Orly Levy-Abekasis

Orly Levy-Abekasis was born on November 11, 1973, in Beit She’an, the ninth of twelve children in the family of David and Rachel Levy.[1][5] Her father, who was born in Morocco, was a veteran Likud politician, Knesset member, and foreign minister.[1][5] Her brother Jackie Levy also entered public life and served as mayor of Beit She’an.[5] David Levy founded the original Gesher party in 1995, a name his daughter would later revive for her own political organization.[6]

Before her parliamentary career, Levy-Abekasis served in the Israeli Air Force and earned a bachelor’s degree in law from the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, subsequently known as Reichman University.[1][7] Her professional background also included modeling, television presenting, and radio broadcasting.[7] Among her broadcasting roles was hosting a morning program on Channel 10.[7] Her move into electoral politics therefore followed an earlier career in media rather than an exclusively parliamentary or party-organizational background.[7]

Levy-Abekasis is married, has four children, and has been listed as living in Kibbutz Mesilot.[1]

Levy-Abekasis joined Yisrael Beiteinu in 2008 and entered the 18th Knesset in the 2009 election.[5] Party leader Avigdor Lieberman placed her sixth on its electoral slate, and the party won fifteen seats.[5] Her first parliamentary responsibilities included serving as a deputy speaker and chairing the Special Committee for the Rights of the Child.[1] She continued to chair the children’s rights committee during the 19th Knesset.[1]

Her committee assignments also included membership of the Labor, Welfare and Health Committee and a subcommittee dealing with regulations under the Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities law.[7] Alongside those formal committee positions, she chaired parliamentary lobbies concerned with children and youth at risk and with public housing.[1] These assignments placed children’s welfare, disability-related protections, and housing conditions among the recurring subjects of her parliamentary activity.[1][7]

As chair of the children’s rights committee, Levy-Abekasis addressed school diagnoses, the rights of working youths, and health services for pupils in both regular and special-education elementary schools.[1] Her work also concerned children at risk and the protections that public authorities provided to them.[1] The range of issues extended from services within schools to employment protections and the response of public institutions to vulnerable children.[1]

In a 2017 interview, she described efforts to make the treatment of children at risk a more prominent public issue, expand funding for child investigators, and accelerate the handling of cases involving children who had been harmed.[8] She also cited legislation that she said she had passed with Yariv Levin to prevent sex offenders from working in institutions connected to children.[8] These were her own descriptions of the priorities and accomplishments of her parliamentary work.[8]

During the 18th Knesset, Levy-Abekasis promoted legislation making the 1202 assistance line for victims of sexual assault and harassment a free and confidential emergency hotline.[9] The measure changed the status of an existing assistance service rather than establishing an unrelated new program.[1] Her legislative activity also encompassed the handling of sexual offenses, gender equality, welfare, health, and education.[1]

Other laws she helped pass included an amendment barring publication of minors’ names in civil proceedings and an amendment restricting the employment of sex offenders in certain institutions.[5] She also worked on an amendment to the Women’s Employment Law extending maternity leave when a child was hospitalized.[5] A 2019 account of her legislative record identified further measures that had completed second and third readings, including provisions on voluntary disclosure by victims of sexual assault and restrictions concerning sex offenders, including changes of name.[5]

Housing was another sustained area of activity.[1] Levy-Abekasis worked on public-housing tenants’ rights, including legislation defining the obligations of companies responsible for housing tenants.[1] A public-housing tenants’ rights law that she initiated with Dov Khenin had taken effect by the time of a 2019 account of her parliamentary record.[5] Her work also included renters’ rights, a draft bill on that subject during the 20th Knesset, and proposed mortgage guarantees for single apartments.[1][9]

In the 19th Knesset, she initiated a bill intended to rehabilitate, advance, and integrate people with autism in the community while regulating rights for them and their families.[1] She pursued a new version of the legislation in the 20th Knesset.[1] Other proposals she sponsored, concerning unemployment benefits for self-employed people and maternity benefits for self-employed women, advanced through preliminary readings.[5] Those proposals were distinct from the measures identified as having completed their later parliamentary readings.[5]

