Shelly Yachimovich

Shelly Yachimovich
Yachimovich at the Tel Aviv Pride, 2007
Date of birth	(1960-03-28) 28 March 1960 (age 57)
Place of birth	Kfar Saba, Israel
Knessets	17, 18. 19, 20
Faction represented in Knesset
2006–2015	Labor Party
2015–	Zionist Union
Other roles
2012	Leader of the Opposition
2013	Leader of the Opposition

Shelly Yachimovich (Hebrew: שלי רחל יחימוביץ׳‎, born 28 March 1960) is an Israeli politician. A member of the Knesset since 2006, member of Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. She served as leader of the Israeli Labor Party between 2011 and 2013. Prior to entering politics, she was a journalist, an author, and a television and radio commentator.

Yachimovich was born in Kfar Saba. Her father, Moshe, was a construction worker and her mother, Hanna, a teacher. Both parents were Holocaust survivors who immigrated to Israel from Poland. She became politically engaged at an early age, and was expelled from Ostrovsky high school in Ra'anana at age 15 for hanging up posters denouncing the principal's style of leadership. In 1985, Yachimovich graduated from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev with a degree in behavioural science.

While studying in Beersheba, she worked as a correspondent for the Al HaMishmar newspaper. She went on to become an anchor for the Israel Broadcasting Authority's radio station Reshet Bet, earning a reputation as opinionated and critical of conventional wisdom and the establishment. She has also been described as an assertive, abrasive radio journalist with very pronounced feminist and social-democratic views. As a journalist, she covered women's and social welfare issues. In October 2000, following a work dispute, she left her radio job and joined Channel 2 TV, where she hosted a political talk show and served as a news commentator. She also did a weekly program for Israel Army Radio (Galei Tzahal).