Anna Azari

Anna Azari (born 27 August 1959) is an Israeli diplomat and the Ambassador of Israel to Poland. She was also an Ambassador of Israel to Russia. She was born in the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1959 and immigrated to Israel with her family in 1972. Azari attended University of Haifa where she earned a bachelor's degree in history and English literature and a master’s in political science. She also garnered a Special Programme in Russian Studies from Hebrew University and graduated from the National Security College.

She has been in the Israeli Foreign Ministry since the 1980s and lived in San Francisco from 1989 to 1992, where she served as consulate general of Israel to the Pacific Northwest. Azari held the position of first secretary for the Embassy of Israel in Moscow from 1995 to 1997. Beginning in 1999, she served as the Ambassador of Israel to both Ukraine and Moldova and was described by the Ukrainian press as one of the country's most popular foreign diplomats before she left the post in 2003.

On the day of the September 11 attacks, Azari was meeting with a delegation of physicians from Chicago and Atlanta-based Jewish Healthcare International to discuss their collaborative work with Ukrainian health professionals. The meeting was interrupted when they learned of the attacks and they watched news coverage of the attacks in the meeting room until the embassy was ordered to be evacuated. Following her tenure in Ukraine, Azari ran the Ministry's Eurasia Department where she handled relations with former Soviet states. During this time she was considered to be one of several candidates that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon could choose to appoint as head of Nativ.

She was appointed as ambassador to Russia by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in 2006 and presented her credentials to Russian President Vladimir Putin on 18 January 2007. Over the course of her tenure, Israel and Russia agreed to eliminate the visa requirement for tourists traveling between the two countries and Russia ended a deal to sell Iran S-300 surface-to-air missiles. Dorit Golander was chosen to replace Azari in 2009 and she left the post in the summer of 2010. In an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta prior to her departure, Azari stated that relations between Israel and Russia had improved markedly and that she saw the level of diplomatic activity nearing a par with Russia's relations with bigger countries, such as Germany.

Azari is married to Rabbi Meir Azari who leads the Reform Judaism congregation of Beit Daniel in Tel Aviv and together they have two children. When her appointment as ambassador to Russia was announced, Greer Fay Cashman of The Jerusalem Post suggested her marriage could be a source of contention with orthodox religious communities in Russia. An outspoken rabbi from San Francisco, Martin S. Weiner, faced criticism from Azari in 1991 when he voiced support for a move by then U.S. President George H. W. Bush that delayed loan guarantees to Israel.