Miri Regev

Miri Regev (born 26 May 1965) is an Israeli politician and retired Israel Defense Forces brigadier general who serves as Minister of Transport and Road Safety in the Thirty-seventh government of Israel, a position she has held since January 2023, and as a member of the Knesset for the Likud party since 2009. Born in Kiryat Gat to parents of Moroccan Jewish descent, Regev pursued a 25-year military career in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, rising to the rank of brigadier general in the reserves, where she managed public relations during major operations including the Second Lebanon War.

Regev's political ascent within Likud has been marked by her loyal defense of party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, her promotion of infrastructure projects benefiting Israel's geographic periphery, and her tenure as Minister of Culture and Sport from 2015 to 2020, during which she redirected public funding toward artistic works emphasizing Zionist themes and national heritage while withholding support from productions perceived as undermining Israeli identity or security narratives. This approach, often framed by critics in left-leaning outlets as restricting artistic freedom, reflected Regev's emphasis on "freedom of funding" to align state resources with majority public values amid longstanding cultural divides between Israel's central elites and peripheral communities.

Miri Regev, née Miriam Siboni, was born on May 26, 1965, in Kiryat Gat, a development town in southern Israel established in the 1950s to absorb Jewish immigrants. She was the eldest of four children born to Felix Siboni, an immigrant from Morocco, and Marcelle (also known as Mercedes) Siboni, who hailed from Spain, reflecting her family's Sephardic Jewish heritage with roots in North African and Iberian Mizrahi communities.

Regev grew up in a working-class household in Kiryat Gat's "train neighborhood," a modest area emblematic of the economic hardships faced by many families in Israel's peripheral regions during the post-independence era. Her parents, lacking formal higher education themselves, raised their children amid the challenges of integration for Sephardic immigrants, where Regev became the first in her family to complete high school. This environment, marked by limited resources and distance from central urban centers, later informed her emphasis on development in Israel's southern periphery.