Eli Ben-Menachem

Eli Ben-Menachem was born in 1947 in Mumbai

Ben-Menachem was born in Bombay, India, in 1947. He immigrated to Israel in 1949.

He studied at a military boarding school and served in the IDF as a reserve officer. He worked as an aircraft technician and became chairman of the El Al workers' committee. He also founded a forum of 13 large workers' committees and headed a neighborhoods forum in Tel Aviv.

He entered the Knesset in 1988 on the Alignment list. From 1992 he was a deputy minister in the Prime Minister's Office, and from 1993 to 1996 Deputy Minister of Housing and Construction. After the 1996 elections he chaired the committee on drug abuse.

He lost his seat in 1999 but returned that November after Yossi Beilin resigned. He was Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade from 2001 to 2002, a Deputy Speaker of the Knesset from 2003, and again Deputy Minister of Housing and Construction in 2005.

He left Labor for Kadima, lost his seat in the 2006 elections and headed the Kadima faction in the Histadrut. He ran 48th on the Kadima list in 2009 and was not elected. He lives in Tel Aviv, was married to Aliza until her death in 2025, and has 3 children.