Gilad Erdan

Erdan was born in Ashkelon, Israel, on September 30, 1970.[1] He served in the Israel Defense Forces’ Adjutant Corps and left military service with the rank of captain.[5] He studied law at Bar-Ilan University, earned an LL.B., and qualified as a lawyer in 1996.[1][5] He later earned a master’s degree in political science from Tel Aviv University.[5]

His political activity began while he was a law student in the early 1990s, when he opposed the Oslo Accords.[1] In 1996, he became an adviser to Ariel Sharon, then a Knesset member, and subsequently worked as an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[1] From 1996 to 1998, he directed the Public Petitions Department in the Prime Minister’s Office.[1]

Before entering the Knesset, Erdan also established and chaired a lobby for soldiers missing in action.[1] He chaired Al Sam, an association dealing with drug problems, alongside his work as an adviser and public-service administrator.[1]

Erdan entered the 16th Knesset in 2003 after being placed 28th on the Likud electoral list.[6] His parliamentary service extended from 2003 to 2020.[5] He became a prominent opponent of Ariel Sharon’s Disengagement Plan and remained in Likud after Sharon left the party to establish Kadima.[1] He was reelected in 2006 and 2009.[1]

His committee assignments covered constitutional and legal affairs, finance, economic affairs, education, culture and sport, state control, labor, welfare and health, Knesset House affairs, foreign workers, and drug abuse.[1] During the 16th Knesset, he chaired subcommittees concerned with road-accident prevention and sport.[6] He later chaired the Economic Affairs Committee and the parliamentary lobby for the war against road accidents.[1][6]

Erdan’s parliamentary advocacy included environmental issues, reducing social gaps, and matters affecting Ethiopian immigrants; he also chaired the road-safety lobby.[1] In 2008, he received the Green Globe award in the Green Knesset category.[6] These environmental activities preceded his appointment to lead the Ministry of Environmental Protection after the following year’s election.[6]

In March 2009, Erdan became minister of environmental protection, a position he held until 2013.[5] His work in the portfolio included cleaning rivers, increasing recycling, and protecting Israel’s coastline.[7] He was also responsible for coordinating between the government and the Knesset.[1] The environmental portfolio followed his parliamentary work on environmental issues and his chairmanship of the Economic Affairs Committee.[1][6]

After the 2013 election, Erdan became minister of communications and concurrently held responsibility for Home Front Defense; he also became a member of the security cabinet.[5] He took up the Home Front Defense portfolio in March 2013, becoming the third person to head a ministry established in 2011.[8] At the time, the home-front system was dispersed and lacked an accepted structure for leadership, direction, and coordination.[8] Erdan sought to address this organizational problem, although the effectiveness of the changes he introduced was not yet established in the contemporary assessment.[8]

Speaking at a 2014 conference as minister of homeland defense and communications, Erdan said Israel’s enemies had 200,000 rockets and missiles aimed at the country.[9] He estimated that approximately 30 percent of Israel’s population was vulnerable to attack.[9] These figures formed part of his presentation of the danger posed by rocket and missile attacks and the need to prepare civilians for wartime conditions.[9]

Erdan also said an interministerial committee was developing plans to maintain supplies of basic goods during war.[9] Another element of the preparations involved creating safe zones for residents of 650,000 unprotected homes.[9] He left the Home Front Defense portfolio in 2014 following disagreements with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, and the ministry was subsequently dissolved.[1] In November of that year, he became minister of interior.[1]

In 2015, Erdan assumed the portfolios of public security, strategic affairs, and information or public diplomacy.[1][5] He initially remained outside the government after not receiving the internal security and interior portfolios he wanted, but subsequently joined it as public security and strategic affairs minister.[5] His responsibilities included oversight of the National Police, Prison Service, and Fire and Rescue Services.[1]

Police leadership was among the personnel issues he handled in office.[5] After the proposed appointment of Gal Hirsch as police commissioner was blocked, Erdan recommended Roni Alsheich for the position.[5] In 2018, he decided not to extend Alsheich’s term.[5] His public-security work also encompassed counterterrorism, cannabis-law reform, and protection of children from online predators.[7]

Erdan established the Child Online Protection Bureau during his ministerial service.[1] Its hotline brought together experts from the police, the Justice Department, and the welfare and education ministries to identify and prosecute online predators.[1] The bureau also addressed bullying, shaming, and online violence, and its hotline was described as the first of its kind in the world.[1] The initiative combined law-enforcement responsibilities with welfare and educational expertise in responding to harms affecting children online.[1]

