Eitan Ginzburg

Ginzburg was born on January 25, 1977, in Argentina and immigrated to Israel with his parents at approximately one and a half years of age. He later made Ra'anana his home.[4] He holds undergraduate degrees in law and government from the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (now Reichman University) and a master's degree in political science, in a public and political leadership program, from Tel Aviv University.[1] He is qualified as a lawyer and holds the rank of major in the Israeli military reserve.[1]

Before entering elected politics, Ginzburg worked as a political adviser to Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai.[4] He entered Ra'anana municipal politics in 2003 and was, at the time, the youngest member of the city council in its history.[5]

Ginzburg served on the Ra'anana City Council for more than fifteen years, holding several municipal roles including chair of the local planning and building committee and six years as a paid deputy mayor under Ze'ev Bielski.[9][5] In 2013, in his capacity as chair of the planning and building committee, he oversaw approval of a building project under Israel's TAMA 38 urban-renewal framework in under a year, describing the expedited process as a model for moving significant plans forward more efficiently.[10]

When Bielski departed in March 2018 to head the National Housing Headquarters at the Finance Ministry, the city council chose Ginzburg as his successor by consensus, with support spanning Meretz to the Jewish Home.[5][6] The selection made Ginzburg Israel's first openly gay mayor.[6] He said the council had chosen him for his municipal experience, abilities, and record rather than because of, or despite, his sexual orientation.[6]

During his 2018 mayoral campaign, Ginzburg outlined ambitious plans for the city, including renovation of Ahuza, Ra'anana's central boulevard — covering sidewalks, façades, storefronts, and a new bicycle path — along with 1,000 underground parking spaces, a theater, and conversion of the historic Lev HaMoshava municipal compound into a conservation area hosting restaurants, cafés, galleries, and a museum. He also proposed improved immigrant services, including translated information and dedicated assistance for immigrant children and young adults.[9]

Ginzburg sought a full elected mayoral term in October 2018 but lost to Haim Broide in the second round. Broide received 58.06% of the vote (17,629 votes) against Ginzburg's 41.94% (12,733 votes).[11] By June 2022, after entering national politics, Ginzburg was serving as chair of Blue and White's parliamentary faction and as a deputy speaker of the Knesset.[5]

Ginzburg entered national politics on the Blue and White ticket in 2019, listed at position 32 on Kahol Lavan's slate for both the April and September elections.[12] The party won 33 seats in the September vote, bringing him into the 22nd Knesset.[12] He appeared at the same position on the Kahol Lavan list for the March 2020 election to the 23rd Knesset, when the party won 33 seats with 26.59% of the vote.[13] For the 24th Knesset election on March 23, 2021 — in which Blue and White won eight seats with 292,257 votes (6.63%) — Ginzburg was again among the party's Knesset members.[2]

In May 2021, following cabinet approval, Ginzburg was sworn in as Minister of Communications.[3] His appointment meant that three openly LGBT individuals were serving as cabinet ministers simultaneously, alongside Itzik Shmuli and Amir Ohana.[3] Within about a week of taking office, he advanced a draft law to open postal services to competition and expand the Communications Ministry's enforcement and oversight powers, drawing on recommendations from a committee chaired by former ministry director-general Danny Rosen.[14]

Ginzburg returned to the Knesset in July 2025 as an opposition legislator following the resignation of Gadi Eisenkot.[15] In January 2026, he co-chaired — alongside Likud MK Boaz Bismuth — the Knesset–U.S. House of Representatives parliamentary friendship group.[15] That same month, he co-sponsored with Likud lawmaker Moshe Passal a bill to regulate and enable ride-sharing services in Israel, which passed a preliminary Knesset reading on January 21, 2026.[15]

Among his other legislative initiatives were a bill to prohibit photographing suspects in courthouses, which advanced to second and third readings; a proposed amendment to transfer water and sewage operations to local authorities; and legislation to limit the state's right to appeal acquittals.[15] Ginzburg explained his courthouse-photography bill by noting that more than half of people who are arrested are never indicted, yet their photographs may remain publicly accessible online indefinitely — framing it as balancing "the right to know" with "the right to be forgotten and respect for a person."[15]

