Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed former ambassador to Brazil Yossi Avraham Shelly as the director-general of his office and US-born attorney Yossi Fuchs as his cabinet secretary.
Shelly, a confidant of Netanyahu’s, strengthened Israel’s ties with Brazil and had a good relationship with its outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro.
But he made waves in Israel when he posted a picture of himself at a meal with Bolsonaro, but blacked out the lobster on the plates. Separately, he accused former minister and former Meretz Party head Tamar Zandberg of hating Jews.
In the past, he has served as the director-general of the Beersheba municipality and chaired the board of the Postal Authority.
A native of New York
Fuchs is a native of New York and lives in the Neve Daniel settlement in Gush Etzion. He is a former chair of the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, which was active in combating the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, and authored a book on the legal battle to halt the evacuation of the 21 settlements that had existed there.
During this election, he ran for the Knesset on the Likud slate but came in 43rd place.
After the appointment, he tweeted that he was “shaken and excited” by the opportunity to serve as cabinet secretary and thanked Netanyahu for the trust placed in him.
“I will do everything in my power, humbly and diligently, so that the… government will run smoothly and advance the interests of the national camp,” he wrote.