July Edelstein

July Edelstein was born in 1958 in Chernivtsi

Edelstein was born in Chernivtsi in the Soviet Union to a Jewish family. His parents taught at colleges, and he was raised by his maternal grandparents. His father later became a Russian Orthodox priest.

His request to emigrate to Israel was refused, and he began teaching Hebrew underground. In 1979 he co-founded a group to train Hebrew teachers and was expelled from his studies. In 1984 he was arrested on false drug charges and sentenced to 3 years of hard labor in Siberian camps.

He was released in May 1987 and moved to Israel, settling in Alon Shvut. He served in the IDF and reached the rank of corporal. He was later vice president of the Zionist Forum.

He co-founded Yisrael BaAliyah with Natan Sharansky and entered the Knesset in 1996, serving as Minister of Immigrant Absorption. After the party merged into Likud in 2003, he became Minister of Information and Diaspora in 2009. He was Speaker of the Knesset from 2013 to 2020 and resigned after the Supreme Court ordered him to convene a vote on his replacement.

He was Minister of Health from 2020 to 2021 and later chaired the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. In 2026 he left Likud and founded the Unity party with Gilad Erdan, which withdrew from the election.