Ofir Sofer

Origins and early life

Ofir Sofer was born in Alma, in the Galilee, on 1 August 1975, into a family of Tunisian Jewish descent; his grandfather had come to Israel from Libya, and he says he feels deeply attached to the region where he was born.

Work and career

He served for many years as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, and in 1996 he was critically wounded in a battle at Joseph's Tomb, which cost him two years of rehabilitation before he returned to the army as a commander. After leaving the army with the rank of major, he worked on the development of the Galilee at the Ministry for the Development of the Periphery, the Negev and the Galilee, and through the former minister Uri Ariel he moved gradually into politics.

In 2014 he became secretary general of the Tkuma party, and in April 2019 he entered the Knesset, fourth on the list of the Union of Right-Wing Parties. Re-elected in 2022 on the joint list of the Religious Zionist Party, he was appointed Minister of Aliyah and Integration on 29 December 2022. In his first interview to an English-language outlet, in February 2023, he said he wanted to put his efforts into absorbing more immigrants from Western countries, mainly the United States and France, and to update the absorption basket, unchanged since 2015.

He took office after a year in which more than 75,000 immigrants had reached Israel, about 55,000 of them from Russia and Ukraine, the highest number in decades. He lives with his wife and their seven children in Tefahot, a religious moshav in the north, and in July 2026 he announced that he would not stand for re-election. In 2023 the Jerusalem Post included him among its fifty most influential Jews, describing a quiet minister who sees himself as a bridge between groups and sectors.