Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will appoint Innovation, Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis as the country’s next U.N. ambassador, senior government officials say.
Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen have agreed on Akunis as the next ambassador, the sources told Israel Hayom.
Akunis joined the Likud Party aged 18 in 1992 and in January 1996 started working in the information department at Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv.
In 2004, he was appointed media adviser in the office of then-Finance Minister Netanyahu. He continued to serve as Netanyahu’s adviser until 2008, when he was appointed Likud’s vice president of communications and information.
In 2009, Akunis initiated the establishment of the Likud’s response team and headed it until 2013. He has considerable experience explaining the government’s position to media in Israel and abroad.
Akunis would replace Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan. Erdan will complete his four-year term as the permanent representative of Israel to the United Nations next September and is not interested in extending it. He wants to return to Israel for family reasons.
Erdan made news on Sept. 19 when U.N. police temporarily detained him during Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s speech to the General Assembly.
Erdan waved a photograph of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who was imprisoned for not properly covering her hair and then killed in custody a year ago. Her death ignited a wave of protests in the Islamic Republic.
“While the butcher of Tehran is speaking at the U.N. and is being respected by the international community, hundreds of Iranians are protesting outside, shouting and calling on the international community to wake up and help them,” Erdan said. “It is a disgrace that member states stay to listen to a mass murderer.”
