Naftali Bennett
| Naftali Bennett | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Date of birth | 25 March 1972 |
| Place of birth | Haifa, Israel |
| Knessets | 19, 20 |
| Faction represented in Knesset | |
| 2013–2015 | Jewish Home |
| 2015– | Jewish Home |
| Ministerial roles | |
| 2013–2015 | Minister of Economy |
| 2013–2015 | Minister of Religious Services |
| 2013– | Minister of Diaspora Affairs |
| 2015– | Minister of Education |
Naftali Bennett (Hebrew: נַפְתָּלִי בֶּנֶט; born 25 March 1972) is an Israeli politician who has led the right-wing religious The Jewish Home party since 2012. He has served as Israel's Minister of Education since 2015 and Minister of Diaspora Affairs since 2013. Between 2013 and 2015 he held the posts of Minister of Economy and Minister of Religious Services.
Born and raised in Haifa, the son of immigrants from the United States, Bennett served in the Sayeret Matkal and Maglan special forces units of the Israel Defense Forces, taking part in many combat operations, and subsequently became a software entrepreneur. In 1999, he co-founded and co-owned the Cyota company, operating in the anti-fraud space, focused on online banking fraud, e-commerce fraud, and phishing. The company was sold in 2005 for $145 million. He has also served as CEO of Soluto, a cloud computing service, sold in 2013 for a reported $100–130 million. He entered politics in 2006, serving as Chief of Staff for Benjamin Netanyahu until 2008. In 2011, together with Ayelet Shaked, he co-founded the My Israel extra-parliamentary movement. In the 2013 Knesset elections, the first contested by The Jewish Home under Bennett's leadership, the party won 12 seats out of 120.
Naftali Bennett was born in Haifa, Israel on 25 March 1972. He is the youngest of three sons born to Jim and Myrna Bennett, American Jewish immigrants who moved to Israel from San Francisco in 1967, a month after the Six-Day War. His father's Jewish roots come from Poland, Germany and the Netherlands. His maternal grandparents moved to San Francisco from Poland 20 years before the outbreak of World War II, and relocated to Israel as seniors and settled on Vitkin Street in Haifa. Some of his mother's other family members, who remained in Poland, died in the Holocaust. Both of Bennett's parents observe Modern Orthodox Judaism. After moving to Israel they volunteered for a few months at kibbutz Dafna, where they studied the Hebrew language, then settled in the Ahuza neighborhood of Haifa. Jim Bennett was a successful real estate broker turned real estate entrepreneur. Bennett's mother Myrna was the deputy director general of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel's northern program. One of Naftali Bennett's two brothers, Asher, is a businessman who is now based in the United Kingdom. His other brother, Daniel, is an accountant for Zim Integrated Shipping Services.
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