Yoav Kisch

Kisch was born and raised in Tel Aviv and attended Handasaim High School in Ramat Aviv.[3] His family background included military service, Zionist leadership, and religious public service: his grandfather, Brigadier General Frederick Kisch, was a Zionist leader who commanded British Engineering Forces in North Africa during World War II, while his father, Michael Kisch, served as an engineering officer during the Yom Kippur War.[3] His maternal ancestry includes Rabbi Samuel Salant, a nineteenth-century Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem.[3]

Kisch volunteered for Israel Air Force pilot training and served as a combat pilot; subsequent profiles identified him as a reserve lieutenant colonel and an F-16 pilot.[1][3] Before becoming a legislator, he also worked in the internet and cellular sectors and flew Boeing 777 aircraft for El Al.[3][7] He holds an MBA from INSEAD in France and has lived in Ramat Gan.[3]

His mother belonged to Likud’s central committee, and Kisch described himself as a lifelong supporter of the party.[8] His grandfather Frederick was killed by a landmine in Tunisia in 1943.[9] After entering the Knesset, Kisch sought to have his grandfather’s remains transferred to Israel, but the Commonwealth War Graves Commission rejected the request.[9] He also sought to raise public awareness of his grandfather’s life and Zionist work.[10]

In 2012, Kisch helped found the “Camp Sucker” protest encampments, which advocated equal military and civilian service obligations across Israeli society.[3] He participated in the “Common Camp,” a movement that emerged from the 2011 social protests, and helped organize a mass rally for equal service obligations.[7] In May 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed him as a public representative on the committee addressing equality in the burden of service; he represented reservists on the Plesner Committee, which considered legislation on haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, conscription.[1][3]

Kisch said he briefly participated in the 2011 social protests and supported their call for social justice, but declined to join their leadership because he believed they sought to attack Likud.[8] He described his economic outlook as supporting free markets and competition, with government intervention where necessary to correct market failures.[8] He has also cited Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s philosophy of social justice as an influence.[3]

After an unsuccessful attempt to enter the 19th Knesset, Kisch won election to the 20th Knesset in 2015, occupying nineteenth place on the Likud list.[3][11] On entering parliament, he relinquished his British citizenship under the rule barring Knesset members from holding foreign citizenship.[9] His subsequent party activity included heading Gideon Sa’ar’s campaign for the Likud leadership.[12]

Kisch chaired the Knesset House Committee and later the Interior and Environmental Protection Committee.[2] He served on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the Science and Technology Committee, and chaired the Subcommittee on Space.[3] His parliamentary lobby activity encompassed reservists, national unity, economic growth, rare diseases, and the LGBT community; he also chaired the Caucus for the Unity of the Nation and the Land of Israel.[3] He became deputy health minister in 2020, serving for less than a year, and chaired the Arrangements Committee in 2022.[2]

In March 2018, Kisch abstained in a preliminary vote on legislation that would automatically exempt haredi seminary students from military conscription.[13] He waited until the bill had secured 59 votes in favor and 38 against, but his abstention nevertheless broke Likud party discipline and prompted a reported plan to remove him from his committee chairmanship.[13] In a 2024 interview, he recalled opposing a Likud-backed enlistment amendment because he believed service obligations should be uniform, and said he had been suspended from committee activity.[7] By that interview, he favored gradual change and consensus on ultra-Orthodox enlistment, arguing that confrontation could obstruct progress.[7]

Kisch became education minister when Israel’s 37th government was presented in December 2022 and was also named government–Knesset coordinator.[14][15] At the ministry handover, he announced an intention to reverse a matriculation reform affecting examinations in humanities subjects, including Bible and history.[15] He also said he would seek free education for children from birth to age three and give particular attention to special education.[15] Explaining the personal importance of special education, he said his son, who had special needs, had died at age thirteen.[15]

In July 2024, Kisch announced that northern schools within range of Hezbollah attacks would not open for the coming school year, and that evacuated children would continue studying in the places to which they had relocated.[4] He called it “a regrettable decision that has been forced upon us and is being made with heavy heart.”[4] Meeting local authority chiefs, he presented a NIS 152 million plan for alternative schools intended to provide displaced pupils with a more familiar educational environment.[4] At the time, more than 60,000 Israeli civilians, including 14,600 children, had been displaced from their homes by Hezbollah attacks.[4]