As strategic affairs minister, Erdan became the government’s point person for countering efforts to delegitimize Israel, including the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement.[1] In his discussion of ministerial priorities, he identified lone-wolf terrorism and delegitimization as two challenges shaped by mobile phones and the internet.[10] He also emphasized police services in Arab communities and efforts to counter online delegitimization.[10]

Erdan argued that attacks carried out with simple weapons required a response from public-security services, including police and firefighters, rather than primarily from the IDF.[10] Discussing attacks that began in 2015, he described many perpetrators as individuals who acted unpredictably, used improvised weapons, and sometimes neither informed others nor planned far in advance.[11] He called for national resilience that would enable people to adapt, fight back, and return to routine.[11]

At the American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum in Washington on June 6, 2017, Erdan held up a mobile phone and declared that “terror has gone viral.”[12] He used the phrase to argue that online material could inspire potential attackers and provide them with instructions.[12] He identified online incitement, extremist organizations, and their funding as interconnected challenges that crossed national borders.[12]

At that forum, Erdan called for an international alliance involving Israel, moderate Arab states, the United States, Europe, and other like-minded countries to fight terrorism.[12] He urged efforts to trace and dry up terrorist funding and argued that social-media companies needed to take responsibility for misuse of their platforms.[12] In other remarks published in 2017, he discussed proposed legislation concerning online incitement and similarly called for international cooperation.[11]

Following the 2020 election, Erdan briefly became minister of regional cooperation before resigning upon his appointment to diplomatic service.[1] In 2020, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced an arrangement under which Erdan would serve concurrently as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations and the United States for a period.[1][7]

Erdan began serving at the UN before taking up the Washington ambassadorship.[1] On August 21, 2020, he met U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo in his capacity as Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations.[13] Their discussions covered U.S.-Israeli efforts to counter Iran’s influence, the Abraham Accords, and cooperation at the UN concerning prosperity, security, commerce, and regional stability.[13]

He took over the U.S. ambassadorship after Ron Dermer’s term ended in January 2021 while retaining his UN position.[1] Abba Eban was the only previous Israeli ambassador to have held the two positions simultaneously, making the dual assignment the first of its kind since the 1950s.[1][7] Erdan stepped down from the Washington post later in 2021, and Michael Herzog succeeded him on November 15.[1]

His UN service continued until August 2024, completing a four-year tenure.[3]

On November 17, 2020, Erdan participated as Israel’s UN representative in an online event concerning the United Nations’ role in combating antisemitism.[14] He urged member states to adopt a zero-tolerance approach and warned that antisemitism could spread through jokes, comments, and stereotypical images.[14] He expressed the danger in the words: “Antisemitism is like a cancer; if it isn’t cut out, it spreads and becomes deadly.”[14]

During his tenure, Erdan promoted an Israeli-sponsored General Assembly initiative to define and combat Holocaust denial.[2] The assembly adopted the initiative in January 2022, and Erdan later described it as his most important initiative in New York while emphasizing that its adoption was a starting point rather than the completion of the effort.[2]

In 2022, Erdan was elected a vice president of the General Assembly’s 77th session.[7] In 2021, he also appeared in a program marking the 20th anniversary of the Durban conference, where he was identified as Israel’s ambassador to both the United States and the United Nations.[15] These roles accompanied his representation of Israel in UN institutions and his advocacy against antisemitism and Holocaust denial.[2][15]

On October 27, 2023, Erdan condemned the General Assembly’s adoption of a resolution calling for a humanitarian truce in Gaza after the rejection of a Canadian amendment.[16] The resolution passed by 120 votes to 14, with 45 abstentions.[16] He called the outcome “a day that will go down in infamy.”[16] On October 30, he represented Israel at Security Council meeting S/PV.9462, whose agenda included the Palestine question and the situation in the Middle East.[17]

During the Israel–Hamas war, Erdan accused the UN of having “turned a blind eye” to Hamas’s use of civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza.[18] He said the organization was “preaching to Israel” rather than standing by it.[18] These statements expressed his criticism of the UN’s response to the conflict and its treatment of Israel in wartime deliberations.[18]

In a December 2023 General Assembly address, Erdan urged member states to tell Hamas leaders to surrender, lay down their arms, and return the hostages.[19] He argued that those steps would produce a ceasefire that would “last forever.”[19] During the address, he displayed a sign bearing what he identified as the telephone number of a Hamas office in Gaza.[19]

