Hapoel Beersheba owner Alona Barkat is not settling for two consecutive Premier League championships, targeting a place in the Champions League group stage next season.. (photo credit: DANNY MARON)
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Alona Barkat, owner of the Hapoel Beersheba soccer club, has joined the New Right political party on Thursday, according to Globes.
At 1 p.m., Barkat, former Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat’s sister-in-law, will attend a New Right press conference.
What Barkat will say during the press conference is still unclear.
“There are talks with many people, but nothing is decided on,” Barkat told Maariv, The Jerusalem Post’s Israeli sister newspaper, in response before the press conference.
Because of Alona Barkat’s high-profile, Israeli-media speculates she will have a high spot on the candidate list for the Knesset in the upcoming elections on April 9.
Barkat bought the soccer club over a decade ago and has been a big proponent of using sports for diplomacy and combating anti-Israeli sentiment abroad.
“Alona is a great woman,” Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev said on Army Radio in response to Barkat’s decision. “Obviously she has to resign from the management of Hapoel Beersheba. Because at the end of the day, someone who is involved in politics has to be someone who has no ulterior motive whatsoever.”
“Hapoel Beersheba symbolizes so much more than soccer,” Barkat told the Post in 2017, “ Usually Israel’s image is very negative and all of a sudden you show people a different side”
“I always say that soccer is a means. A means through which to reach people. In a way, soccer is the melting pot of Israeli society. It unites so many people from different backgrounds and that allows you to achieve amazing things.”
Barkat revitalized the once failing club, leading it to a first league title in 40 years and then to another.
It has been a long and arduous process, with Barkat and her husband Eli – who made his initial fortune with his brother and current Jerusalem mayor Nir as investors in IT security company CheckPoint – very nearly giving up on several occasions. But the most atypical owner in Israeli soccer – and not just because she is the only woman – remained committed in her actions and multi-million shekel funding, overcoming her many doubters and critics.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.
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