During state-budget hearings in the 20th Knesset, Levy-Abekasis disclosed the cancellation of grants for residents relocating to the periphery and the removal of funding for a neighborhood-rehabilitation project.[1] The grant cancellations were subsequently reversed by the Finance and Health ministries.[1] The contemporary biographical account also raised the possibility that the neighborhood project’s budget would increase in 2017, rather than recording that increase as an accomplished result.[1]

In May 2016, while Yisrael Beiteinu was negotiating to join a Likud-led government, Levy-Abekasis announced that she was leaving the party.[3] She said socioeconomic issues were missing from its principal demands and that it had abandoned its social platform.[1][3] She remained in the Knesset as an independent member supporting the opposition.[1] In March 2017, Yisrael Beiteinu formally had her declared an independent Knesset member, completing a parliamentary separation that followed her announcement the previous year.[10]

Knesset rules prevented her from contesting the next election on an existing list after her separation from the party, and she announced plans to establish a new political organization.[11] She launched Gesher in 2018, with the party receiving that name in December.[11] The name revived the organization founded by her father, while the new party likewise emphasized a social agenda.[6][11]

Gesher’s stated priorities included pensions, health, housing, child-rearing costs, and support for small and medium-sized businesses.[11] Levy-Abekasis said she wanted to put socioeconomic concerns ahead of the conventional division between right and left.[11] Explaining that approach, she said: “There’s this constant divide between right and left, which is a divide that serves the interests of members of the old world order.”[11] The party was described as center-left and focused on economic and cost-of-living concerns.[11]

Before the April 2019 election, Levy-Abekasis sought a joint run with Benny Gantz’s Resilience Party.[11][12] Those negotiations failed, and she announced that Gesher would contest the election independently.[11] Gesher did not cross the electoral threshold and consequently failed to secure parliamentary representation in that election.[6][12]

In July 2019, Gesher and Labor agreed to run together in the September election.[13] Levy-Abekasis said she had received offers from parties on both the right and the left but regarded cooperation with Labor leader Amir Peretz as natural.[13] She presented their partnership as an opportunity to “bring down the walls” and concentrate on what united them.[13] The joint Labor-Gesher slate won six seats, with Levy-Abekasis in second place behind Peretz, enabling her return to the Knesset.[12][13]

For the March 2, 2020 election, Labor-Gesher joined Meretz in a common electoral slate.[14] Levy-Abekasis again occupied second place, behind Amir Peretz and ahead of Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz.[14] Labor-Gesher-Meretz received 267,362 votes, equivalent to 5.84 percent of the total, and won seven seats.[14] Gesher accounted for one member of that parliamentary alliance: Levy-Abekasis herself.[15]

The initial post-election arithmetic grouped sixty-two Knesset members behind an effort by Benny Gantz to form a government and fifty-eight behind Benjamin Netanyahu.[15] The first grouping comprised Blue and White’s thirty-three members, Yisrael Beiteinu’s seven, the Joint List’s fifteen, and Labor-Gesher-Meretz’s seven.[15] The Netanyahu-aligned grouping comprised Likud’s thirty-six members, Shas’s nine, United Torah Judaism’s seven, and Yamina’s six.[15] Those figures described the initial alignments before subsequent changes during the government-formation negotiations.[15]

Levy-Abekasis opposed a Gantz-led minority government dependent on the Joint List’s support. Zvi Hauser and Yoaz Hendel likewise objected to such reliance, while Levy-Abekasis said she no longer considered herself bound by the alliance and moved Gesher out of it.[15][16]

In April 2020, Levy-Abekasis announced that she would support Netanyahu during the coalition negotiations.[15] Her departure effectively ended the three-party Labor-Gesher-Meretz alliance formed for the March election.[15]

