"Imagine a handsome, innocent woman, short-haired, makeup-free, precisely sloppy jeans, the right T-shirt, a feminist, a lesbian, a doctor of gender studies, sharp, charismatic, a liberal tomboy woman. And then imagine that she behaves like a grandmother from a meal from Sderot – separating meat from milk, fond of the graves of the righteous and interested in turning conservatism into gospel."
This text was gracefully written some years ago by publicist Galit Distal Atabrian about Dr. Gali Sambira after she joined her on a leadership tour in Morocco.
He accurately describes the Director General of the Ministry of Information who is sitting opposite me now and who was chosen for the position by Minister Distal Atabrian about a month ago. I meet her at the Technological Garden in Jerusalem, where the small office is located between a law firm and a dentist, like all the new offices that did not receive a fancy office at the entrance to the capital. There are two printers there, not one. But other than that not much property or at all - employees. Chief of Staff Leli Deri took office early last week. And there is also a speaker. In front of Sambira is one notebook and a pen, several pages with tasks and horizon. She looks far away, trying not to get sucked into the dance of criticism around her, around the minister, around the office that was invented out of thin air.
"I'm a nomad"
"The office sign here isn't ready yet, it's at work. It will read: 'Dr. Gali Sambira, Grandma Tony's granddaughter.' Then the CEO will come," she begins her conversation with a monologue that characterizes her work. "It's to say that more than I bring degrees and experience to this role, I bring... Do you see the picture there?" she gestures at a renewed picture hanging behind her desk. There stands a meticulous teacher, and girls and children in an obedient dance position. "Years ago, someone from the Libyan Jewish Heritage Center came to my grandmother to scan pictures she had. He disappeared, and after a few years she died and the pictures were lost.
"More than ten years later, a friend sends me a picture and writes: 'I'm enlarging my living room, enlarging you too? It's from Tripoli.' I asked him: Are you kidding me? The teacher on the left is my grandfather, he was a gym and Hebrew teacher. A lost photo was found. As far as I'm concerned, in the debate between Judaism as a religion and Judaism as a tradition or a nation, Judaism is tradition, traditionalism. For some people, moderation can be an identity or a worldview. For me, it's identity. And the knowledge I bring with me here," she goes back to the beginning, "is Grandma Tony's knowledge."
Sambira arrives armed with three degrees, a profession as a methodologist, a lecturer at the Hebrew University on strategies for social impact, an advisor to government ministries (the Prime Minister, education, agriculture, etc.), head of the Shacharit Institute's Program 120, and a partner in quite a few social organizations. She's 51, and when I ask her where she's from, that answer also becomes complicated: "I'm a nomad. My father was a military man and we moved every two years. I am from Netanya, Be'er Sheva, Mitzpe Ramon and Yavne - these are the districts of my childhood.
"During my life I have lived in more than 15 local authorities. If you ask in Netanya, they'll tell you about Sambira & Son, my grandfather's homeware store. At the Civil Service Commission committee, I told them: I acquired my vocational education by counting inventory in fourth grade in Netanya at Sambira & Son." At this point, I'm already curious, I can't figure out where she labels herself - on the right or on the left, is she, as they claim against her on the left, "legitimizing a fascist government," or - as they claim against her on the right - is she even a leftist woman in the disguise that Distel planted in the office?
"I never said I was left-wing. It's people who decide based on certain identities of mine or organizations I've worked for that I'm left-wing. When my appointment began to be published, I received WhatsApp messages from people close to me who wrote to me from here on out, 'I didn't know you were leftist,' or 'I didn't know you were right-wing.' I think that in Israel there is a small ideological group on the left and a small ideological group on the right, and in the middle two large blocs with a slightly more Jewish or slightly more Israeli sentiment. But whoever shouts at me from the right and the left is the more extreme 10%. And I'm not there. Those who really know me were not surprised by this move."
She shows me one of many messages sent to her accusing her of colluding with a fascist government and wonders: "I am a deep and charismatic traditional center. Is all Israeli pride and Zionism Jewish supremacy? If that's what they think, that any Israeli pride or patriotism is supremacy, it's total system freaking out. I'm not left. Right? I don't know."
