Shimon Ohayon

Shimon Ohayon was born in 1945 in Morocco

Shimon Ohayon was born in Marrakesh, Morocco, in 1945. He immigrated to Israel with his parents in 1956. His cousin is Yitzhak Ohayon, a former mayor of Petah Tikva.

He attended a religious high school in Beersheba and then served in the IDF. He studied for a bachelor's degree at Bar-Ilan University, where he chaired the Student Association. He later studied education for his master's and doctoral degrees at Yeshiva University and the Jewish Theological Seminary.

He worked for the Jewish Agency in the United States, bringing student groups to Israeli universities and organizing groups of immigrants who settled in Israel. In 1979 he returned and joined the School of Education at Bar-Ilan University, later becoming its deputy director. In 2000 he became director of the Dahan Center for the heritage of Sephardic and Eastern Jewry.

He chairs the Moroccan Immigrants' Organisation in Israel. In 2009 he ran on the Jewish Home list but was not elected. He entered the Knesset in 2013 on the joint Likud Yisrael Beiteinu list and lost his seat in 2015, after leading lobbies on teaching and on fighting antisemitism.