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Netanyahu bitter over justice minister appointee

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s shrinking coalition forces him to appoint his old nemesis, Knesset member Ayelet Shaked, to the post of justice minister.
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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.

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