Tal Gilboa

Gilboa has described a single, defining moment as the origin of her commitment to animal liberation: witnessing a calf being separated from its mother and hearing the cow's distress.[6] That experience, she said, shaped her decision to work for animal rights and ultimately to adopt a vegan lifestyle.[6]

As a high-school student, Gilboa demonstrated against the Oslo Accords, and after completing her army service she protested the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gush Katif.[2] She is a mother of three daughters and has worked alongside her partner, activist and photographer Roy Shafranik, on the Transparent Walls project.[4]

Gilboa has been active in animal-rights work for more than a decade, engaging in public marches, protests, and firsthand documentation of conditions at farms, dairies, and slaughterhouses, work that brought her numerous encounters with the law.[3] She founded the Israeli Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in 2013; the group began with fifteen people and grew within three years to several hundred activists organized in branches across the country.[7][5] In 2016, hundreds of vegan activists marched silently through central Tel Aviv under the ALF of Israel banner, with the group reporting approximately 1,000 attendees.[7] Gilboa later organized a separate animal-rights march in Tel Aviv that the Jerusalem Post reported attracted 30,000 people.[3]

Gilboa's involvement with animal-rights groups has extended to Transparent Walls — an online lecture she released that she said had received approximately 2.6 million views — and Total Liberation, another project in which she was involved.[6][4] The ALF's activities have included public demonstrations as well as covert direct actions carried out by its members.[5]

In 2019, Prime Minister Netanyahu appointed Gilboa as his adviser on animal rights and welfare, a role she described as "a historic day for animals."[8] In that capacity she advocated for removing animal-protection oversight from the Agriculture Ministry, arguing that a conflict of interest existed because the same ministry also governed livestock and poultry farming.[9] She credited her advisory work with advancing a Knesset bill on live-animal shipments through a preliminary reading and securing 4.5 million shekels for animal sterilization programs.[9] She also reported that a Knesset Economic Affairs Committee decision directed 50% of new egg quotas to cage-free facilities, crediting MK Yaakov Margi with helping advance the measure.[4]

In 2021, Israel adopted regulations banning the sale of fur to the fashion industry, becoming the first country to do so; the animal-rights NGO Animals Now thanked Gilboa, alongside the environmental protection minister and other organizations, for their role in achieving the ban.[10] That same year, Gilboa described cultivated meat as a pragmatic first step toward vegetarianism, while saying she would prefer a plant-based world; feeding a rapidly growing global population, she said, would be achievable "through technology."[11]

Gilboa served a second stint as Netanyahu's animal-rights adviser after he returned to office in December 2022.[2] In April 2023 she toured the alternative-protein companies Remilk and Tnuva with Prime Minister's Office Director-General Yossi Shelley, meeting with start-up executives, academics, and investors.[12] The Prime Minister's Office had designated the promotion of alternative proteins a national goal, citing food security and economic benefits.[12] Her 2023 priorities also included reviewing the Animal Protection Law, strengthening enforcement, introducing minimum penalties for animal abusers, and restricting the use of glue traps.[13]

Gilboa entered Big Brother Israel in 2014 without having previously watched the program, choosing it specifically because she understood it to be the country's most-watched reality show.[6] Her stated aim was to make animal-rights advocacy visible to audiences who might not otherwise encounter it, and to challenge the assumption that animal liberation is inherently associated with the political left.[4] During the show she refused to eat meat alongside housemates and screened footage about the meat industry.[3]

She left the house wearing a dress bearing the words "Meat is Murder; Go Vegan," which nearly two million viewers saw.[3] The Globes survey conducted afterward found that 49% of viewers reported changing their views on the suffering animals undergo in the meat industry, and 60% reported altering their eating habits.[3][1] Gilboa herself claimed her participation prompted a dietary change among approximately half a million people.[6] After her victory, she used her celebrity to promote veganism beyond the program.[1]

Gilboa's trajectory — from street protest to prime-ministerial adviser — tracks the broader mainstreaming of animal-rights concerns in Israeli public life.[1][3] Her television victory gave animal activism a national platform, while her governmental roles allowed her to pursue legislative and regulatory change from within the state apparatus.[8][12] Israel's fur trade ban, achieved in 2021, stands as one concrete policy outcome associated with her advocacy.[10]

Her online lecture "Transparent Walls" and the growth of the Israeli ALF from fifteen members to a nationwide network of several hundred activists reflect the organizational reach she built in the years preceding her advisory appointments.[7][6] Gilboa has framed her willingness to work inside political institutions as a strategic choice: she described entering the Prime Minister's Office as gaining access to "the corridors of power" in service of animals.[3]

Gilboa's 2019 appointment as Netanyahu's animal-rights adviser drew criticism from those who objected to her association with the prime minister, while supporters argued that animal welfare should transcend partisan politics.[3] Gilboa defended the role by saying she looked beyond political divisions when working to help animals.[3] A September 2026 Ynet report noted that her formal appointment as a government spokesperson had been cancelled roughly six months earlier following public criticism of past remarks; she had since been added to the prime minister's spokesperson team's messaging group and was performing some related work without a formal appointment.[14]

The Israeli Animal Liberation Front, which Gilboa founded, has been linked to covert direct actions, including a 2015 incident in which activists entered a hatchery and disrupted equipment used to grind male chicks; Gilboa's personal participation in that specific action was not established by reporting.[5] She has said the Israeli branch is connected to the international ALF movement but is not as extreme as some counterparts abroad.[7]

A 2021 profile relayed allegations from an earlier investigation suggesting that Gilboa's activist circle had cult-like features, including alleged ostracism and humiliation of dissenting members.[4] Gilboa and Shafranik denied the allegations, characterizing them as false and retaliatory; no legal finding resolving the matter was reported.[4]