Middle East Monitor / July 6, 2020
The Israeli government approved on Saturday the appointment of Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan as the Zionist state’s Ambassador at the UN, Al-Quds Al-Araby has reported. Critics claim that Erdan has been given senior roles within the far-right Likud Party as well as the government solely because of his anti-Palestinian views.
Erdan was born in 1970 from a Romanian father, who was a teacher and a lawyer, and Hungarian mother. He studied at a prestigious Israeli religious school in Jerusalem and has a BA in Law from Bar Ilan University and an MA in political sciences from Tel Aviv University.
His political career started as a Likud member when he was at university, where he organised and led anti-Oslo Accord protests. He was the head of the Union of Building Contractors in Israel and the Head of Likud’s youth wing. Erdan then worked as a legal consultant for the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
His hard-line views saw him oppose Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. When he entered the Knesset (parliament) in 2015, Netanyahu appointed him as Internal Security Minister.
Erdan believes that Arab culture and traditions make it difficult to fight crime in the community. In turn, Israel’s Palestinian citizens — 20 per cent of the population — accuse him of ignoring the security of the Arab cities and neighbourhoods.
Arab MKs in parliament point out that Israel seems to know every crime everywhere within a very short time, and knows everything inside Syria and Iran, but is apparently unable to tackle the increasing crime rate within the Arab community. They accuse the minister of hypocrisy, not least because two years ago it was revealed that Erdan channelled a government budget allocated for fighting crime inside the Arab community to projects serving only Jewish citizens in Israel.
