Jerusalem--Ayelet Shaked, Israel's incoming justice minister, is a far-right politician who has drawn fierce criticism for her outspoken views on Palestinians and attempts to advance legislation criticised as anti-democratic.
Number three in the Jewish Home party, she won the cabinet post during hard-fought coalition talks that saw Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bow to an ultimatum set by her party leader Naftali Bennett.
A former software engineer, she was first elected to parliament in a 2013 vote which saw a revival of interest in the pro-settlement Jewish Home under Bennett, a former high-tech entrepreneur who opposes a Palestinian state and has called for annexing most of the occupied West Bank.
A 39-year-old mother of two young children who is married to a fighter pilot, Shaked has been described as the "hawkish envoy" of the settlers, while supporters hail her as an ardent rightwing ideologue known for her uncompromising honesty.
But it was a posting on her Facebook page last year which sparked the biggest controversy after she endorsed an article written in 2002 which labelled Palestinian militants as "snakes", described "the entire Palestinian people (as) the enemy" and said anyone supporting terror should be killed.
"As relevant today as it was then," she commented on the article, which was posted after the discovery of three Israeli teenagers kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian militants.
Soon afterwards, three Jewish extremists went out and kidnapped a Palestinian teen, burning him alive in revenge.
The post quickly disappeared from her Facebook page, but not before it was reported by the Israeli media.
The Palestinians reacted with disgust, accusing her of fomenting genocide, and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan reportedly described Shaked's mindset as "no different to that of Hitler".
Defending the article, she said it was "not a call for indiscriminate murder" but a "legally-minded discussion" taken out of context.
Earlier this week, parliament said it was assigning her a bodyguard after she received death threats online and somebody posted a photomontage on Facebook of her wearing a Nazi uniform.
AFP