Gesher subsequently joined the coalition supporting the unity government led by Netanyahu and Gantz.[17] That government was formed on May 17, 2020.[17] Levy-Abekasis’s position thus changed from membership in a joint electoral slate grouped with Gantz’s supporters to participation in the government headed by Netanyahu.[15][17]

In May 2020, Gesher and Likud signed a coalition agreement providing for Levy-Abekasis to head a newly created ministry.[18] She served as minister for community empowerment and advancement during 2020–2021.[2] The ministry’s responsibilities included authorities and programs transferred from the Public Security Ministry, bringing together work on community safety, violence prevention, and protection of children online.[18]

The transferred responsibilities included drug- and alcohol-related violence prevention, the City Without Violence project, and the national child-online-protection framework.[18] The coalition agreement also provided for her participation in the government’s socioeconomic and reconciliation committees.[18] These responsibilities combined community-level prevention programs with a national framework addressing risks to children on the internet.[18]

In August 2020, Levy-Abekasis announced a national plan to combat online shaming and said a technological reform of hotline 105 was being advanced.[19] She said the hotline’s activities would expand to address newer social phenomena alongside its work against pedophilia.[19] She also stated that the national child-online-protection body should become familiar to every child and parent.[19] The announcement set out her intended expansion of the service rather than establishing that all of the proposed changes had already been implemented.[19]

For the 2021 election, Levy-Abekasis joined Likud and received a reserved place on its slate.[4] She served as a Likud member of the 24th Knesset.[4] Her sequence of parliamentary affiliations had therefore moved from Yisrael Beiteinu through independent membership and Gesher to Likud.[2]

In the August 2022 Likud primaries, she placed twenty-ninth.[4] The allocation of reserved positions pushed her outside a realistic place on the slate for the next Knesset.[4] That result followed a political career encompassing committee leadership, independent parliamentary service, the leadership of Gesher, and a cabinet portfolio.[1][2]

Levy-Abekasis received the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award for 2012 in recognition of work spanning children’s rights, public housing, gender equality, responses to sexual offenses, welfare, health, and education.[1] She also received the Knight of Good Government award in 2015 for her legislative activity.[1] Her parliamentary record included enacted protections as well as bills and proposals that had reached different stages of the legislative process.[1][5]

In a 2017 interview, she described her work in terms of its effect on particular children and families rather than broad political transformation.[20] Referring to minors harmed by crime and mothers of hospitalized premature infants, she said: “Not great revolutions, but for children with certain problems and their families, it’s the revolution of their lives.”[20] She also said in that interview that she had passed dozens of laws.[20]

The social-policy emphasis continued across her parliamentary committee work and the platform she developed for Gesher.[1][11] Children at risk, public-housing tenants, people with disabilities, and families facing particular health or welfare difficulties were recurring constituencies in that record.[1][5] Her later ministerial responsibilities extended her involvement in child protection to national programs addressing online harm and community violence.[19][18]

Accounts of Levy-Abekasis’s 2016 departure from Yisrael Beiteinu differed in emphasis.[20] She cited the sidelining of public housing, support for the periphery, and other social priorities in the agreement to enter Netanyahu’s government.[20] Coverage also highlighted a dispute over her not receiving a ministerial appointment.[1][20]

Her 2020 break with Labor-Gesher-Meretz drew strong criticism from former allies and supporters of the alliance, who characterized it as a betrayal of their voters.[16] Levy-Abekasis defended her opposition to a Gantz government supported by the Joint List and said her agreement with Labor preserved Gesher’s independence on political and religion-and-state questions.[16]

The creation of her ministry also drew criticism from Public Security Ministry and police officials.[21] They questioned transferring the online child-protection hotline Unit 105, which included police personnel, outside the Public Security Ministry and raised concerns about the new minister’s authority over those officers.[21] Contemporary reporting estimated that the new ministry would cost more than twenty million shekels.[21]