In December 2025, Ginzburg submitted a proposal to the Central Elections Committee calling for safeguards against election disinformation, AI-generated campaigning, and foreign interference. His proposals included expanded disclosure rules for election advertising across all platforms, mandatory labels for AI-generated campaign content, disclosure of AI-based voter micro-targeting, and the appointment of a specialized AI adviser to the committee.[16]

Civil rights legislation has been a consistent focus of Ginzburg's Knesset work. In 2020, he submitted a bill intended to assist victims of terror attacks that also extended protections to LGBTQ victims of hate crimes.[17] That same year, he promoted an amendment to Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty that would enshrine equality and prohibit discrimination, including on the basis of sexual orientation. The proposal passed a preliminary Knesset reading by 56 votes to 54, though it did not reach a first reading before the Knesset dissolved.[18][19]

In 2021, Ginzburg renewed the equality proposal within the new coalition, but it generated internal disagreement: some coalition members objected to its potential effect on the Supreme Court's scope of action, and Deputy Minister Abir Kara and Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked opposed it.[19] Ginzburg argued that the proposal would establish a straightforward individual right to equality.

In May 2022, amid renewed debate over the Nation-State Law following the death of Druze officer Mahmoud Kheir el-Din, Ginzburg said a bill to elevate Israel's Declaration of Independence to the status of a Basic Law could be ready for a vote in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation as early as the following Sunday. Druze advocates and politicians had championed such a change in response to what they argued was the Nation-State Law's discriminatory effect on non-Jewish citizens.[20] Also in 2022, Ginzburg said he had initiated legislation treating verbal violence based on sexual orientation on sports fields as a form of discrimination and a legal offense.[17]

In May 2026, Ginzburg left Blue and White.[8] For the 2021 Knesset election cycle, he had appeared seventh on Blue and White's candidate list.[21] In August 2026, he announced he was joining B'Yachad — a party formed in April 2026 by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid — to contest the 26th Knesset.[7][8] He was placed eighth on B'Yachad's party list.[7] Ginzburg cited his experience working with Bennett during the previous "change government" as the basis for his conviction that Bennett had the ability, skills, and experience to lead the reform effort he considered necessary.[8]

Ginzburg's appointment in 2018 marked the first time an openly gay politician served as a mayor in Israel.[6] In May 2021, his appointment as communications minister coincided with another milestone, as three openly LGBT cabinet ministers were serving simultaneously.[3] His equality proposal also placed individual equality and anti-discrimination protections within the debate over Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, passing a preliminary reading in 2020 before the Knesset dissolved.[18][19]

Ginzburg lives in Ra'anana with his partner, Yotam Nissimblat, and their twin children, Itai and Emma.[5] In a 2022 interview, the couple said they had been together for nearly two decades and that their twins, then around four and a half years old, were born through surrogacy in the United States.[5] They said they considered several routes to parenthood before choosing the United States, citing the medical and ethical standards of the process there, and noted that the arrangement required a substantial financial commitment.[5]

Ginzburg has spoken publicly about the administrative obstacles he and his partner encountered as a same-sex couple. When registering their children with the National Insurance Institute, officials asked which of the two men was the mother, and the couple was told to choose one of them because the child allowance was at that time paid only to the mother.[5] Although a later Knesset decision enabled male same-sex parents to receive the allowance, Ginzburg said government computer systems continued to register one of them as the mother.[5]

He has also recalled that, while serving as mayor, he faced resistance to attending Ra'anana's main synagogue Independence Day service because of his sexual orientation, and was asked not to attend another synagogue as well; as a compromise, he attended only the end of the service.[5] Ginzburg connected the episode's pain to his family's immigration to Israel out of Zionist conviction and to his great-grandfather's role as a synagogue treasurer.[5]

During his 2018 mayoral campaign, Ginzburg's team alleged that a fake Facebook page called "Free Ra'anana" had used manipulated images — including a doctored photograph of Ginzburg at a Pride parade — to alarm religious residents with homophobic messaging. Ginzburg said the posts were designed to target the religious community. His team believed a rival mayoral candidate was responsible and filed a police complaint, though the cited reporting did not establish who actually created the page.[9]

Some coverage referred to Ginzburg as having been "elected" mayor in 2018. Contemporary accounts clarify that the city council chose him to complete the term after Bielski's departure; he then lost the public municipal election to Haim Broide later that year.[5][11]