Ofer Cassif

Ofer Cassif was born in 1964 in Rishon LeZion

Cassif was born in Rishon LeZion on 25 December 1964. He attended Shalmon Elementary School and the Reali Gymnasium. He was drawn to Marxism and socialism as a youth and joined the youth group of the Left Camp of Israel at 16.

He served in the IDF with the Nahal, including a period in the Nahal paratroopers. During the First Intifada he refused to serve in the occupied territories and was jailed as a conscientious objector.

He studied philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned a PhD in political philosophy at the London School of Economics, with a Marxist study of nationalism and democracy. He did postdoctoral research at Columbia University. He taught at the Hebrew University, the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yafo and Sapir Academic College.

He worked as a parliamentary aide to Meir Vilner and sat on the Central Committee and Political Bureau of Maki. He entered the Knesset in April 2019 after the Supreme Court overturned his disqualification, and he was reelected several times. In November 2020 he became chair of the Subcommittee on Higher Education.

In 2024 he backed South Africa's case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, and a vote to expel him from the Knesset failed. In October 2026 he was convicted of assaulting a police officer at a 2022 protest, which he called persecution. His 2026 disqualification from the election was overturned by the Supreme Court.