Let's make it simple: two states for two peoples - yes or no?
"The truth is that most Israelis simply don't care. The first home class I attended as a high school student was with Elyakim Hatzni. Two weeks ago I came full circle and took a tour of Samaria with his son Boaz Hatzni. After the events and processes of the past few decades, I think that what we called autonomy then, today can be defined as approaches that call for reducing the conflict. Those on the ground understand that this question is no longer relevant; we need to maintain the security and depth of the State of Israel while reducing the conflict, economic cooperation, good neighborly relations and reaching out for peace. I saw it happening in the Barkan industrial zone, where the residents of the area, Jews and Arabs, work together and live together. The solutions will come from the field, from the real people who live in a shared space, from initiatives by Israeli Arabs to be a bridge between their people and their state, and not from abstract universal principles."
"Grandma Toni spoke more languages than I did and held wisdom for life", Photo: Kfir Ziv
She refers me to a post she wrote about "stuck in the middle," those who are neither here nor there, and says: "This text at certain times is the platform of the Likud and sometimes of other parties." The text she wrote last February seems to be the case for a very large percentage of Israeli society. "We are neither conservatives nor progressives, we are not afraid of the New Fund or the choir, we have no think tanks because we are more pragmatic and less ideological (and proud of this), we do not import American ideas here that do not suit us because here it is neither Europe nor America. We are troubled by the erosion of democracy, both on the right and on the left. We are also troubled when Judaism becomes folklore alongside Christmas and Halloween. We are troubled by religious coercion as well as secular coercion and liberal blindness. We don't like the intoxication of this government in recent weeks, nor do we like those who think that their country has been stolen from them, and only they are the 'right' ones, and if not them then no one..."
In connection with these words, she tells me: "There are two elites squabbling in the streets right now that have nothing to do with me. What is it that they stole my country? It means that I thought the country was mine and not yours until now."
So in normal times I wouldn't have found you in Kaplan?
"Nope. I won't set foot there. Because of the demonstrations in Kaplan, I missed an appointment I made seven months ago for my passport, but now I have a diplomatic passport," she says with a smile, adding, "I wasn't there in other incarnations of these demonstrations in Balfour either. It's simple: I am the deep traditional center – in the morning I am excited about the connection to the biblical Land of Israel in Samaria, in the afternoon I talk about Jewish-Arab relations in the Galilee. In media terms, you can call me a 'riddle' or a 'phenomenon,' but on the street I'm the average Israeli. Pragmatic, not ideological – life itself."
She met Minister Distal Atabrian when the latter was still a publicist and writer and went together with the Shacharit Institute to Morocco to document the leadership journey led there by Sambira in 2019. The minister's impressions of the trip and the future CEO are still engraved on the Israel Hayom website under the headline "Moroccan salad."
"In response to trips by leadership programs to Harvard and Finland, they conceived the trip to Morocco," Sambira says. "As Margol says here, it's not Europe, Finland is not relevant to us here in anything. You land in Casablanca and feel at home, and I was there with Hasidim, Lithuanians, Arabs, secular and religious. Israeli society has chosen human dignity over 'dignity of Casabalan.' It took the human dignity that Moroccans brought from Morocco that could have been the foundation of a multicultural society, downgraded it to low dignity and took human dignity.
"I grew up in Mitzpe Ramon, Netanya, Be'er Sheva and more, and I felt like everyone else. When we moved to Yavne on the first day of school, a girl from my class asked me, 'Are you from the Ashkenazim in the new neighborhoods?' Until that moment I knew we were Tripolites. I went home and asked my mother: Tripolites are Ashkenazim or Mizrahim? We were Mizrahi sociologists and Ashkenazi geographers. This experience shaped my hybrid identity – I am both the first Israel and the second Israel, and at that moment I am the hybrid, traditional Israel. I refuse to be sorted, and these perspectives create a complex position for me in almost every decision-making process. My complex identity is part of my knowledge of reality, of unity of opposites, of the middle way.
"A friend asked how the first week was and I said, 'What's a week? Year.' For ten years I've been telling a joke when the civil service commissioner says: 'How do I feel like coffee, issue a tender,' and now the joke is on me."