On February 3, 2025, Kisch announced an “AI Year” in the education system and a program to introduce artificial intelligence tools into schools.[5] The initiative combined the provision of tools and learning content with support for educators using them.[5] The ministry selected approximately thirty existing services and developed two education-focused chatbots based on Google’s Gemini, QBot and Binah.[5] Approximately 3,500 volunteer mentors were expected to begin training school staff that February, with the program intended to reach hundreds of thousands of teachers and more than a million students.[5]

In an interview before the October 2026 Knesset election, Kisch said he wanted to remain education minister in the next government and pursue a NIS 15 billion education plan.[16] His proposed measures included reducing class sizes to twenty pupils and introducing a five-day school week.[16] He said wartime demands on resources had constrained investment in education.[16]

Because Kisch remains in active politics, assessments of his legacy are provisional. His public profile has combined national-service advocacy, parliamentary work, and education policy. His first legislative initiative sought to increase public-sector employment of people with disabilities; he also led or co-led parliamentary friendship groups with the United Kingdom, Georgia, South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, and Zambia.[3]

As education minister, he linked his future agenda to smaller classes, a five-day school week, and expanded personalized learning through artificial intelligence. In October 2026, he argued that AI could support individual English practice while teachers remained in classrooms to supervise and assist students.[16] These proposals remained prospective at the time of the interview.

As a legislator, Kisch submitted a proposed “foreign agent” bill aimed at preventing government ministries and the IDF from cooperating with foreign-funded NGOs described in the proposal as engaging in “anti-Israel propaganda.”[17] It would also have allowed the Registrar of Associations to seek their dissolution in court and labeled organizations funded by foreign political entities as their “moles.”[17] A campaign supporting the proposal began in December 2015 and targeted peace activists and organizations.[17] Kisch was also among the sponsors of the Maale Adumim Draft Bill, submitted on August 1, 2016, within a wider legislative debate about extending Israeli jurisdiction in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[18]

A proposed change to the National Library Law raised concerns about institutional independence.[6] The proposal would have transferred the power to appoint a majority of the library’s board to the education minister and immediately dismissed the sitting board if enacted.[6] The library opposed these provisions as a threat to its autonomy and public trust, warning that lost donations could endanger its continued existence; recent private donations had totaled approximately NIS 1 billion.[6] The existing law had passed in 2007 without opposition, following a 1998 committee recommendation for an independent board.[6] These concerns addressed a proposed change rather than established effects of enacted legislation.[6]

In 2023, Kisch sent Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan a letter alleging mismanagement and questioning the legitimacy of three board appointments.[19] Dayan rejected the allegations, saying meetings complied with regulations and describing some claims as unfounded and false.[19] Reports that Kisch sought to replace him with a political ally did not establish that motivation as fact.[19]

On October 12, 2023, Kisch demanded that university presidents act against people suspected of incitement or support for Hamas, calling for hearings within 72 hours, suspension, and permanent expulsion or termination when incitement was confirmed.[20] He also instructed institutions to report confirmed cases to the Council on Higher Education and the police.[20] Several leading universities responded that they had lost faith in him and warned against an atmosphere of “McCarthyism.”[20] The civil-rights organization Mossawa alleged that approximately 130 Arab students and lecturers at 33 institutions were summoned to hearings and suspended or expelled between October 7 and the end of 2023 through expedited and improper procedures.[20]

Education policy disputes also followed the 2023 TIMSS results, in which Israel fell from ninth place in 2019, with a score of 519, to twenty-third, with a score of 487.[21] Ministry sources alleged that access to the results had been restricted before publication; Kisch rejected responsibility for the decline, citing the pandemic, leadership changes, security challenges, and his arrival in office in 2023.[21] In March 2025, the Movement for Quality Government requested a criminal investigation following allegations that ministry funding favored municipalities led by Likud mayors, including Arad, Nof Hagalil, and Kiryat Gat.[22] Kisch denied the allegations, and the request did not constitute a finding of wrongdoing.[22]