Esterina Tartman

Esterina Shabtai was born in Jerusalem on 9 November 1957 to a religious Sephardi family whose roots in the country reached back seven generations. Her given name came from her grandmother. As a child she attended the Beit Yaakov Haredi school system. At fifteen she left for the religious kibbutz Hafetz Haim, a move that widened her world beyond the Jerusalem neighbourhood of her childhood.

Those early years fixed two themes that later defined her public voice: loyalty to Jewish tradition, and a readiness to argue in blunt Hebrew. Hebrew and English Wikipedia biographies, and later Channel 14 obituaries, all return to that Jerusalem upbringing as the starting point of a life spent almost entirely in and around the capital and the nearby settlements of Ma'ale Adumim and Giv'at Ze'ev.

Tartman served in the Israel Defense Forces as an operations sergeant and as Jerusalem city officer. She completed parachute training and, according to Hebrew biographical accounts, once held a record among women soldiers for the number of jumps. She was discharged with the rank of major (rav seren).

In the reserves she continued as city officer for the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council and for Giv'at Ze'ev. After full discharge she founded a private manpower firm, turning organisational habits from the army into a small business before politics claimed her full attention.

Tartman ran with Yisrael Beiteinu for the 15th Knesset and on the National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu joint list for the 16th. She finally entered the chamber late in the 16th Knesset after Michael Nudelman resigned, then won election to the 17th Knesset in 2006 from fifth place on the Yisrael Beiteinu slate.

As faction chair she sat on the Knesset House Committee and the State Audit Committee, and acted as temporary chair of the audit committee while Yuri Stern was ill. She was also a substitute member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. With Michael Melchior she sponsored an amendment to the State Education Law empowering the education minister to designate official schools as combined state schools with a broader Jewish-sources curriculum.

She was not given a realistic place on the 2009 list and announced her withdrawal from the ticket and from electoral politics.

On 25 February 2007 Yisrael Beiteinu unanimously approved Tartman as tourism minister, replacing Isaac Herzog in a cabinet reshuffle that brought the party into Ehud Olmert's coalition. Within days Israeli media reported gaps between the degrees she had claimed (including a first-class Bar-Ilan accountancy degree and an MBA) and what universities would confirm. She had completed a course at Bar-Ilan, held a first degree from Touro College at a time when the relevant campus lacked Council for Higher Education recognition, and had not finished a master's programme.

Under the pressure she withdrew from the tourism nomination and lost the faction chair. About a month later the Knesset Ethics Committee issued a severe reprimand. The episode ended any near-term ministerial path and became the defining scandal of her short parliamentary career.

Tartman backed a hard line against Palestinian terrorism and rejected what she called softness or surrender. She supported Avigdor Liberman's land-swap ideas and repeatedly framed Israeli Arabs as a demographic challenge to a Jewish state. Her January 2007 attack on Raleb Majadele's cabinet nomination, calling it a lethal blow to Zionism, triggered headlines and talk of a criminal probe into racist incitement. Arab MK Ahmad Tibi answered her later tourism nomination as a lethal blow to sanity and tolerance.

Supporters heard an unapologetic nationalist who said aloud what many on the right preferred to soften. Critics heard demagoguery. Either way, the style never changed: direct, often abrasive, and tightly tied to Yisrael Beiteinu's security-first brand.

After leaving the Knesset Tartman rebuilt a public role on Channel 14 (Now 14), appearing as a regular panelist on midday current-affairs programmes. Hosts including Ido Tauber later recalled that she brought parliamentary experience and a distinctive voice into the studio. Clips of her interviews and forum talks circulated on YouTube well into the 2020s, including discussions of personal history such as the 1975 Nahal Darga disaster.

The television years made her familiar again to a right-leaning audience that had largely forgotten the tourism scandal. When she died, Channel 14 treated her as one of its own, opening the midday bulletin with a memorial segment.

After the army Tartman married her commander, Amos Tartman, a founder of Ma'ale Adumim who led the local council from 1979 until after city status in 1992 and later headed Giv'at Ze'ev (2003-2008). They had four children and divorced at the end of 1997. In 2012 she married architect Uri Sali, formerly an actor.

Health crises shaped the middle of her life. She recovered from cancer in the mid-1990s. On 9 January 1997 a serious road accident left her bedridden for nearly a year and with a 52 percent disability rating. An occupational physician limited her to four hours' work a day for a period, and she left her job at Bank Yahav. A High Court-linked claim later produced a substantial insurance award. She still entered politics and television with those limits in her medical file.

Tartman died on the morning of 16 September 2026 at the age of 68 after what Channel 14 and Hebrew outlets described as a recent struggle with illness. The Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post reported the death the same day; neither published a detailed medical cause.

Funeral prayers were set for 16:00 that afternoon at Har HaMenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem. Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Liberman posted condolences on X, praising years of public service and determination. Channel 14 host Ido Tauber opened the midday programme with a studio memorial, saying her political experience and life wisdom would remain with colleagues.

Tartman's public life was short in the Knesset and long in argument. She left one lasting legislative fingerprint in the combined state-school education amendment, a thick file of controversy from the Majadele remarks and the degree scandal, and a second act as a Channel 14 panelist who spoke the language of the nationalist right without polish.

For admirers she modelled stubborn service after injury and illness. For opponents she exemplified the sharp edge of Israeli right-wing rhetoric in the Olmert years. Both sides agree she was hard to ignore while she had a microphone.

• Member of Knesset for Yisrael Beiteinu, 16th Knesset (from February 2006) and 17th Knesset (2006-2009)
• Chair of the Yisrael Beiteinu Knesset faction (early 17th Knesset)
• Member, Knesset House Committee
• Member and acting chair, State Audit Committee
• Substitute member, Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee
• IDF major; Jerusalem city officer; reserve city officer for Mateh Binyamin and Giv'at Ze'ev
• Channel 14 (Now 14) current-affairs panelist