Yehiel Lasri

Yehiel Lasri was born in 1957 in Morocco

Lasri was born in Morocco to a Jewish family, one of four children. In 1963 the family moved to Israel and settled in Ashdod. His father died while he was growing up, and his mother washed floors to support the children.

He studied medicine at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev through the Atuda program, graduating in 1982. He then interned in internal medicine at Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot. In 2016 he completed an MBA at IDC Herzliya.

He served as a medical officer in a combat engineering battalion and in several roles in the Navy, including chief medical officer of the Navy. After leaving the army as a lieutenant colonel, he became deputy director of internal medicine at Kaplan and acting director of its AIDS institute. In 1994 he helped found the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra Ashdod.

He joined Ashdod city council in 1998 and entered the Knesset for the Center Party in 2001. In November 2002 he and Roni Milo formed the Lev faction, which merged into Likud. He lost his seat in 2003 and returned to the city council as acting mayor.

In 2008 he was elected mayor of Ashdod, and he was reelected in 2013 and 2018. His first wife, Miriam, died in 2010, and he married Iyrit Alexenberg in 2017.