Galit Distel-Atbaryan

Distel-Atbaryan was born in Jerusalem on January 10, 1971. Her parents were immigrants from Iran, and she speaks Farsi.[9][1] She grew up in Jerusalem, served in the Israel Air Force as a welfare noncommissioned officer, and earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Tel Aviv University.[3]

She worked as a writer and media commentator before entering politics, writing columns and appearing on television panels and radio programs. Her media work included writing for Israel Hayom, hosting a daily program on Galei Israel Radio, appearing on the panel show “The Patriots,” and making opinion videos for Kan 11.[9][3]

Her first book, And If They Told You, was published in 2009 with support from the Israel Lottery program for books of literary value. Her second novel, A Peacock in the Stairwell, appeared in 2014 and was one of five finalists for the Sapir Prize for Literature that year.[9][3] A National Library of Israel bibliographic record lists her as an author and associates her name with the Hebrew title of A Peacock in the Stairwell.[10]

She lived in Greece for about five years as part of her husband's work and was described in 2022 as divorced with two children.[1]

In February 2021, Benjamin Netanyahu selected Distel-Atbaryan for tenth place on the Likud slate for the election to the 24th Knesset. Her writing and media appearances expressed right-wing views and frequently criticized the left.[9][3] She entered the Knesset for the first time in 2021 and was placed twentieth on the Likud list for the 2022 election to the 25th Knesset.[3][1]

On January 9, 2023, Netanyahu announced that she would become Minister of Public Diplomacy. At the time, the ministry's remit and the minister's authority had not been clearly settled. Responsibilities relating to government publicity, the BDS campaign, the Government Press Office, and the National Public Diplomacy Directorate were divided among or associated with other offices.[4]

Distel-Atbaryan described her intended role as coordinating organizations and groups working in public diplomacy, producing content, and explaining Israel's case internationally. In a February 2023 interview, she proposed working with social-media creators and recruiting people from national service and schools. She said the ministry should address what she viewed as misinformation and ignorance about Israel and Palestinian leadership; these were her stated objectives and opinions.[11]

The ministry began with practical and budgetary constraints. In April 2023, Distel-Atbaryan said it had no funds because it had not existed when the previous state budget was approved. She expected an initial budget installment on June 1 and described interim work as improvised, including using videos recorded on her spokesperson's phone and publishing messages in English. She also estimated that the ministry would take about a year to become fully staffed.[12] She had previously worked in left-wing institutions and said that tens of thousands of readers of her opinion pieces felt that she gave voice to them.[11]

On May 31, 2023, she reposted a ministry message responding to Hamas's condemnation of Jerusalem's Pride parade and added that people concerned about LGBTQ rights should speak out against Hamas. The repost tagged an account identified as a parody account; the ministry and Distel-Atbaryan did not remove the post after users drew attention to its satirical nature.[13]

After the October 7, 2023, attack and outbreak of war, the National Public Diplomacy Directorate assigned international wartime public-diplomacy responsibilities to the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs alongside the Foreign Ministry. Distel-Atbaryan resigned as Minister of Public Diplomacy on October 12, five days after the attack. She said the other ministry had more staff, resources, and authority, leaving her office's role duplicative and its continued operation unjustifiable.[2][5]

In her resignation statement, she said the Public Diplomacy Ministry had been stripped of its original powers, could no longer make a significant contribution, and represented a waste of public funds. She also said that it had received its initial budget only 17 weeks earlier.[2]

The cabinet voted on October 22, 2023, to close the ministry and redirect its unused budget to the Tekuma Authority, which was tasked with rehabilitating communities near the Gaza border. The sums were reported as NIS 9.4 million for 2023 and NIS 14.4 million for 2024. The ministry's allocation of 29 full-time employees was also to be transferred, although it remained unclear how many employees might be laid off.[14]

While serving as a minister, Distel-Atbaryan had temporarily resigned her Knesset seat under the Norwegian Law. After leaving the ministry, she returned to the Knesset, replacing Avichay Buaron. In her resignation statement, she urged that the ministry's budget instead be transferred to residents of southern Israel.[5]

In a private WhatsApp exchange reported in November 2023, Distel-Atbaryan said she felt intense anger toward Netanyahu and that his government bore responsibility for the country's condition. She said threats in the south and north under his government had helped prompt her resignation, but opposed removing him during the war, arguing that he had political and international capacities important at that moment. She later characterized speaking openly in the exchange as a mistake in judgment.[15]

By 2025, she chaired a Knesset subcommittee on Jewish thought in the education system. In June of that year, she ordered MK Gilad Kariv, a Reform rabbi, removed from a meeting and said, “Remove the Reformist, the Jews here want to continue.” The Jerusalem Post described the remarks as implying that Reform Jews were not real Jews, and representatives of Jewish organizations criticized them.[6]

By May 2026, she chaired the Knesset Communications Committee, which was advancing the government's media legislation. Disputes arose over the legislation's accelerated advancement. In an April confrontation, she accused the committee's legal advisers of improperly delaying its work, after which they left the meeting.[16]

In May 2026, Distel-Atbaryan announced that she would retire from politics and would not compete in the Likud primaries for the 26th Knesset.[16]

Distel-Atbaryan's public profile has combined literature, broadcasting, and elected office. Her second novel was a finalist for the 2014 Sapir Prize, and in 2023 she became the first woman to head an independent Public Diplomacy Ministry.[3][11]

Her ministerial tenure ended later that year after wartime public-diplomacy responsibilities were reassigned, and the cabinet subsequently closed the ministry.[14][2] She returned to the Knesset and later chaired committees concerned with Jewish thought in education and communications legislation before announcing that she would not compete in the next Likud primaries.[5][16]

During the 2023 dispute over the government's proposed judicial overhaul, Distel-Atbaryan strongly supported the program and publicly criticized its opponents. In a March speech protesting comparisons between Likud politicians and Nazis, she told critics, “it's your families that were burned there.” Critics understood the remark as drawing a distinction between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. She later said she had not intended such a distinction, regretted language open to that interpretation, and opposed Nazi comparisons.[7] The judicial overhaul was deeply contested: opponents said it threatened democratic checks and minority protections, while supporters argued that it was needed to rein in an activist court.[7]

She also faced criticism over using her ministerial office to promote the government's judicial overhaul, including to audiences in Israel and abroad, and over earlier remarks described in reporting as incendiary.[14] In a television interview reported on December 31, 2023, she apologized for her contribution to social division during the dispute, saying that she had helped create rifts and tension that weakened the country. She said she believed this division had contributed in some way to the October 7 massacre; that was her retrospective assessment, not an independently established causal finding.[8]

In the November 2023 private exchange, her criticism of Netanyahu's government coexisted with her opposition to efforts to remove him during the war.[15] The episode and her subsequent apology reflected the tension between her stated objections to government decisions and her continued support for Netanyahu at a time of national crisis.