Gideon Sa'ar

Gideon Moshe Sa'ar (Hebrew: גִּדְעוֹן סָעָר; born 9 December 1966) is an Israeli politician serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs since November 2024. A lawyer by training and long-time member of the Likud party, Sa'ar entered politics as a cabinet secretary under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the late 1990s and was first elected to the Knesset in 2003.

Throughout his career, Sa'ar has held multiple senior ministerial portfolios, including Minister of the Interior from 2009 to 2013, where he oversaw immigration and settlement policies; Minister of Education; Minister of Finance; Minister of Public Security; and Minister of Justice. In 2020, dissatisfied with Netanyahu's leadership amid ongoing corruption trials and political deadlock, Sa'ar resigned from Likud and founded the New Hope party, which positioned itself as a right-wing alternative emphasizing governance reform and national security. New Hope briefly joined an anti-Netanyahu coalition government in 2021 before collapsing, leading Sa'ar back to the opposition; however, he rejoined Netanyahu's coalition in late 2022 and merged New Hope into Likud in August 2025, solidifying his return to the party's mainstream.

Gideon Sa'ar was born on December 9, 1966, in Tel Aviv, Israel, as the firstborn son of Ashkenazi Jewish parents Bruriah and an unnamed father who had immigrated from Argentina in 1965. His family originally bore the surname Zarechansky, reflecting Eastern European Jewish roots common among Ashkenazi immigrants to Argentina.

Sa'ar's father worked as a physician, including serving as the personal doctor to Israel's founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion at the Sde Boker kibbutz in the Negev Desert. As a child, Sa'ar spent several years living in Sde Boker, where he occasionally accompanied his father on home visits to Ben-Gurion, fostering early exposure to figures central to Israel's foundational history. Despite this period, he primarily grew up in Tel Aviv, in a secular household that maintained some ties to Jewish tradition, as his mother taught Tanach (Hebrew Bible).

During his tenure as Minister of Education, Sa'ar was named Man of the Year by the Congress of Bukharan Jews for spearheading reforms that enhanced Jewish education in Israel and supported diaspora communities, including expanded preschool access and core curriculum strengthening. This honor underscored his role in integrating Bukharan Jewish heritage into national narratives, drawing on his family's own roots in that community.