Avigdor Lieberman
Avigdor Lieberman is a Soviet-born Israeli politician who served as Minister of Finance between 2021 and 2022, having previously served twice as Deputy Prime Minister of Israel from 2006 to 2008 and 2009 to 2012.
Born and raised in Soviet Moldova, Lieberman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1978. He entered the Knesset in 1999, and has served in numerous roles in the government, including as Minister of National Infrastructure, Minister of Transportation, and Minister of Strategic Affairs. He served as Deputy Prime Minister under Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu. He served under Netanyahu as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2009 to 2012 and 2013 to 2015 and as Minister of Defense from 2016 to 2018. On 14 November 2018, he resigned as Defense Minister because of a ceasefire in Gaza which he characterized as "surrendering to terror."
He is the founder and leader of the secular nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, whose electoral base initially consisted overwhelmingly of Russian-speaking immigrants from the former Soviet Union, but later attracted broader support. Lieberman has stated his opposition to forming a coalition with religious parties and refused to join Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition in April 2019. As a result of the arrival in Israel during the 1990s of about one million Russian-speaking immigrants, Yisrael Beiteinu has regularly played the "king-maker" role in Israel's coalition governments. He was replaced in the Knesset by Elina Bardach-Yalov when he became the finance minister.
Lieberman is a polarizing figure in Israeli politics due to his hardliner positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His name is associated with the 2004 Lieberman Plan, which advocates land swaps between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and the barring of Arab Israelis from Israeli citizenship unless they swear a loyalty oath to Israel. While this has been decried as discriminatory, this however makes him unique among right-wing Israeli figures in that he is not categorically opposed to any form of two-state solution and even ready to cede land from the pre-1967 borders. He is nonetheless also known for rhetoric considered violent and hawkish in times of military escalation. During the 2018–2019 Gaza border protests and the Gaza war, he iterated that there are "no innocents in Gaza".
Biography
Evet Lvovich Lieberman was born to a Russian-speaking Jewish family in Chișinău, Moldavian SSR, Soviet Union. His father Lev was a writer who had served in the Red Army and spent seven years in a Siberian exile under Joseph Stalin's rule, where he met his wife Esther. His parents imbued him with a strong secular Jewish identity and consciously taught him only Yiddish up until the age of three. They were not afraid to speak Yiddish in public, even on crowded buses. Inheriting a love of Russian literature from his father, Lieberman had dreamed of becoming a poet. Lieberman attributes his forthright personality to his youth in the large Jewish community of 1970s Chișinău, saying: "Jews were 25 percent of the population of Kishinev … We were more affluent, better educated, and we showed it… The Jews of Moldova have this no-nonsense streak. They are 'doers,' not idle philosophers. No wonder Meir Dizengoff, another Jew from Moldova, established Tel Aviv".After high school, Lieberman enrolled at the Chișinău Agriculture Institute majoring in hydrological land improvement. As a student in Moldova, his passion for Russian literary classics continued, as he won first prize for a play he wrote, and dreamed of a literary career.
Lieberman and his family immigrated to Israel on 18 June 1978. Lieberman studied Hebrew at an ulpan and changed his first name to Avigdor. He was conscripted into the Israel Defense Forces, and was only obligated to do one year of active service instead of three, during which he served in the IDF military government in Hebron. Following his discharge from active duty, he continued to be called up for the reserves. After undergoing an artillery course, he served in the Artillery Corps. He attained the rank of Corporal.
Upon his release from the army, he earned a BA in International Relations and Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
On campus he was active in the student group "Kastel," associated with the Likud. Relations between Kastel and Arab student groups were tense and often deteriorated into violence. According to Maariv, based on the testimony of a witness who was a student at the time, Lieberman participated in a few of the violent clashes. Lieberman said that he was involved in two. Jamal Zahalka, an Arab Knesset member from Balad who was also a student at the time and active in Arab groups, claimed that he remembers Lieberman as yelling a lot but avoiding any of the rough action.
Haaretz reported that Lieberman was briefly involved with the Kach party founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane based on the testimony of two Kach activists, Avigdor Eskin and Yosef Dayan. Lieberman denied this and called the publication an "orchestrated provocation". While studying at the Hebrew University, Lieberman worked as a bouncer at the student club "Shablul", which is where he met his future wife. A year later, Lieberman was promoted to general manager, responsible for all the activities at the club.
