In the winter of 2008, Ayelet Shaked, the current justice minister-designate, left her job as office manager for the then-leader of the opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu, after serving in the post for less than a year and a half. Actually, Shaked “fired herself,” just three days after the office chief of staff, a young high-tech millionaire named Naftali Bennett, left under similar circumstances. He had a bitter argument with Sara Netanyahu, wife of the opposition leader, that affected his working relationship with Netanyahu himself. It was easy to see how it would all end.

The beginning of this saga was actually quite promising. After the 2006 Lebanon War, when it looked like the Kadima government was about to fall, Netanyahu, as chairman of the opposition, put together an office dream team that was supposed to accompany him all the way to the Prime Minister’s Office. Shaked, from Tel Aviv, was then a computer engineer working in a high-tech company. Raised in a Likud family, Netanyahu and his wife selected her to serve as his office manager. Both Netanyahus had interviewed her for the job. Later, they recruited Bennett, a member of the religious nationalist community and an officer in the Matkal commando unit, the same unit in which Netanyahu had served years before.

The pair of them, Shaked and Bennett, didn't quite fit the profile of the other members of Netanyahu’s team. They came from outside the world of politics; they were young; and they both had successful high-tech careers. The good times quickly came to an end. Both Bennett and Shaked proved to be highly independent-minded and refused to go along with every whim of Sara Netanyahu. Arguments often reached fever pitch, with the two hires demanding that Netanyahu limit his wife’s involvement in office affairs. They considered Sara detrimental, and precious time was being wasted trying to deal with her. They did not like her involvement in setting Netanyahu’s daily schedule or her demands that they cancel meetings or his participation in various events because of family or other considerations.

There was something else as well. Netanyahu went behind Sara’s back to “fill in” Shaked’s salary, because the Likud Party’s budget to employ her amounted to just a few thousand shekels. As soon as Sara found out about it, there was hell to pay. By this stage, her relationship with Shaked and Bennett was already on shaky footing. From then until their being forced out was only a matter of time.