Miri Regev

Background

Regev was born in Kiryat Gat in 1965 to Moroccan Jewish immigrant parents.

Career

In 1983 she joined the Gadna, where she became a platoon commander, serving in the position until 1986. She has a Master"s Degree in Business and a Bachelor"s Degree in Informal Education. Revital Madar, a Tunisian-Israeli writer in Haaretz, has argued that Miri Regev had faced discrimination within the Likud hierarchy due to the fact that she is a Moroccan woman, whose forthright behaviour is perceived as being stereotypically Mizrahi.

She then began serving as the Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson"s representative in the Israeli Southern Command.

Regev was promoted to a Colonel rank for the position of Deputy Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson in 2002. In 2003, she was appointed coordinator of the national public relations efforts at the Israeli Prime Minister" General’ s Office in preparation for the Iraq War.

After a short stint (2004–2005) as the Chief Press and Media Censor, she was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General and to the position of Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson in 2005. She served in this position during Israel"s disengagement from Gaza in 2005 and the 2006 Lebanon War.

In 2007, she was discharged and was succeeded by Avi Benayahu.

In May 2012, Regev participated in an anti-immigration protest and called illegal Sudanese immigrants "a cancer in our body." She later said that the quote was misrepresented, and apologized for seeming to compare human beings to cancer. Regev was re-elected in the 2015 elections after being placed fifth on the Likud list. She was subsequently appointed Minister of Culture and Sport in the new government.

LGBT rights

Although she is heterosexual and holds traditional views on the family, Regev is also known as a strong supporter of the LGBT community, and spent 25 years in the Israel Defense Forces fighting for the rights of LGBT officers.

Regev says of this: "In the political world they don’t know how to swallow me, because I am a colorful person and different. I am unpredictable. Who decided that social activists have to be leftists? Sorry, but people on the right also embrace the gay community.”.

Achievements

• She won twenty-seventh place on the party"s list for the 2009 elections, just high enough to enter the Knesset as Likud won 27 seats.

Politics

In November 2008, Regev joined the Likud party, saying that she had been a supporter of the party"s platform for many years.

Views

Quotations: "a cancer in our body.".

Membership

She is currently a member of the Knesset for Likud and Minister of Culture and Sport.