"In the illustration of Grandma Tony Street - the name of the street is written in the three languages she spoke: Hebrew, Arabic and Italian. She spoke more languages than I did and possessed wisdom that today about 100 Sambira girls and sons pass on as part of the chain of generations.
"By the way, my grandmother, if people who hold liberal worldviews understood that the value of Grandma Toni's granddaughter is no less than Dr. Gali Sambira, we would be in a different place now. Jews who came from less dichotomous places, not from Europe, came with it, but it was marked low and then distanced themselves from it. The trips I led to Morocco were prostrate on the graves of the righteous. It's leadership."
Listen, it sounds natural to me to prostrate yourself on the graves of the righteous, but my readers will tell you: a pagan custom.
"It's Harvard. The fact that you and I talk like that is because you and I are bathed in Western thinking. Haviva Padya says that the third generation of immigrants is still with the pain, but they already have the resources and the ability. We are already socialized from the West. So you have to go to Morocco to remember. Galit joined as a journalist and wrote an article. On my website, the home page was text that Galit wrote in the article."
What was the connection between you?
"There's a connection. We're in a different package, but we're both traditional, coming from similar pains. The incarnation of my pain is different – for me it's not in anger yet, but maybe it will be one day."
Return to the common good
It's hard not to get sucked with Gali into a conversation about Morocco, identity, traditionalism, worldviews, especially when her phone suddenly rings and a little girl is heard singing, "We sinned before you, have mercy on us." But the page is short, and curiosity nonetheless permeates when talking about an office established for purely political purposes, and even a month later, it is still unclear what its purpose is and how to establish a new office in Israel with departments and authority.
"Now, on June 1, I am the only employee in the Ministry of Information. As they told me: You kick the horn and run to butt. We're recruiting manpower now, and it's all a little chicken and egg. You need powers and standards, there is a complex series of actions here. Over the past two weeks, I've been meeting my friends across the government and finding ways to make moves now, I don't have patience."
And there is, as already mentioned, a printer. It's hard to avoid referring to what Distel said at the time in response to allegations against her for not starting work, and since then the printer has been associated with her name forever. Sambira says she suggested that the minister respond to the recommendations at her expense as follows: "On May 1st, when there was a government decision on my appointment, I came here and said to Galit, 'Now we're taking pictures next to the printer and you're tweeting: Look at the CEO I recruited, she's here for an hour and there's a printer.' But then all the media mess started and the sense of humor here went down to the floor, disappeared," she laughs, and immediately adds: "But there are already two printers."
Beneath the laughter also surfaces the pain over the insults hurled at the office and its leaders since it was established. "A lot is expected of us, but we're just getting started. We were expected to explain the reform, but we are not government spokesmen. We're not just the smallest firm, we're the only firm that doesn't have a single auxiliary unit under it. Even May Golan has the Authority for the Status of Women, the Heritage Ministry has Ammunition Hill. There's nothing here. On the one hand, they fire at us from all directions, 'What are you doing?' and on the other hand, I hold a path and say, 'This is where we are going and where we will get to.'
"I am the deep traditional center. In media terms, you can call me a 'riddle' or a 'phenomenon,' but on the street I'm the average Israeli. Pragmatic, not ideological – life itself."
"I'm sandwiched between politics and bureaucracy now. Fun is not," says Sambira, moving on to practice: "Here, you see – there is a plan here for the ministry: Israeli advocacy and social resilience. I come from worlds of public participation. It's listening to a hundred people and creating one focused program that holds brains. So there are two areas in the ministry here – one is the story of Israeli advocacy sitting in several government bodies, not synchronized enough between them and certainly not proactive enough but reactive and in a very short term. There is no long-term vision and no story. Okay, so prepare an infographic for the flag parade on Jerusalem Day to show that it doesn't pass through the Temple Mount. But there is no consistent Israeli story, and everything works in the very short term.
