Nine ‘FIRSTS’ About Israel’s New Government

Photo Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

For the first time in 12 years, Israel’s Likud Party and its head, Benjamin Netanyahu, have moved from the prime minister’s seat to the opposition in the Knesset.

The new government, sworn in Sunday night, brings into power a broad coalition of eight political parties, spanning the country’s political spectrum.

Heading Israel’s 36th government is Yamina Party leader Naftali Bennett, the 13th Israeli prime minister.

Bennett was sworn in along with Yesh Atid Party leader Yair Lapid, who will serve as alternate prime minister and foreign minister until becoming the country’s 14th prime minister in August 2023 for the final two years of the term—if all goes according to plan.

The word “Together,” in large letters, in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, a day after Naftali Bennett was sworn in as the new prime minister of Israel, June 14, 2021. Photo by Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90.

Here are 10 notable firsts in this 36th Knesset, formed with the intention of unseating Netanyahu and bringing change to Israel.

1. Bennett, 49, is the first prime minister from the high-tech world, having headed and sold two successful software companies, Cyota and Soluto. He also is the first to wear a kippah, a traditional Jewish skullcap.

Yamina Party head Naftali Bennett gives a press conference at the Knesset in Jerusalem on May 30, 2021. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

2. The ruling coalition includes an Arab party—the Islamist Ra’am Party—while other parties representing Israel’s 21 percent Arab minority chose to remain in the opposition.

3. Incoming Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz was the first openly gay Knesset member to head a major party (Meretz).

Meretz Party head Nitzan Horowitz (third from right) and MK Tamar Zandberg (with child) at a committee meeting in Tel Aviv, ahead of the swearing-in of Israel’s new government, June 11, 2021. Photo by Miriam Alster/Flash90.

4. The 36th Knesset includes two longtime disabilities activists: Shirley Pinto, Israel’s first deaf Knesset member; and Karine Elharrar, a veteran MK who has muscular dystrophy, as Minister of Energy.

New Right Party member Shirley Pinto attends a press conference in Tel Aviv, March 17, 2019. Photo by Flash90.

5. There are nine female cabinet ministers (out of a total of 27), the highest number in Israel’s history: Yifat Shasha-Biton (education), Ayelet Shaked (interior), Merav Michaeli (transportation), Tamar Zandberg (environmental protection), Orna Barbivay (economy), Karine Elharrar (energy), Pnina Tamano-Shata (aliyah and integration) and Orit Farkash-Hacohen (science and technology).

Israeli lawmaker Karin Elharar speaks during a Shabat Culture event in Kfar Yona, March 9, 2019. Photo by Flash90.

6. There are two Arab cabinet ministers: Esawi Frej (regional cooperation) and Hamed Amar (finance).

7. Two new Knesset members hail from English-speaking countries: Cape Town-raised Ruth Wasserman Lande and North Carolina native professor Alon Tal. Counting Tal, the Knesset has had only eight American-born members in its 73-year history. (Bennett, like Netanyahu a fluent English speaker, was born in Haifa to American immigrants.)

Esawi Frej addresses the Knesset plenum ahead of the swearing-in of the new Israeli government, June 13, 2021. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90.

8. Three former broadcast journalists are in the top echelon: Yair Lapid, Nitzan Horowitz and Merav Michaeli. Lapid’s late father, Tommy, was also a TV journalist-turned-politician. (A video made in 1994, recently recirculated on Twitter, shows Michaeli and Lapid emerging disheveled from behind a sofa. Now 54 and 57, respectively, they have shed their playgirl/playboy personas of the past.)

{Reposted from the JNS website}