Israel Katz, Efrat Minuchin and Bnei Baruch's Political Service

The professional fit is thin. The resume opens a bigger political question.

In October 2023, during the war and shortly before leaving the Energy Ministry, Israel Katz appointed Efrat Minuchin as a public director on the Electricity Authority council. Calcalist reported that Minuchin had academic training in economics and a career in marketing and business analysis. No practical experience in energy. The Electricity Authority makes professional decisions on the market, tariffs and regulation.

A routine appointment review asks: why does a person with no energy-sector background get a seat in a body like this? The public-interest question cuts deeper: why does that seat go to someone connected to Kabbalah La’Am / Bnei Baruch, an environment that critics, former members and Israeli investigations have described for years as a sectarian political force inside Likud?

A Position For A Sectarian Network

Calcalist pointed to two facts: no relevant energy experience, and Minuchin’s connection to Kabbalah La’Am. The outlet also reminded readers that this movement has a large party base inside Likud. At that point the appointment stops looking like a staffing oddity and starts looking like political service.

Katz did not place a random person in a random place. He placed a person from a circle that had already proved its usefulness to the party. The formal file can show a degree, a procedure, a public post and a minister’s signature. The result: a professional state body gets an appointee from an environment useful to the ruling party.

The appointment also brings a family link into view. Efrat Minuchin and her husband Eran Minuchin are a couple from Laitman’s Bnei Baruch environment, tied to Kabbalah La’Am / Bnei Baruch. Their LinkedIn profiles provide career reference points. The political meaning rests on the published materials: the appointment itself and the party work of this environment.

Minuchin is not a passive surname in someone else’s list. Through her appointment, the movement’s network gets a publicly paid entry point into a professional state body.

None of this needs shouting. The mechanism is quiet and bureaucratic. The public sees procedures. Inside those procedures, people from the right circle gain access to state positions.

What Bnei Baruch Gave Likud

In December 2024, The Seventh Eye/Shakuf described Kabbalah La’Am as a political machine inside Likud: thousands of party members, primary work, “ambassadors” in state institutions, phone mobilization of voters. For the government, that makes the movement a mobilized political asset.

In that investigation, Hanoch Milwidsky said people from this environment were a “central axis” of Likud’s national campaigns over the past decade. Likud confirmed it: David Bitan credited Milwidsky with creating and operating the party call center through four campaigns. The same piece added one more detail. Israel Katz said that thanks to “Hanoch and his friends,” the party received 300,000 votes in 2020. Without those votes, Katz admitted, victory would have been impossible.

After that statement, Minuchin’s appointment can’t be hidden behind the word “qualification.” The arithmetic is political: some bring votes, others get access.

The Phone Center And Elections

This photo is from the last election. Even then, the Likud database was used by volunteers (Laitman's sectarians) to conduct mass phone calls to voters.

The Seventh Eye/Shakuf described a video in which Gilad Shadmon showed a call script for mobilizing voters on election day in 2021. Operators were supposed to present themselves as Netanyahu representatives, pressure people to go vote and ask them to bring friends and relatives.

In this context, the call center is electoral service. Labor for the ruling party. Later that labor appears near state jobs, and the public is asked to treat the appointments as ordinary procedure.

The Citizen Outside

The ordinary citizen has no access to this internal process. He doesn’t sit in the party center. He doesn’t see lists of phone operators. He doesn’t know who brought whom into the primaries, who owes votes to whom, who is pushing whose appointment before leaving a ministry.

The citizen gets the finished result. Yesterday he saw a politician on screen. Today he pays tariffs, taxes and bills. Tomorrow he learns that a professional body got an appointee with no relevant experience but the right political environment behind her. Then he’s told everything was legal, procedural and normal.

The system is closed enough that exposure only comes when journalists pull pieces of it into view. Calcalist documents Minuchin’s appointment. The Seventh Eye/Shakuf show the Bnei Baruch political machine inside Likud. N12/Mako later describes Katz’s broader style: thousands of outside consultants in the Defense Ministry, many without a tender, total cost roughly half a billion shekels. The pattern matters more than the full list of appointees. State resources, again, end up next to party usefulness.

Why Minuchin Matters

Minuchin is not the loudest episode. That is exactly why it matters. Loud scandals at least trigger a defensive reaction. Appointments like this pass almost silently. One council. One minister. One person without energy experience. One connection to a politically useful environment.

A convenient form of access. You don’t need to ask for 50 million shekels upfront. You don’t need to build a new state body in the open. Sometimes it’s enough to put your person on a professional council and call it an ordinary appointment. The next layer of the same political network — a bill, the Knesset and a budget line — is covered in the article on 50 million shekels. Recurring faces and photographs from this environment are gathered in the archive of the Bnei Baruch personnel network.

No public document exists where Katz writes outright that Minuchin got the position in exchange for electoral support. The published facts are enough for a political accusation: an appointment without relevant energy experience, Minuchin’s connection to Kabbalah La’Am, the recognized party power of this environment inside Likud, phone mobilization, Katz’s words about 300,000 votes.

Legally, not a verdict. Politically, it looks like payment for service.

What Comes Next

If this pattern holds, it will do again what it knows how to do: call, mobilize, bargain, push through, appoint, explain that everything followed the rules.

The ordinary person in this system stays a spectator, a payer, a statistic. He learns about the internal deal last — position already filled, decision already made, party machine already rolling toward the next elections.

On that reading, if nothing changes, Likud wins again in 2026. Not because citizens checked everything and freely chose this arrangement. Because an ordinary citizen has almost no tool against a closed network of appointments, religious alliances, party call centers and state resources. He’s left with the bill.

Crimes concealed by the sect.
Accusations of mass rape by Michael Laitman.
Accusations of mass rape by Hanoch Milwidsky.
Accusations of the rape of a soldier's wife by the son of Gilad Shadmon (Shlomo Shadmon).
Gilad Shadmon's wife (Tael Shadmon) admitted in court that she concealed complaints of rape by Laitman.