Eli Cohen

Eli Cohen (Hebrew: אֵלִי כֹּהֵן) is an Israeli accountant and politician,

Cohen was born on October 3, 1972, in Holon. After his IDF national service as a Major in the Israeli air force, he studied at Tel Aviv University, gaining a BA in Accounting and an MBA, majoring in Financing and Accounting. He also obtained a bachelor’s degree in management and economics from the Open University of Israel. He went on to work as an accountant and lectured at Tel Aviv University.

In 2000, he began to work at the BDO Ziv Haft Accountants’ firm as Head of the Economic Division. In 2003, he joined the credit rating company Maalot S&P and headed the Corporations Division. In 2007,  he was appointed Senior Vice President of the Israel Land Development Company.

Prior to the 2015 elections, he joined the new Kulanu Party and was elected to the Knesset, where he was appointed Chairman of the Reforms Committee and joined the Finance Committee and the Joint Committee for the Defense Budget.

On January 23, 2017, he took over from Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon as Minister of the Economy.

Cohen was re-elected in the April 2019 elections, but the party dropped from ten to four seats. He was re-elected on the Likud list in September 2019 and March 2020. In May 2020, he was appointed Minister of Intelligence in the new government, serving until the formation of another government in June 2021. On December 29, 2022, Cohen was sworn in as Foreign Minister in the new government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, and will rotate the position with Yisrael Katz.

Cohen is married, has four children and lives in Holon.

Sources: Eli Cohen, Wikipedia.
Eli Cohen, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Lazar Berman, “Netanyahu names Eli Cohen as foreign minister; Dermer gets strategic affairs post,” Times of Israel, (December 29, 2022).

Photo: Ofir Abe (אופיר אייבי), CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.