Lieberman and his wife Ella née Tzipkin, also a Moldovan immigrant to Israel, have a daughter Michal and two sons, Yaakov and Amos. They live in the Israeli settlement of Nokdim, located in the Judean Desert of the West Bank, where they have resided since 1988. Lieberman stated that despite having lived there for so long he is willing to leave his home as part of a peace agreement.
In breaks between government stints, Lieberman has engaged in business endeavors such as importing wood from the former Soviet Union into Israel, through which he amassed a fortune. He speaks Russian, Romanian, Hebrew, Yiddish and English.
Lieberman's mother, Esther Lieberman, died on 4 December 2014 while Lieberman was in Switzerland.
Political career
In 1983–1988, Lieberman helped found the Zionist Forum for Soviet Jewry and was a member of the Board of the Jerusalem Economic Corporation and the Secretary of the Jerusalem branch of the Histadrut Ovdim Le'umit. In 1988, he started working with Benjamin Netanyahu. From 1993 to 1996, following Netanyahu's election as party leader, Lieberman served as Director-General of the Likud party. After Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister, Lieberman served as Director-General of the Prime Minister's Office from 1996 to 1997.In 1997, Lieberman resigned from Likud after Prime Minister Netanyahu granted concessions to the Palestinians in the Wye River Memorandum, and expressed disappointment when Yisrael BaAliyah, a new immigrant party headed by Natan Sharansky did not quit the coalition government in protest. In 1999, Lieberman formed the Yisrael Beiteinu party to create a platform for Soviet immigrants who supported a hard line in negotiations with the Palestinians. The party ran for the Knesset during the 1999 legislative election, and ran on a joint list with Aliyah, a party formed by Michael Nudelman and Yuri Stern, who had broken away from Yisrael BaAliyah. The new party won four seats, one of which was taken by Lieberman. Lieberman served on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and State Control Committee, and as Chairman of the Israel-Moldova Parliamentary Friendship League.
In March 2001, Lieberman was appointed Minister of National Infrastructure, but resigned in March 2002.
In the 2003 legislative election, Yisrael Beiteinu ran on a joint list with the National Union. The joint list won seven seats, with Yisrael Beiteinu allotted four of them. In February 2003, Lieberman was appointed Minister of Transport, and resigned from the Knesset to take a seat in the Cabinet. He maintained leadership of the party and returned to the Knesset in 2006. Later he would simultaneously serve in the Knesset and Cabinet.
In May 2004, Lieberman was dismissed from the cabinet by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon due to his opposition to the Gaza disengagement, and Yisrael Beiteinu left the government in June in protest of the disengagement.
In the 2006 legislative election, Lieberman's party split from the National Union to run alone. The party won eleven seats, a gain from its previous six seats. It was initially in the opposition, but in October 2006, Lieberman and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert signed a coalition agreement under which Lieberman became the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs, a newly created position with a focus towards the strategic threat from Iran. In December 2006, he called Iranian nuclear proliferation "the biggest threat facing the Jewish people since the Second World War". He advocated that Israel join the European Union and NATO.
Lieberman resigned his cabinet position and Yisrael Beiteinu left the coalition in January 2008. He cited opposition to the resuming peace talks, saying that "Negotiations on the basis of land for peace are a critical mistake... and will destroy us."
Yisrael Beiteinu, which was described at times as Lieberman's "one man's party" for its media-closed meetings and party members' reluctance to give interviews, emerged as the third largest party in Israel after 2009 legislative election and on 16 March, it entered the coalition government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Lieberman was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister.
On 25 October 2012, Lieberman and Benjamin Netanyahu announced that their respective political parties, Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu, had merged and would run together on a single ballot in Israel's 22 January 2013 general elections. "In view of the challenges we're facing, we need responsibility on a national level.... We're providing a true alternative, and an opportunity for the citizens to stabilize leadership and government," Lieberman said.
Lieberman was appointed Minister of Defense in May 2016. He resigned from the Knesset under the Norwegian Law, allowing Yulia Malinovsky to replace him.
Lieberman has attracted interest of voters from Israel's business community. Former ambassador to the United States Danny Gillerman explains: "His agenda is interesting, especially the combination between his vigorous opposition to a state of halakha and his uncompromising condition of the formation of a national-unity government. There is a yearning for leadership, and this milieu is fed up with the parties and with religious coercion." Dalia Itzik has said "He represents the historic Mapai today."