Nava Boker, a new member of Knesset from the Likud, first met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in December 2010 under difficult circumstances. It was after she lost her husband, senior police commander Lior Boker, at the Carmel fire disaster a month earlier.
Boker, then an active journalist, demanded answers to the debacle that happened at the fire, which is reportedly the largest fire in the history of the state. Forty-three people lost their lives in the fire besides her husband, most of them policemen, as a result of gross systematic errors. A state comptroller’s report that looked into the response to the event found that the Israeli firefighting and emergency system is antiquated and limited, more befitting a developing country than a modern country such as Israel. In the end, firefighters overcame the fire only with extensive international help.