Rina Bassist has been writing for Al-Monitor since December 2013 and is a member of Al-Monitor's Israel Pulse editorial team. Bassist is also an international correspondent for the Israel Broadcasting Authority, where she has been stationed in Paris, Brussels, New Orleans and Pretoria. She also contributes to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jerusalem Post and Ynet. Before her journalistic career, she served as an Israeli diplomat in the post of deputy ambassador in Bogota.
Al-Monitor: Why did you decide to become a journalist?
Bassist: Having left a career in diplomacy behind me, I arrived many years ago to Brussels, the true heart of Europe. Intrigued by the changes the world was undergoing on the one hand, concerned at the direction the Middle East was taking just a few years after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the other, it was as if I had no choice — but to become a journalist. A spectator, yet carrying a mission of a sort.
