http://’If I didn’t believe Netanyahu, I wouldn’t stay in my job for another second’ – JNS.org
I first met Tal Gilboa in July 2023. Little could we have imagined during our upbeat encounter that a mere three months later, her beloved nephew, Guy—the 22-year-old son of her sister, Meirav, and brother-in-law, Ilan—would be hauled off violently to Gaza by Hamas terrorists. That he is still there today, a full 11 months later, is even more unfathomable.
Tal is on her second stint as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s adviser on animal rights. She served in that role during his previous government—the one that was replaced by the rotation coalition headed by Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett.
When Bibi returned to the helm in December 2022, he hired her again. An endeavor dear to both was promoting cultured meat and lowering its cost through the use of Artificial Intelligence.
I’d been familiar with her appearances on political panels on TV, and knew that she was the winner of the Israeli version of the reality show “Big Brother” in 2014. My interest was really piqued, however, when she became a target of left-wing attacks for her refusal to toe the intersectional line of her self-described yet anything but liberal peers.
When I went to work for a brief period at the Prime Minister’s Office, I introduced myself to her by revealing that I’d written an op-ed a year and a half earlier about the hypocrisy of her critics.
Given the way she’s been treated since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre—despite her nephew’s abduction from the Nova Music Festival—I felt it was time for another piece defending her against the slander to which she has grown so unfairly accustomed. But I opted, instead, to let her speak for herself.
The following are excerpts from our interview, though full disclosure requires that it be described as a conversation between two friends who share similar perspectives.