"I come from civil society, the tools I bring to the government, and I see that it creates a bit of a shock here in the corridors. It's collaboration, creativity and flexibility. And create a story and place it in a large and pretentious way. In recent weeks, I have been shocked at how organized and sophisticated forces we have in front of us. Israelis, Jews and supporters of Israel around the world are ambassadors of public diplomacy, but we need to create materials for them and make these materials accessible. There are dozens of civil society organizations and individuals doing the work of an entire country. So we need to gather the materials and knowledge and create content houses for activists, content creators, YouTubers, and for them to do the advocacy – not from above, from below."
But these things are already being done at both the information headquarters and the Foreign Ministry.
"The information bureau deals with the security and political issues, but the great Israeli story could have been a motive for many political or security events a minute earlier if we had told the story of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel. This is a story that needs to be told regularly and regularly, not in response to the Pentateuch now. Obviously they tried before me. The magnitude of the task in front of me is probably the biggest I've ever had. I tell people that there are a lot of frustrations here, but from a managerial standpoint, including the attacks from the right and the left, from a managerial point of view I am at my best, this is the magnitude of the task I need. I interview people for work here and tell them: 'Listen, this is the kind of work you get addicted to or you collapse from, think well if you get into it.'"
I understand the importance, but – and sorry I insist – in the end the ministry was established as a political necessity and not to meet a need.
"If there are many bodies in hasbara and it is crowded, and yet I still think that there is a significant national mission, the second area is, as Galit says, 'I recruited Gali against the background of the division among the people.' What I've done over the past ten years is this: I've spoken to every community, culture and group in Israeli society, and this phrase 'common good,' which unfortunately has been hijacked by hostile elements, I believe in. I believe that it is possible to create processes in Israeli society from below. Moving from programs to policies."
Coming from below
She points to her notebook, which came from a leadership program for Ramla residents. "Sderot, Ofakim and Ramle know how to establish relations between Russians and Mizrahim, religious and secular, more than any government ministry. The Israeli government has no policy in this area. Before I came here, I managed with the Prime Minister's Office the Yitzhak Navon Association, which is currently establishing the Navon Center for Social Cohesion in Neot Kedumim. But multicultural approaches are imported here from America, when Israel can be the one teaching the world. At the time, Merav Cohen spoke about it at the Ministry for Social Equality."
Social resilience is what Galit said at the time – to explain government actions?
"No, no, no. This social resilience means that Israeli society will know about all its multiculturalism to work together, how to live here together. There is a common Israeli identity, and there are particular identities. In the 50s and 60s, Ben-Gurion tried the melting pot policy to run a country, and received a pendulum swing of multiculturalism and crazy identity politics. Is it possible to create a model that is neither a melting pot nor multiculturalism – that I can be both Israeli and ultra-Orthodox or Arab – without paying prices on either side?"
How can you sell a common story if part of the nation perceives you as the immediate suspect and you are not trusted?
"That's right, there's a problem. In general, look at transportation or special education reforms. I walked around the corridors of the government and saw how ministers came and meant one result and the exact opposite result. Just as systems are complicated today, it is impossible to produce things from top to bottom. You have to work smartly with the local government. Knowledge is below. To create now, for example, a call to the authorities and give them the opportunity to create arrangements and agreements for living together and separately. This has been my life's mission for ten years on a personal level, and when I came here and realized that this is part of the ministry's missions, for me it's a good reason to come here."
Do we even have the ability to tell a common story at this time?
"Not only do we have the ability, most people in Israel live this thing. I had a slide in the presentation with questions about our cultural identity. The story is there. It's very easy to blame the media and politics, politics also benefits from black and white. I understand that it's easier to tell a 1-0 story, but most people's lives here are more complicated than that. I tried at the time to create feminism with Israeli Jewish sources of inspiration, and we connected with Makor Rishon to mediate this – and it's hard."
I understand the ideals, but I haven't yet understood what you're going to do here. Will the information bureau move to work under the ministry?
"Nope. We will collect under a portal or smart digital system the knowledge center of Israeli hasbara. First of all, I do mapping and I talk about this issue with the NSC about all the challenges and the required messages. Security and political issues are one item, and there is the story of the people of Israel in the Land of Israel and the cultural richness, innovation and start-up nation. We're already working on it. After mapping, we create content of smart hasbara - already today we are building content houses with the knowledge, and there will be content creators who will create Israeli hasbara. It's crazy knowledge management of the messages and content of the Israeli story.
