Nir Barkat

Origins and early life

Nir Barkat was born in Jerusalem on 19 October 1959 and grew up there, the son of Zalman Barkat, a physics professor at the Hebrew University, and of a folk-dance teacher; his grandparents had come to the country from Poland and Russia.

Work and career

He served in the paratroopers of the Israel Defense Forces from 1977 to 1983, reaching the rank of major, and then took a degree in computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1988 he founded the software company BRM, which specialised in antivirus software and later became an incubator and venture firm that invested in companies such as Check Point and BackWeb. From 1999 his family invested in the Snunit Center for the Advancement of Web-Based Learning, and he helped found IVN, the Israel Venture Network, which backs social businesses.

He entered politics in January 2003 by founding the Jerusalem Will Succeed party, lost that year's mayoral race, and led the opposition on the city council until November 2008, when he was elected mayor with 52 per cent of the vote. Reporting that victory, the Associated Press described the bareheaded, casually dressed Barkat as reflecting the secular Jewish residents of Jerusalem, and in his speech he called the city the heart of the Jewish people.

He was re-elected in October 2013 with 52 per cent and served until 4 December 2018, years in which, according to the Jerusalem Post, he fostered the city's technology ecosystem and put Jerusalem on the global business stage. He then joined Likud, entered the Knesset in 2019, and on 1 January 2023 became Minister of Economy and Industry, where he has championed import reforms meant to bring more competition into the Israeli market.

In 2023 the Jerusalem Post placed him, together with Ofir Sofer and Amichai Chikli, on its list of the fifty most influential Jews.