A throwback photo of MK Naama Lazimi, now one of the most prominent lawmakers in The Democrats party, has resurfaced on the Instagram account “Knesset Gossip” and drawn attention to how different she looked years ago. The party, which united Meretz and Labor, is Lazimi’s current political home, after she originally came up through Labor. Today she is known for her black curly hair, but in the older image she appears with bleached blond hair, when she was 29 and active in Labor in Haifa while running for city council.
The reposted image is linked to a 2015 protest Lazimi joined at a Jewish Home Party convention led at the time by Naftali Bennett, against the placement of Bezalel Smotrich in the party. The article says her current political target is the education portfolio in the next government, if her party ends up in the coalition.
Lazimi began her political path as a young student at the University of Haifa. In 2012, she was elected to the Labor Party convention, and a year later she ran for the first time in local elections on the party’s Haifa slate. In 2021, she was placed ninth on Labor’s Knesset list for the 24th Knesset, but the party won only seven seats.
She still entered the Knesset after Omri Bar-Lev resigned and Nahman Shai left the party voluntarily. In the next round of Labor primaries, she ran again and finished first on the party’s list.
