Orit Farkash-Hacohen

Orit Farkash-Hacohen was born on December 29, 1970, in Petah Tikva. She grew up in Ashdod and attended the Amana school in Kfar Saba. She did her IDF national service in the Sha’arei Tzedek Medical Center in Jerusalem and subsequently studied for an LLB at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

After an internship in the district and Supreme Court with Dalia Dorner, she worked at E.S. Shimron, I. Molho, Persky & Co as a lawyer. After five years at the firm, she left to join the Antitrust Authority, becoming head of the litigation team. In 2003, Farkash-Hacohen became a legal advisor to the Electricity Authority, a position she held until 2011.

Between 2006 and 2007, she attended Harvard University, earning a master’s degree in public administration.

She was appointed temporary chair of the Electricity Authority in September 2011 and was given the job permanently the following March, the first woman to hold the position. During her tenure, she pushed for opening Israel’s energy production market to competition and encouraged the creation of a renewable energy industry. She lost her job, however, in 2015 after speaking out against the country’s natural gas monopoly and urging the prime minister to address the high price of gas.

In 2017, she joined Goldfarb Seligman & Co. as head of the Department of Energy, Regulation and Infrastructure.

Farkash-Hacohen was a visiting lecturer at the Florence School of Regulation, the European University Institute, and taught the Energy Law and Regulation course at the College of Law and Business in Israel. She was also a guest lecturer at the Hebrew University on economic regulation.

Farkash-Hacohen joined the new Israel Resilience Party in 2019. She won a seat in the Knesset after the party joined the Blue and White alliance for the April 2019 elections. She also won a seat in the succeeding elections in September 2019 and March 2020. In May 2020, she was appointed Minister of Strategic Affairs in the new government.

She says she became involved in politics to be an agent of change and hope and to have a positive impact on the lives of consumers.

Farkash-Hacohen is married and has four children.

Sources: “Orit Farkash-Hacohen,” The Knesset;
“Orit Farkash-Hacohen,” Wikipedia;
Ministry of Strategic Affairs.

Photo: Yanai Yechiel licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.