Likud MK Distel Atbaryan says she won’t seek reelection

Former Netanyahu ally served as public diplomacy minister before resigning days after October 7, has recently headed panel overseeing a controversial media overhaul bill

By Ariela Karmel

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25 May 2026, 8:50 pm

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Ariela Karmel is a political correspondent at The Times of Israel. She previously reported for Calcalist and Haaretz. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern and African History from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia.

Likud MK Galit Distel Atbaryan on Monday said she will not run in the upcoming elections and will leave the Knesset at the end of its current term.

Distel Atbaryan announced her departure during a session of the special Knesset panel overseeing Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s controversial media overhaul bill.

The announcement came after months of mounting criticism of the committee, led by Distel Atbaryan, including allegations that it bypassed parliamentary procedures, curtailed debate, and disregarded legal advice.

Those irregularities prompted Knesset Legal Adviser Sagit Afik last month to call for the legislation to be moved to the Economic Affairs Committee, where such bills are normally discussed.

Speaking in the committee, Distel Atbaryan praised Karhi: “For your diligence, for your dedication, for the job you take so much flak for, and still fight for what you believe in.”

Distel Atbaryan has been a member of Knesset since 2022. She briefly served as public diplomacy minister before resigning days after the October 7, 2023, attack, arguing that her office had been sidelined while other government bodies were tasked with Israel’s international public diplomacy efforts.

Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi attends the Special Committee for the Communications Law at the Knesset on May 25, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The ministry was criticized for failing to release any meaningful explanatory content as Israel suffered the largest single-day loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust.

She resigned from her ministerial role days into the war, acknowledging that her newly created ministry had been unnecessary, powerless, and a “waste of public money.”

The firebrand Likud minister, one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strongest supporters, later said she had a burning anger toward him after leaving her ministerial position.

“You don’t know how [Netanyahu] broke me, and I’m keeping my mouth shut. The minute after this war ends, I will spill it all, but now it’s time to hold it in,” she wrote. “I have been holding in my personal fury with Netanyahu for several months. The fury over the monsters that grew under his governments in the south and the north is what broke me and led me to resign.”

Distel Atbaryan has also often made headlines for making divisive comments and remarks.

MK Galit Distel-Atbaryan in the Knesset plenum in Jerusalem, on July 17, 2024. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Last year, she ordered Labor MK Gilad Kariv removed from a Knesset committee meeting following a dispute, snapping at the ordained Reform rabbi and comparing a woman wrapping tefillin to celebrating a bar mitzvah for a dog.

In another instance, she reportedly got into a heated fight with then-intelligence minister Galit Gamliel (Likud), saying: “Bite me, you moron. No one in Likud likes you.”

She has also suggested that there was a deep-state network of senior officials in the military, police, and media that were working to bring down the government, and drew a wave of backlash when she gave a fiery speech proclaiming that it was “your families that were burned” in the Holocaust, slamming what she claimed were Ashkenazi elites leading a wave of criticism against her and her activities.