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

The appointment is about more than a thin professional fit. The resume opens a larger 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, but no practical experience in energy. The Electricity Authority makes professional decisions on the market, tariffs and regulation.

A routine appointment review would ask a simple question: why does a person without an energy-sector background receive a seat in such a body? The public-interest question is larger: 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: the absence of 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 being a staffing oddity and begins to look 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 is still concrete: a professional state body receives 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 give career reference points; the political meaning here rests on the published materials about the appointment 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 receives a publicly paid entry point into a professional state body.

The point does not need shouting. It is quiet and bureaucratic. The public is shown procedures, while 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 and 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. According to the publication, Likud confirmed it: David Bitan credited Milwidsky with creating and operating the party call center through four campaigns. The same piece added a central detail: Israel Katz said that thanks to “Hanoch and his friends”, the party received 300,000 votes in 2020, without which victory would have been impossible.

After that statement, Minuchin’s appointment cannot be hidden behind the word “qualification.” The arithmetic is political: some bring votes, others receive 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 with them.

In this context, the call center is not generic civic activity. It 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 does not sit in the party center, does not see lists of phone operators, does not know who brought whom into the primaries, who owes votes to whom, and who is pushing whose appointment before leaving a ministry.

The citizen is left with the finished result. Yesterday he saw a politician on screen. Today he pays tariffs, taxes and bills. Tomorrow he learns that a professional body received an appointee without relevant experience but with the right political environment behind her. Then he is told that everything is legal, procedural and normal.

The system is closed enough that exposure appears only 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, and N12/Mako later describes Katz’s broader style: thousands of outside consultants in the Defense Ministry, many without a tender, at a total cost of about half a billion shekels. The important point is not the list of all appointees. It is the pattern: 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.

This is a convenient form of access. It is not always necessary to ask immediately for 50 million shekels or openly build a new state body. Sometimes it is enough to put your person on a professional council and then 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.

There is no public document in which Katz directly writes that Minuchin received the position in exchange for electoral support. But 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, this is not a verdict. Politically, it looks like payment for service.

What Comes Next

If this pattern is not broken, it will again do what it knows how to do: call, mobilize, bargain, push through, appoint, explain that everything followed the rules.

The ordinary person in this system remains a spectator, payer and statistic. He learns about the internal deal last, when the position is already filled, the decision already made and the party machine already moving toward the next elections.

On that reading, if nothing changes, Likud will win the elections again in 2026. Not because citizens checked everything and freely chose this arrangement, but because an ordinary citizen has almost no tool against a closed network of appointments, religious alliances, party call centers and state resources. He is left only 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.