Jo Golan (1922-2003) was born in Alexandria and spent his childhood in Tel Aviv, Damascus and Beirut. He was fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, English and French. In Paris, a pupil at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques, he was elected Secretary General of the Students' League against French colonialism. Then undertakes a series of missions that took him from Israel to Morocco, Lebanon, Algeria, the Vatican on behalf of the World Jewish Congress. For seventeen years, he directed the Arab affairs bureau of the World Jewish Congress and became secretary general of Florence seminars with George La Pira.