Ambassador Ginsberg spent his formative years in the Middle East, particularly in Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon from 1960-1968. He began his foreign policy career as a foreign affairs advisor during his freshman year in college to Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1971-1977). He was appointed by Secretary of State Vance as his White House Liaison in 1977, and then served as Deputy Senior Advisor to President Carter for Middle East Policy on his White House staff from 1979-1981.

In 1994, he was appointed by President Clinton as U.S. Ambassador to Morocco, making him the first American of Jewish heritage to be appointed to an Arab nation. Currently, Amb. Ginsberg is President of Layalina Television, the first U.S. philanthropic producer of commercial Arabic language television for broadcasting in the Arab world (visit www.layalina.tv). Layalina’s programs currently appear on MBC – the largest pan-Arab Middle East network.

He is also a Senior Vice President of APCO Worldwide – a global corporate advisory company with offices throughout the world based in Washington, D.C., and manages many of its Middle East accounts. Amb. Ginsberg is also a managing director of Integration Capital and Trade – a Middle East investment bank, based in Oman, Saudi Arabia and New York.

During his career, Amb. Ginsberg served on many prestigious public and private panels reviewing U.S. foreign and economic policy in the Middle East, including the Council on Foreign Relations Tasks Forces on Iraq, Public Diplomacy and Middle East policy, and the Brookings Institution Saban Center Islamic Task Force. He was also recently appointed to co-chair the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS) roundtable on Islam extremism in Europe.

Amb. Ginsberg is also a Fox News Channel and Arab media commentator. His insights on the Middle East are regularly published in several prominent U.S. newspapers and periodicals, including most recently in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, and the Baltimore Sun.

Amb. Ginsberg will complete his book on what Americans are doing to win the battle of ideas in the Middle East in 2008.

Blog Entries by Amb. Marc Ginsberg

Timidity Vs. Audacity? The Tests Are Yet to Come

Posted November 3, 2009 | 03:46 PM (EST)


A year ago today I was sitting on a cold floor of a dark elementary school at 5am determined to be the first in my precinct to vote for Barack Obama. I could not sleep the night even though as a veteran of other election campaign nights I could feel...

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Russia "Nyet!" and China "Bu Shi!" to Tougher Iran Sanctions

223 Comments | Posted October 16, 2009 | 03:16 PM (EST)


Iran's anti-democratic and repressive regime is a member of a fraternal club of other like-minded anti-democratic and repressive regimes which include Russia and China. They do stick together. And friends they are indeed!

In one bad week for us good guys, both Russia and China brushed aside diplomatic entreaties...

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Keep Al Qaeda in Our Crosshairs

81 Comments | Posted September 11, 2009 | 04:24 PM (EST)


Today's 8th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks should refocus our sites to the unfinished business against Al Qaeda. As victims' names are read one by one and the sad, rain soaked faces of families who lost loved ones peer into Ground Zero, this most essential of national purposes warrants revisiting....

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Playing Shortstop for the Boston "Ted" Sox

7 Comments | Posted August 26, 2009 | 03:47 PM (EST)


Ted Kennedy was my boss and my mentor. More than anyone in my life, he inspired me as he inspired all of the many hundreds of staffers who served him on his senate staff.

I began volunteering as a freshman in college in his mailroom in 1969 when I...

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"Mabruk" Mubarak

51 Comments | Posted August 18, 2009 | 04:33 PM (EST)


Ironically, the temperature in Cairo today was a balmy 94 degrees compared to Washington's oppressively steamy 97 degrees. But that did not deter 81-year-old Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from winging into DC for encouraging meetings with President Obama, Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton to reinvigorate Egypt's pivotal...

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A Cabal in the College of Mullahs?

21 Comments | Posted July 14, 2009 | 05:28 PM (EST)


Supported by the Revolutionary Guards and its Basij Miliitia (the equivalent of its Gestapo/SS), the Supreme Leader's iron-fisted tactics are beginning to resemble what the revolution was supposed to have overthrown -- the worst vestiges of the dreaded Shah's secret police state built around the notorious SAVAK. In the face...

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Supreme Leader to Demonstrators: "Drop Dead!"

43 Comments | Posted June 20, 2009 | 01:38 AM (EST)


I am writing this as the sun is about to rise in Iran. I have this dreaded feeling that very bad things are about to happen throughout Iran in a few short hours and I pray I am wrong.

In his Friday Prayer address, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei essentially...

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Is Katherine Harris in Tehran?

54 Comments | Posted June 15, 2009 | 08:32 PM (EST)


The bloodshed and civil disorder in the streets of Tehran -- unseen since the 1979 revolution that overthrew Shah Reza Pahlavi -- constitutes an appropriate civil rebuke to Iran's ruling mullahs, who badly miscalculated how unpopular their brutish President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad really is among wide swaths of Iran's population.