"As far as social resilience is concerned, because I believe in the bottom, in terms of government tools, this is a call to the authorities that says create the knowledge and projects, and at the same time we will work to make knowledge accessible to local authorities on the subject of social resilience. Now we are creating a program called 'Tuesday – Twice Because Good,' in which the minister will visit the community or another part of the country every Tuesday and hear from local residents about initiatives and good things happening there. Later we will unite things to tell the full Israeli story."
At the time, Orly Levi-Abekasis also tried to work with residents and communities.
"Yes. What she did at the time is now parked at the Ministry of Social Affairs, but they are overwhelmed with needs. The place of community strength and community building is gone. In my imagination, Israel should be a model in this field and say: Here is a model of shared Israeli identity, and each community thrives according to its perception – ultra-Orthodox and LGBTQ. And still maintain an Israeli identity that has national dignity and good relations between everyone and everyone."
So let's just take it off the table – isn't explaining reform the role of this ministry?
"Nope. They said in the legal counsel, 'You shouldn't,' and that's it. This is water that has long since flowed. One week I called the legal counsel with five questions, but the system is so cumbersome that you can't get out of it. I'm not complaining about them, it's just that they're all victims of the cables. It's a web of cobwebs. Sarah is not allowed to do this or appear in it. It's an endless Catch-22. Every day there's a new event here that I say to myself: 'Wow, we won't move for a year.' On the other hand, I suddenly find some cooperation and manage to move something. After a week I was here, a friend asked me how the first week was and I said: 'What's a week? I thought for a year.' For ten years I've been telling a joke that the civil service commissioner wakes up in the morning and says, 'How do I feel like coffee, get a tender?' – and now the joke is on me. Even though I knew everything, I'm learning it now."
One and only
When I ask Gali towards the end if she is offended by the criticism leveled at her even by those closest to her in the organizations where she worked, she gives me this wonderful answer: "There are only two people in the world who can be disappointed in me: my mother and my father. On a personal level, there are painful events, but I am more troubled by the good reactions and expectations placed on me. There are heaps of expectations, because people know that I come from places of social resilience and I know all the organizations, I know what is done and failed, I know what is happening, and there are many expectations."
"I'm not left. Right? I don't know."
Two states for two peoples - yes or no?
"The truth is that most Israelis don't care. Anyone on the ground understands that this question is no longer relevant."
Gali, the woman, is a unique phenomenon in the government landscape. She is actually the only female CEO among more than 30 CEOs. Compared to the previous government, which broke a record for women's representation at the senior level, this government seems to have gone back a generation. At the last meeting of directors-general, led by the Director General of the Prime Minister's Office, Yossi Shelly, Sambira stood out from afar. "At this event, Yossi Shelly spoke with the Director General of the Housing Ministry Yehuda Morgenstern, who was with me on the '120' program, and he told him: 'I'm happy about the diversity in the room,' so Yehuda replied: 'I'm not the diversity already, I'm the majority – that's the waves of diversity in the room.' It comes up every time you ask, 'Where is the woman? Where's the CEO?' It's a very strange situation."
You come from worlds of diversity, and as mentioned, you are in a government that is not very diverse. Are you comfortable with that?
"A government is not supposed to be a reflection of the public – the Knesset is supposed to be. The previous government was a mirror image. There are people for whom this situation now is the end of democracy and the end of the world, and those who felt this way in the previous government, and there are people who understand that neither the previous situation nor the current situation is the end of the world. What bothers me the most is that people live in such disturbed and extreme bubbles. Networks and technology play a very central role in this situation, and now with the TV channels, each with its own TV channel."
She returns to the role she bears and the world of values she brings in light of the sense of division, saying: "There is no government body that looks at this from a strategic perspective, at the relations between the communities. No one looks and asks: What is the work plan of Israeli society? The campus in Tel Aviv has plans for all disasters, but no one has an optimistic plan for prosperity. We will produce it."
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