Asa-El's weekly column in the Jerusalem Post, Middle Israel, appears regularly since 1995, and is a unique attempt to present in English the average Israeli's view on anything, from politics and foreign affairs to business and religion.
Asa-El's Hebrew bestseller The Jewish March Folly (מצעד האיוולת היהודי, Yediot Sefarim, 2019), a revolutionary reading of Jewish history that places at its heart twelve ancient civil wars, was praised by novelist A.B. Yehoshua as a "bold, deep and well-written" book that "convincingly and accurately ... revives Jewish history with dramatic, literary scenes." Historian Yuval Noah Harari wrote that the book is "a well-written and thought-provoking retelling of Jewish history, which artfully connects past events with present concerns," and Hebrew University philosopher Prof. Moshe Halbertal described it as "inspired writing that adds historic and intellectual depth to Israel's political debate."
Asa-El was invited by IDF Chief of General Staff Lt-Gen Aviv Kochavi to lecture about the book to the IDF's General Staff. President Reuven Rivlin invited the author to lecture about the book in front of an audience at the President's House, Prime Minister Naftali Bennet handed out the book to the Israeli cabinet's ministers, and President Isaac Herzog invited Asa-El to discuss his book in the wake of Israel's constitutional crisis.
Asa-El's previous book, The Diaspora and the Lost Tribes of Israel (Universe, 2004), a geographic history of the Jews, was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal as "an engaging history of the Jewish experience" that "vividly captures the creativity and nomadic quality of the Jewish people."
Asa-El has been quoted or published along the years by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, TIME magazine, the Daily Telegraph, the New Republic, Le Figaro, L'Express, Azure, Harvard Political Review, the Australian, the Australia Financial Review, Jornal do Brasil, the India Times, Politiken and others.
His five-part series in the Jerusalem Report (Aug-Sept 2017) about the future of the Jewish people won the Bnai Brith Journalism Award
Having originally joined the Jerusalem Post as its business editor, Asa-El was later the Post's news editor and editor-in-chief of its overseas edition, the International Jerusalem Post, before serving as the Jerusalem Post's executive editor.
In these positions, Asa-El led the Post's editorial line that blended diplomatic pragmatism, political reform, economic liberalism and cultural pluralism. Meanwhile, he oversaw the redesign of the daily Jerusalem Post, the remodeling of its weekend magazines and supplements, and the reinvention of the International Jerusalem Post as an independent news weekly.
A member of the Jewish Speakers Bureau, Amotz Asa-El has been invited on lecture tours to the US, Canada, China, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand where he addressed diplomats, legislators, journalists, clergy, business leaders and academic forums on issues relating to Middle Eastern, international and Jewish affairs. His lectures were sponsored among others by AIPAC, JNF, ADL, the American Jewish Committee, the Canada Israel Committee, the Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council, United Israel Appeal, Hadassah and Bnai Brith, as well as a variety of universities from Harvard and Columbia to the University of Melbourne and the Royal Military College of Canada.
Since joining the Jerusalem Post Asa-El has been a frequent commentator of Middle Eastern affairs on BBC, NPR, CNN and the Israel Broadcast Corporation, as well as a regular contributor to Dow Jones' MarketWatch, analyzing macro-economic, financial and social developments in Israel, the Arab world, Iran and Turkey.
Prior to joining the Post, Asa-El was a foreign correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, and the foreign editor of the Hebrew-language financial daily Telegraph.
Asa-El holds graduate degrees in journalism from Columbia University, in Jewish history from the Hebrew University, and in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. He lives with his wife Nurit in Jerusalem where they raised their three children.