The most ridiculous thing happened today in Israeli politics.

Esterina Tratman, a Member of Knesset from the Yisrael Beiteinu party, was recently selected to be the new Minister of Tourism. She is a controversial figure to begin with, considering her outspoken opinions on the Arab sector in Israel.

Yesterday it became apparent that Tratman filed a claim with the courts that due to a traffic accident she has memory problems along with a physical disability. By law she is not allowed to work more than 4 hours per day. People are up in arms over the fact that this has been revealed now, as she is being appointed to the very important post of Minister of Tourism.

The bigger issue that broke today is her level of education. She informed the press during an interview yesterday that she holds a bachelors degree in Economics and Marketing and a masters degree in Business Administration.

I guess she assumed the press would not check, but they did. They today announced that she has no degrees and was not a registered student in any of the universities she claimed she graduated from. She never went to college, despite her claims otherwise.

To be honest, her lack of education does not really bother me. True, I would hope our leaders would be educated, but we already have another minister (Science, Culture and Sport) with no formal education, and it would not be the end of the world if she too had no formal education. Maybe she is extremely talented and experienced and would function fine despite no education. She obviously is talented, as she is one of the leaders of one of the, recently, more successful political parties.

The fact that she lied to the press about it, claiming she has higher degrees when she doesn not and it is so easily verifiable, makes her look ridiculous and as someone with bad judgement. How is it that they could not find someone reasonably honest (as politicians go) to appoint?

update - it is getting even more confusing. It turns out now she has a BA but not an MBA, but it seems she also lied about some other filings.... What a crazy story!