Avigdor Lieberman (5 July 1958-) was an Israeli politician who served as a Yisrael Beiteinu MK from 1999, as Foreign Minister from 2009 to 2012 and from 2013 to 2015, and as Defense Minister from 2016 to 2018.
Biography[]
Evet Lvovich Liberman was born in Kishinev, Moldavian SSR, Soviet Union (now Chisinau, Moldova) in 1958 to a Russian-speaking Jewish family. His family made aliyah to Israel in 1978, and he changed his name to "Avigdor Lieberman". Lieberman served in the IDF artillery corps before joining a Likud student group, and he was also briefly a member of Kach. In 1988, he started working with Benjamin Netanyahu, and he rose in the party's ranks under Netanyahu. In 1999, he founded the secular-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, whose electoral base consisted mostly of Russian-speaking Soviet immigrants. During the 1990s, over one million Russian-speaking immigrants arrived in Israel, and his party became a kingmaker in Israeli politics. He first entered the Knesset in 1999, and he went on to serve in various cabinet positions, including as Foreign Minister from 2009 to 2012 and from 2013 to 2015, and as Defense Minister from 2016 to 2018. In 2018, he resigned as Defense Minister in protest against the ceasefire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.