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.

Al-Monitor:  Did you have female role models to look up to when you were first starting out? Who?

Bassist:  Growing up, and later on throughout my years as a working adult, I had my two grandmothers as constant inspiration. One of them survived the war and concentration camps, immigrated to a new country where she built a family and even went to university at 40 years old. The other was the driving force within a poor immigrants' family. She took upon herself at a very young age to care for her parents and her siblings. As a journalist, you are exposed to the best and the worst in human society. My grandmothers taught me to always look first for the good.