divisions) Commander (2007-2012), and as President of the Israeli Military Court of Appeals (2002-2007).

 

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​Dr. Boaz M. Ben-David is an Associate Professor at the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology at Reichman University where he heads the Communication, Aging and Neuropsychology lab (CANlab). He holds adjunct faculty positions at the University of Toronto (Department of Speech-Language Pathology) and at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute.

 

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​Prof. Laurie Blank is a Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the Center for International and Comparative Law and Director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic at Emory University School of Law. Professor Blank is a core expert on the Woomera Manual on International Law of Military Space Operations and the Oslo Manual on Selected Problems in the Law of Armed Conflict.

 

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 ​Superintendent Shlomi Chetrit, is the current Commander of the Israel Police Heritage Center. He specializes in the use of underground complexes during the Bar-Kochva revolt. 

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​Drew Craig is an economic geologist who serves with the British Army as a specialist reserve with the Royal Engineers. A Fellow of the Geological Society of London and a Chartered Engineer, he specialises in infrastructure, geospatial intelligence, subterranean warfare, and stabilisation in post-conflict and disaster environments.

 

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 ​Nathalie Durhin serves as the head of SHAPE’s Legal Operations Branch at NATO. 

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​Maj. Gen. Michael Edelstein serves as Israel’s Defense and Armed Forces Attaché to the United States. Edelstein served as Commander of the Gaza Strip division, leading the division during Operations “Pillar of Defense” and “Protective Edge.”

 

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​Prof. Gilad Hirschberger is Vice Dean at the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology at Reichman University. He is a political psychologist focusing on the conflict between Israel and its neighbours, looking at explicit and implicit factors that contribute to political violence.

 

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​Dr. Agnieszka Jachec-Neale is an international humanitarian law expert at the University of Exeter Law School. She has field experience in Kosovo and Croatia, and serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Military Law and Laws of War. 

 

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​Simon Jones is a freelance historian, tour guide and museum curator based in Windsor, UK. He received the Honorary Research Fellow in War Studies from the University of Birmingham and is a member of the British Commission for Military History. His book, Underground Warfare 1914-1948, was published in 2010.

 

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​Col. Patrick J. Mahaney, Jr. is an Army Special Forces Officer serving as the Senior Military Fellow of the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Strategic Studies Group. Previously, he commanded the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, and a Special Forces battalion and a Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan. 

 

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​Michael W. Meier serves as the senior civilian adviser to the Army Judge Advocate General on matters related to the law of war. He advises on legal and policy issues involving the law of war, reviews proposed new weapons and weapons systems, serves as a member of the DoD Law of War Working Group, and provides assistance on detainee and Enemy Prisoner of War affairs. 

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​Major Haley Mercer serves as an Engineer Officer at the United States Military Academy at West Point and is a graduate of the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS). Haley deployed twice in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan, Consolidation II (2007-2009) and Transition I (2012-2013).

 

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​Dr. Stuart Mitchell is a senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst where he specializes in learning, transformation and leadership in the British Army during World War I. He is an associate editor of the British Journal for Military History, as well as a member of the British Commission for Military History, Western Front Association and the Institute for Historical Research.

 

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 ​Dr. Sasha Radin is a Director of Research at the Lieber Institute at West Point. She is specialized in the law of armed conflict and related bodies of law, and the legal and policy implications of emerging technology in conflict.

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​Major (res). Joel Roskin heads the Geomorphology and Portable Luminescence Laboratory at the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, University of Haifa. He is a geologist, geomorphologist, geo-archaeologist, and terrain analyst. In 2002, he led a terrain research team in the IDF that initiated a terrain-oriented study of underground threats from the Gaza Strip and the suitability of geo-technologies and their robustness for detection and treatment of Gazan tunnels. 

 

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 ​Major Emmanuel Sioson is Deputy Director of the Modern War Institute at West Point. He served as Ambassador Sung Y. Kim’s principal advisor on US Special Operations in the Philippines.

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​Major (ret.) John Spencer serves as the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies and Co-Director of the Urban Warfare Project with the Modern War Institute at the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY. He served over twenty-five years in the Army as an infantry soldier, including two combat deployments to Iraq. 

 

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 ​Dr. Jacob Stoil is an Assistant Professor of Military History at the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS). He focuses on the military history of Israel, the Horn of Africa, and the western Middle East. 

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​SGM (ret.) Joe Vega serves as the Senior Operational Advisor to the Asymmetric Warfare Group (AWG). He is responsible for subterranean warfare training to all AWG members and US Army Infantry Brigades. SGM Vega was also instrumental in the development and deployment of the Improvised Explosive Device Task Force and served as Team Leader and Operations Officer in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

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​Prof. Rivka Weill is a Professor of Law (tenured) at the Radzyner Law School at Reichman University. Her work focuses on constitutional law and administrative law, with a focus on theoretical and comparative dimensions. She co-founded the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare

 

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​Dr. Moran Yarchi is a Senior Lecturer at the Sammy Ofer School of Communications, the head of the Public Diplomacy program, and a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at Reichman University. Her main area of research is political communication, especially the media’s coverage of conflicts and terror, and public diplomacy.

 

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​Ron Ben Yishai is a commentator on national security and international affairs and a special assignment correspondent for the “Yedioth Aharonot” daily, and its news website Ynet. Mr. Ben-Yishai deals extensively with matters of Israeli and Middle Eastern regional security, indigenous and global terrorism, Israeli foreign policy, and international affairs.

 

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 ​Prof. Dan Zakay is the former Dean of the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology at Reichman University. His research focuses on psychological time, cognitive and meta-cognitive judgements, decision-making, and conflict resolution processes.
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