THE CURRENT → PROFILES Issue 578 · September 23, 2015

Gideon Saar’s Days of Rest

In 2015, we spoke to Gideon Saar, just as he was deciding if, when, and how to come out of his self-imposed political exile to try unseat Israel’s longest-serving prime minister

By Shimon Breitkopf

20 min read September 23, 2015

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu speaks with minister of Education Gideon Saar during a session in the plenum hall of the Israeli parliament. November 25, 2009. Photo by Miriam Alster/FLASH90

Who is Gideon Saar, the one politician on the Israeli scene who could be considered a true nemesis to Netanyahu?

In the seemingly never-ending battle for the character of Shabbos in Eretz Yisrael, Gideon Saar, born into a secular, Tel Aviv family, played a starring role. In one of his final acts as Minister of the Interior a little more than a year ago, he enforced the law banning supermarkets from opening on Shabbos in the city of his birth.

Secularists were appalled, chareidim applauded, and the media charged Saar with chareidi-pandering in advance of a presumed campaign to dethrone Binyamin Netanyahu in the upcoming Likud primaries.

They were wrong.

A couple of months later, Saar gathered a crowd of 1,000 supporters for a pre-Rosh Hashanah toast to announce he was taking a “time-out” from politics to devote more time to his family. “I felt that this was the right thing for my loved ones. My son David will start walking soon, and I want to be there, right next to him, holding his hand.”

His declaration came as a shock to the political system. Widely respected inside his Likud Party — as well as by the opposition — for his skill as a parliamentarian, Saar had twice finished second to Prime Minister Netanyahu in Likud primaries. Another primary was coming up soon and the conventional wisdom had it that the third time could be the charm, where either a Netanyahu slip or a Saar leap would place Saar first.