Was born in the USA. He is a stage designer for opera and theatre with all leading opera houses and theatre companies around the world. Among the operas he has designed are Katya Kabanova (Janacek) and Wozzeck (Berg) at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Jenufa (Janacek) and Rienzi (Wagner) at the Vienna Staatsoper, Der Ring des Nibelungen (Wagner), Aida (Verdi), Parsifal (Wagner), Florencia en el Amazonas (Daniel Catan) and Macbeth (Verdi) in Seattle, The Fairy Queen (Purcell) at the English National Opera and many others including in Tokyo and Paris. He has also designed the set for five world premieres of operas by Philip Glass. He has also designed for the Millennium Park in Chicago. Israel's costume drawings are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Obie award. An elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Israel is also a professor in the School of Arts and Architecture at University of California in Los Angeles.