Miki Zohar

Zohar was born on March 28, 1980, grew up in Kiryat Gat, and lived in Ashkelon as a teenager.[1] He attended Ort Israel high school and served as a recruit-training commander at the Nitzanim base.[1] He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in law.[1]

Before entering the Knesset, Zohar worked in real estate.[6] In a 2015 interview, when he was described as 35 and married with four children, he said he had recently completed a law internship.[6]

Zohar chaired the Maccabi Kiryat Gat basketball club from 2004 to 2014; the team was promoted to Israel’s Premier League the following year.[1] He also served on the board of the Israel Basketball Association from 2012 to 2015.[3]

His municipal career began with an independent list in Kiryat Gat’s 2008 election, through which he won a city council seat and subsequently chaired the council’s audit committee.[1] After becoming chairman of the local Likud branch, he led a list that secured two council seats in 2013 and became deputy mayor.[1] His service on the city council ran from 2008 to 2013, followed by his deputy mayoralty from 2013 to 2015.[3] He described entering national politics as an opportunity to work for all Israelis after serving the people of Kiryat Gat.[6]

Zohar first entered the Knesset in 2015 as a Likud member of the 20th Knesset.[3] His initial stated legislative priorities included raising allowances for older people and reducing the cost of living and housing prices.[6] To address housing costs, he advocated increasing supply, setting target prices, offering incentives to developers, and providing location-based loans for young couples in peripheral areas.[6] He said Jerusalem should remain Israel’s “undivided capital for all eternity” and opposed a Palestinian state without Palestinian recognition of Jewish claims to the land and leadership he considered committed to peace.[6]

During his first parliamentary term, Zohar chaired the House Committee, the Subcommittee for Sports, and the Special Committee for Distributive Justice and Social Equality.[3] He became chair of the Knesset Committee in January 2018.[1] He also participated in parliamentary lobbies addressing sports, Negev development, minority enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces, and restitution of Jewish property in Arab countries.[3]

Reelected in subsequent elections, he held roles across the 21st through 25th Knessets and served on committees including Finance, Constitution, Law and Justice, and Foreign Affairs and Defense.[3] Following the March 2020 election, he became Likud faction chair and coalition chair in the unity government formed by Likud and Blue and White.[1] His parliamentary positions also included deputy speaker and coalition whip, and he chaired the Likud faction during its period in opposition.[7]

In April 2021, Benjamin Netanyahu selected Zohar to head the Knesset Arrangements Committee.[8] The committee determines which parliamentary committees are established and their membership, while controlling the legislative agenda until a new government is formed.[8]

Zohar also competed for the chairmanship of World Likud in a contest involving internal elections and legal challenges, after which he and Yaakov Hagoel negotiated together.[9] In an election connected to the World Likud convention, he received 24 percent of the votes cast in Israel.[10] He appeared at position 10 on Likud’s list for the November 2022 election to the 25th Knesset and at position 12 on its 2026 election list.[11][12]

In December 2022, Zohar became minister of culture and sports in Netanyahu’s sixth government, Israel’s 37th government.[2] At the January 2023 ministerial handover, he called receiving the portfolio a “dream come true” and said he had “countless plans” for changing Israeli culture.[13] He introduced a reform of Israeli cinema and changed the criteria governing financial support.[14]

Following negotiations involving Zohar, ministry director-general Kfir Suissa, and Finance Ministry officials, the government approved the ministry’s 2023–2024 budget with an additional NIS 1 billion.[15] The agreement also transferred responsibility for the Toto national lottery to the ministry and doubled marketing agreements with sports teams.[15]

For 2025, the ministry announced investment of more than NIS 350 million in sports infrastructure in local authorities.[4] The program included support for football grounds with at least 1,000 seats and a new sports arena with at least 3,000 seats intended to host international matches.[4] Zohar presented the investment as a way to reduce geographic and social gaps and strengthen the periphery.[4]

Zohar’s public profile has been shaped by conservative social positions, nationalist policies, and loyalty to Likud’s ideological program.[3] As culture and sports minister, he coupled that approach with expanded state investment: the 2023–2024 ministry budget received an additional NIS 1 billion, and the ministry later announced more than NIS 350 million for local sports infrastructure in 2025.[15][4] These initiatives emphasized sports development and the periphery, while his cultural-funding policies made state support for the arts a recurring political issue.[3]

Zohar’s cultural-funding policy generated disagreement over artistic freedom and political interference: he argued that state support should uphold national values and unity rather than fund works he considered to promote the “enemy’s narrative.”[3] At his ministerial handover, he said public money should not support works portraying terrorists or martyrs as heroes; outgoing minister Chili Tropper warned against renewed political battles over culture.[13] In September 2025, after The Sea, a film about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, won Best Feature at the Ophir Awards, Zohar announced that he would halt ministry funding for the awards and their 2026 ceremony, arguing that the film falsely defamed Israeli soldiers.[16] In a further film dispute reported in 2026, he called for scrutiny of how material had been obtained and a Shin Bet investigation into the participation of serving or reserve personnel; former Finance Ministry budget director Shaul Meridor defended the freedom to create art critical of the country.[14]

On January 23, 2023, Zohar announced that his ministry would stop the “Israeli Shabbat” project, which subsidized Saturday openings of museums and heritage sites; after criticism from secular politicians, Netanyahu said within hours that it would continue.[5] Zohar subsequently said he had not intended to cancel events or funding, and a joint government statement distinguished activities initiated by funded organizations from those initiated by the ministry.[17] The program nevertheless stopped on January 31 for lack of funding, moved to the Heritage Ministry in February, and remained unfunded at year’s end.[5] Earlier, in January 2016, Zohar postponed a vote on a Sabbath-business bill after Netanyahu and Kulanu members sought revisions; it proposed fines of three times a business’s Sabbath proceeds and civil suits by competitors.[18]

In 2017, the Knesset Ethics Committee found that Zohar had breached conflict-of-interest rules by conducting three hearings concerning development in Karmi Gat, where he owned property and his wife owned five properties and marketed properties.[19] The committee rejected his argument that he was addressing the needs of a wider group and directed him not to conduct further hearings on the neighborhood.[19] In 2022, his appearance with his wife on VIP Winning Kitchen also raised questions about rules governing sitting lawmakers’ media appearances; he said he had consulted legal authorities.[3]

In 2019, Zohar filed a bill to give lawmakers immunity from prosecution unless the House Committee removed it, prompting opposition objections that it would protect Netanyahu.[20] During a separate committee dispute over polling-station cameras that year, he expelled MK Ahmad Tibi and told him, “The Jewish race is a special race, deal with it”; a tied committee vote blocked an accelerated route for the bill that day.[21]

Police questioned Zohar in November 2020 on suspicion of extorting Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit; the State Attorney’s Office closed the case in March 2021.[1] On May 30, 2023, the Supreme Court granted an appeal in New Contract Association v. MK Miki (Mikhluf) Zohar, holding that severe social-media statements accusing him of serving Netanyahu’s “crime organization,” inciting, and lying did not constitute defamation warranting relief.[22]

In April 2026, Zohar underwent 11 hours of police questioning in a Histadrut-related corruption investigation concerning insurance agent and Likud activist Ezra Gabay.[23] Reporting subsequently described further questioning under caution and suspicions involving bribery and assistance in obtaining insurance business; these were allegations, not findings of guilt.[23][24] Zohar denied wrongdoing and any connection to the affair, while describing his relationship with Gabay as legitimate business ties.[23][24]