Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel’s job is about bringing about communication.
In his first 100 days on the job, he has done it by connecting the periphery to high-speed Internet, setting up a hotline for seniors affected by the coronavirus and by issuing a tender for deploying the infrastructure for 5G, the fifth-generation technology standard for cellular networks.
But it is the communication between Likud and Blue and White that he and his ally MK Zvi Hauser forced that prevented Israelis from going to a fourth election since April 2019.
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Hendel and Hauser refused constant offers to help form a right-wing government without Blue and White, or a center-left government without the Likud. They demanded a unity government, and they got it and maintained it.
Unity is part of Hendel’s and Hauser’s ideology. When Blue and White was formed, Hendel was part of the team that negotiated a new joint platform overnight for the slate.
A native of Elkana in Samaria, Hendel had been the leading voice of the Right in the Left-leaning newspaper Yediot Aharonot, and was recruited by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2011 to serve as his director of communications and public diplomacy. He is a married father of four, whose wife is from a home of immigrants to Israel from Brooklyn and Teaneck, NJ.
He considers himself “sometimes religious.” He keeps Shabbat, but does not wear a kippah during the week and does not want to be part of a particular sector.
He served in the Shayetet 13 naval commando unit as a company commander. In the IDF reserves, he commands a special unit.
Following his IDF service, Hendel did what he calls “operational things in the security system.” After earning a doctorate in Israel’s military history, he worked for the Institute for National Strategic Studies and Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, and authored a number of books. In May, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman chose Hendel and Hauser as the first MKs with whom he held a meeting in Israel’s new government.
Hauser previously served as Netanyahu’s cabinet secretary but, like Hendel, also fell out with him and turned to the opposition.
With the government continuing to teeter on the brink of collapse, their past partnership with Netanyahu makes them the most likely suspects for defection if the prime minister decides to try and form an alternative coalition with Naftali Bennett’s Yamina joined by Hendel and Hauser. For now, the duo has rejected any offer. But if the clock ticks toward an election, the pressure will mount. Will they save Netanyahu? Stay tuned.