At a Calcalist conference in New York in March 2024, Erdan criticized calls for a ceasefire and again accused the UN of bias against Israel.[20] He said ambassadors from some countries without formal relations with Israel conveyed a different picture in private meetings from the one presented in public UN debates.[20] He also highlighted an Israeli resolution promoting agricultural technologies, which he said had passed the General Assembly the previous December with 135 countries voting in favor.[20]

In September 2024, Erdan was appointed global president of Magen David Adom.[3] The position involved promoting the organization’s emergency medical and blood services, representing it internationally, and advocating for it in international forums.[3] Erdan described Magen David Adom as “the backbone of Israel’s resilience.”[3] The appointment followed the completion of his UN ambassadorship the previous month.[3]

In October 2024, he was appointed to lead the newly established Center for Diplomacy and International Cooperation at the Misgav Institute for National Security.[21] The center’s stated purposes included strengthening Israel’s diplomatic policies and international standing, countering delegitimization campaigns, and researching international partnerships.[21] Erdan said he intended to showcase Israel’s contributions and expose what he characterized as failures and distortions in international institutions.[21]

On August 6, 2026, Erdan launched a new right-wing political party with former Likud colleague Yuli Edelstein.[1][22] The party, which Erdan led, later took the Hebrew name HaAhdut, meaning Unity.[23] Its announced priorities included universal military or national service and the formation of a broad coalition government.[22] Former Beit Shemesh mayor Aliza Bloch joined the party, and Oren Samadja was also among those associated with it.[24]

Erdan advocated a Basic Law on Service requiring every citizen to undertake military or national service, including ultra-Orthodox Israelis.[1][22] He said the party would seek a broad Zionist government rather than participate in a narrow government.[22] He also expressed support for settlements and the Land of Israel and opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state.[1]

On September 4, 2026, Erdan announced that Unity would not contest the upcoming election.[24] He cited polling that did not make passage of the electoral threshold sufficiently likely and unsuccessful efforts to merge with other parties.[24] The withdrawal was intended to avoid wasting supporters’ votes, and Erdan said that leaving the electoral race did not end his public commitment.[24][25]

The Child Online Protection Bureau and the 2022 General Assembly initiative against Holocaust denial were concrete projects associated with Erdan’s ministerial and diplomatic service.[1][2] The bureau assembled police, justice, welfare, and education expertise to address online predators and other harms to children, while the UN initiative sought to define and combat Holocaust denial.[1][2]

His environmental work encompassed river cleanup, recycling, and coastline protection, following parliamentary advocacy that had earned him the 2008 Green Globe award.[6][7] His later international roles included representing Israel simultaneously in Washington and at the United Nations, promoting emergency medical and blood services through Magen David Adom, and directing a center devoted to diplomacy and international cooperation.[1][21]

Erdan’s emphasis on resilience appeared in both his public-security advocacy and his later description of Magen David Adom.[3][11] As minister, he called for the public to adapt to attacks and return to routine; after his diplomatic service, he assumed an international advocacy role for the organization he described as central to Israel’s resilience.[3][11]

In October 2021, Erdan tore up the UN Human Rights Council’s annual report at the General Assembly podium after denouncing what he called the council’s “obsessive anti-Israel bias.”[26] His criticism addressed the council’s resolutions concerning Israel and its establishment of an ongoing commission of inquiry into alleged violations in Israel and Palestinian territory.[26] In an explicitly critical account, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs described his October 2022 challenge to the commission’s impartiality, accompanied by Shani and Asaf Avigal holding a photograph of their five-year-old son Edo, who had been killed by rocket fire on May 12, 2021.[27]

Erdan’s 2022 election as a General Assembly vice president drew condemnation from the Palestinian Authority foreign ministry, Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh, and Hamas.[28] The PA foreign ministry characterized the election as conferring legitimacy on occupation; that was its stated political assessment of his election.[28] In September 2023, Erdan also staged a protest during Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s General Assembly address by displaying a photograph of Mahsa Amini, the Kurdish Iranian woman who died in the custody of Iran’s morality police.[29]

In late October 2023, Erdan addressed the Security Council wearing a yellow star bearing the words “never again.”[30] An academic chapter on Holocaust memory interpreted the related slogan “never again is now” as a justification for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza; that interpretation belongs to the chapter’s politically contested analysis rather than constituting an established meaning of the gesture.[30]