Avigdor Lieberman

Avigdor Lieberman (Hebrew: אביגדור ליברמן, romanized: Avigdor Liberman, IPA: [aviɡˈdor ˈliberman] (audio)^ⓘ; born 5 June 1958) is a Soviet-born Israeli politician who served as Minister of Finance between 2021 and 2022, having previously served twice as Deputy Prime Minister of Israel from 2006 to 2008 and 2009 to 2012.

Born and raised in Soviet Moldova, Lieberman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1978. He entered the Knesset in 1999, and has served in numerous roles in the government, including as Minister of National Infrastructure, Minister of Transportation, and Minister of Strategic Affairs. He served as Deputy Prime Minister under Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu. He served under Netanyahu as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2009 to 2012 and 2013 to 2015 and as Minister of Defense from 2016 to 2018. On 14 November 2018, he resigned as Defense Minister because of a ceasefire in Gaza which he characterized as "surrendering to terror."

He is the founder and leader of the secular nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) party, whose electoral base initially consisted overwhelmingly of Russian-speaking immigrants from the former Soviet Union, but later attracted broader support. Lieberman has stated his opposition to forming a coalition with religious parties and refused to join Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition in April 2019. As a result of the arrival in Israel during the 1990s of about one million Russian-speaking immigrants, Yisrael Beiteinu has regularly played the "king-maker" role in Israel's coalition governments. He was replaced in the Knesset by Elina Bardach-Yalov when he became the finance minister.

Lieberman is a polarizing figure in Israeli politics due to his hardliner positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His name is associated with the 2004 Lieberman Plan, which advocates land swaps between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and the barring of Arab Israelis from Israeli citizenship unless they swear a loyalty oath to Israel. While this has been decried as discriminatory, this however makes him unique among right-wing Israeli figures in that he is not categorically opposed to any form of two-state solution and even ready to cede land from the pre-1967 borders. He is nonetheless also known for rhetoric considered violent and hawkish in times of military escalation. During the 2018–2019 Gaza border protests and the Gaza war, he iterated that there are "no innocents in Gaza".

Evet Lvovich Lieberman (later Avigdor Lieberman) was born to a Russian-speaking Jewish family in Chișinău, Moldavian SSR, Soviet Union (now Moldova). His father Lev (18 May 1921 – 2 July 2007) was a writer who had served in the Red Army and spent seven years in a Siberian exile under Joseph Stalin's rule, where he met his wife Esther (2 July 1923 – 4 December 2014). His parents imbued him with a strong secular Jewish identity and consciously taught him only Yiddish up until the age of three. They were not afraid to speak Yiddish in public, even on crowded buses. Inheriting a love of Russian literature from his father, Lieberman had dreamed of becoming a poet. Lieberman attributes his forthright personality to his youth in the large Jewish community of 1970s Chișinău, saying: "Jews were 25 percent of the population of Kishinev [Chișinău] [during the 1970s]… We were more affluent, better educated, and we showed it… The Jews of Moldova have this no-nonsense streak. They are 'doers,' not idle philosophers. No wonder Meir Dizengoff, another Jew from Moldova, established Tel Aviv".

After high school, Lieberman enrolled at the Chișinău Agriculture Institute majoring in hydrological land improvement. As a student in Moldova, his passion for Russian literary classics continued, as he won first prize for a play he wrote, and dreamed of a literary career.

Lieberman and his family immigrated to Israel on 18 June 1978. Lieberman studied Hebrew at an ulpan and changed his first name to Avigdor. He was conscripted into the Israel Defense Forces, and was only obligated to do one year of active service instead of three, during which he served in the IDF military government in Hebron. Following his discharge from active duty, he continued to be called up for the reserves. After undergoing an artillery course, he served in the Artillery Corps. He attained the rank of Corporal.

Upon his release from the army, he earned a BA in International Relations and Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.