TEL AVIV — Barry Rubin, one of the most highly regarded and prolific commentators on Middle East politics, international affairs, and world history died Monday, Feb. 3 after an 18-month battle with cancer.  He was 64.

Barry Rubin

Rubin was the director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya for nearly two decades and a long-time columnist for The Jerusalem Post. He also was the Middle East editor and featured columnist at PJ Media, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and editor of the Turkish Studies Journal.

American born and raised, Rubin received his Ph.D. from Georgetown University and taught at several major Israeli and American universities. A former Fulbright and Council on Foreign Relations fellow, the commentary he published on his blog, The Rubin Report, boasted thousands of loyal followers.

Regarded as an intellectual, Rubin was a steadfast defender of Jews, Israel, and U.S. interests. According to The Jerusalem Post, he did not envision a near-term solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, believing Jews should defend themselves. Anti-Semitism was “at the highest point in the West and the world generally since 1945,” he wrote in 2010, believing that the West is in denial about this reality. He saw revolutionary Islamism as the current driving force behind this hatred.

Recently, he began to post complimentary editions of several of his books online on the Gloria Center website. They included: Israel: An Introduction, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, and Revolution Until Victory? The Politics and History of the PLO. His forthcoming book, Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, deals with the relationship forged during the 1930s and ’40s between Nazi leaders, Arab nationalists, and Muslim religious figures.

He also wrote about his ancestry and those who perished in the Holocaust in a book published in 2013 entitled Children of Dolhinov.

“For 2000 years, my ancestors dreamed of returning to their homeland and reestablishing their sovereignty,” he wrote. “I have had the privilege of living that dream. How amazing is that?”

He is survived by his wife Judith Colp Rubin and their two children.