In...

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"Natural Growth": Netanyahu's Road Map to a Mid East Roadblock

352 Comments | Posted June 2, 2009 | 02:57 PM (EST)


Taking on the sacred cow of Israeli settlements construction in the West Bank has historically been a fool's errand for American presidents.

Caught between Israel's concerned supporters at home (many of whom do not appreciate the complexity of the issue) and domestic Israeli politics, no amount of presidential arm-twisting...

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A Fictional Iran Intel Account of the Obama-Netanyahu Summit

29 Comments | Posted May 20, 2009 | 05:04 PM (EST)


TOP SECRET

FROM: Washington, D.C. Agent Mossadeq - Ministry of Intelligence & Security
TO: Office of the Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khameni
RE: OBAMA-NETANYAHU MAY 18 SUMMIT

Holy Imam:

The following report summarizes our Washington intelligence unit's assessment of Monday's summit meeting between the Zionist leader...

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Decision 2009 -- Iran's June 12 Elections

32 Comments | Posted May 8, 2009 | 04:22 PM (EST)


As President Obama calibrates his engagement policy with Iran and plans his next steps with the vexing Islamic Republic, that nation will go to the polls on June 12 to elect a president. The election will have important implications for the U.S. and the future of Middle East stability since...

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Obama's Foreign Policy: A Grand Century of Days -- Light Years Away from Bush

38 Comments | Posted April 28, 2009 | 07:57 PM (EST)


Two years ago, Barack Obama was a mere back-bencher on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, whose chairman is now our Vice President, Joe Biden. From his 24 month journey as back-bencher to Commander-in-Chief, President Obama has made an incredibly impressive start altering the direction of America's foreign policy -- altogether...

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The Dear Leader's Used Rug

Posted April 16, 2009 | 10:35 AM (EST)


I've been in China this week after addressing a forum at Beijing University on the new Obama administration's foreign policy. During my visit, North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, or parliament saw fit to unanimously elect "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il to a third five year term as head of the country's...

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AF"Lack" -- NATO's AWOL Allies in Afghanistan

Posted March 27, 2009 | 10:54 AM (EST)


Watching the President unveil his well-constructed Obama Doctrine for Afghanistan and Pakistan this morning, it is all too clear from his message that the safety of Europeans is as much on the line as the safety of Americans as events in Afghanistan unfold. But you wouldn't know it given how...

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Double Jeopardy: Putin's Vengeful Miscarriage of Justice

Posted February 25, 2009 | 05:14 PM (EST)


Kremlin inspired vengeance knows no limits when it comes to the miscarriage of justice committed by Russian authorities against political prisoners Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his fellow imprisoned business partner, Platon Lebedev. Both men now face the prospect of a second Soviet era kangaroo-style proceeding designed to keep them in the...

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Bibi & Avi or Tzpi & Avi: Change We Can't Believe In

Posted February 11, 2009 | 11:14 PM (EST)


So here we are once again, another political groundhog day in Israel resulting in yet another inconclusive national election. Neither of the two major political parties -- Tzipi LIvni's Kadima or Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud, scored a major political knock out punch, leaving just one parliamentary seat separating the two claimants...

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Cheney: "Lions, Tigers & Bears...Oh My!"

Posted February 4, 2009 | 02:35 PM (EST)


Deep from his post-vice presidential dungeon Dick Cheney is wasting no time grinding out the same ol sinister dirge on his organ... a funereal threat that the Democrats are too soft on terrorism to protect the country. Now, haven't we been in this movie before!

In an interview yesterday, Cheney...

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"Abu" Obama's Muslim Stimulus Package

Posted January 28, 2009 | 12:12 AM (EST)


What transfixed me most about President Obama's eloquently choreographed initial outreach to the broader Muslim world on the moderate pan-Arab satellite channel "Al-Arabiya" was the studied confidence of the messenger and the mastery of his message.

In an unprecedented unveiling of the new Democratic "soft power" public diplomacy, the...

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Live from the Capital of the Freed World

Posted January 20, 2009 | 03:12 PM (EST)


I rushed to my office in downtown Washington, but a few long blocks from the Capitol to share with you the wonderous experience of witnessing first-hand the inauguration of President Obama. Having stood within but a few hundred yards from the inaugural stand for hours surrounded by thousands at the...

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Gazans in Peril

Posted January 13, 2009 | 12:44 AM (EST)


So much as been written about the fighting in Gaza and its political and military consequences, but surely not enough has been written about the terrible humanitarian conditions that have befallen its unfortunate non-combatant inhabitants.

Every party -- yes, any party remotely involved in instigating or failing to prevent the...

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