Yoav Gallant (Hebrew: יוֹאָב גָּלַנְטְ; born 8 November 1958) is an Israeli politician and retired military general. A member of the Knesset for Likud, he has served as Minister of Defense since 2022.
Gallant is a former commander of the Southern Command in the Israel Defense Forces. In January 2015, he entered politics, joining the new Kulanu party. After being elected to the Knesset, he was appointed Minister of Construction. At the end of 2018, he joined Likud. Gallant also previously held the posts of Minister of Aliyah and Integration and Minister of Education.
Yoav Gallant was born on 8 November 1958 in Jaffa to Polish Jewish immigrants. His mother, Fruma, was a Holocaust survivor who had been on the SS Exodus as a child. Along with other Exodus refugees, she was deported by the British to Hamburg, and arrived in Israel in 1948. She was a nurse by profession. His father, Michael, fought the Nazis as a partisan in the forests of Ukraine and Belarus, and also immigrated to Israel in 1948. He served in the Givati Brigade in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, including the Samson's Foxes unit, and was considered one of the finest snipers in the IDF. He participated in Operation Yoav, during which he was the first soldier to break into the fort at Iraq Suwaydan. He named his son for the operation. In Gallant's youth, the family moved to Givatayim, where he studied at David Kalai high school. He received a BA in Business and Finance Management from the University of Haifa.
Gallant lives in moshav Amikam. He is married to Claudine, a retired IDF lieutenant colonel. They have a son and two daughters.
In 2011, Gallant was tapped to succeed Gabi Ashkenazi as the Chief of General Staff by Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Although his appointment was approved by the government it was overturned due to allegations of building of an unauthorized access road to his home and planting an olive grove on public land outside the boundaries of his property.
