Deputy Foreign Minister and MK Sharren Haskel gives an intimate interview on Channel 7 about her life as a mother of three young daughters, her political work, and her right-wing liberal worldview. Born in Canada during a brief stay by her parents and raised in Kfar Saba, Haskel says she belongs to a generation that no longer wants to be defined by sectarian divisions. She criticizes politicians who inflame ethnic tensions, saying she has seen public representatives shout at parts of the population with historical accusations and the attitude, “I will teach you something.” In her view, that approach harms the next generation, especially children from mixed families.
Haskel also recalls joining combat service in the Border Police about 24 years ago, despite qualifications that could have placed her in Military Intelligence because of her English and French. She says that during the Second Intifada she refused to stay behind the lines because she wanted to do everything she could to protect the country. Her army service alongside religious male and female fighters taught her that practical compromises are possible when there is mutual will, including prayer three times a day and respect for observant soldiers.
That experience shaped her push for equal military service. She says she has spent months fighting against an unequal draft law and presented a written plan called “Border Yeshivot.” The idea would create yeshivot along the country’s borders, every 10 to 15 kilometers, including in Metula, Kiryat Shmona, northern Golan Heights and Hebron, run under local rabbis and strict kosher standards. According to her proposal, some students would mostly study Torah, others would combine four hours of study with guard and intelligence work, and the third group would serve full operational shifts to help meet an estimated need for about 17,000 more combat soldiers. Haskel says the ultra-Orthodox leadership rejected the plan.
On the personal front, Haskel says she and her husband, Yoel, spent five years undergoing difficult fertility treatments before the birth of their eldest daughter, Yael. She later chose to share that story to help women dealing with guilt and failure, urging them not to go through it alone and to lean on family and friends. After another intensive round of treatment, a routine ultrasound unexpectedly showed she was carrying twins, and she jokes that she asked the doctor for one photo of both fetuses so her husband would believe the news. Balancing a twin pregnancy, a baby, and a demanding parliamentary career meant little sleep and constant juggling, but she insists on staying present in her daughters’ lives, even picking them up from kindergarten by bicycle twice a week.
Haskel says her experience also led her to promote women’s issues in parliament, including a first-of-its-kind conference on stillbirths. She disclosed that she had personally lost a fetus a few months before her twin pregnancy, and she welcomes the medical and social progress that now includes formal hospital protocols, trauma support clinics, and a respite house run by Yad Sarah. Looking ahead, Haskel says she currently has no political home, even though she remains committed to her ideological mix of settlement, sovereignty, military decisiveness, free-market capitalism, lower taxes and less regulation. She argues that today’s right wing is dominated by boycotts, personal interests and poisonous internal politics, and says about 10 Knesset seats worth of voters still want real right-wing liberal unity. She vows to keep working to build a political framework that centers values, security and the economy.
