A candidate for Israel's Cabinet from a stridently anti-Arab party withdrew her nomination after key parts of her official resume turned out to be false. A retired police commander will take her intended place at the Cabinet table if he survives the confirmation process.
Esterina Tartman blamed Israeli media for bringing her down and adding her to the growing list of Israeli politicians mired in scandal. Party leader Avigdor Lieberman said on Wednesday he stood by her but respected her decision to withdraw.
"I will not be broken by the media," Tartman told a news conference, with Lieberman at her side, but she did not deny that her resume was full of errors.
Lieberman said he would nominate Yitzhak Aharonovich, a retired deputy police commissioner, as tourism minister instead of Tartman. The Cabinet and parliament must approve the appointment.
The scandal erupted when it came out that two universities where Tartman claimed she earned advanced degrees said she was never enrolled -- and a bank where she claimed to be a vice president said she held only a lower level post.
Tartman was already a contentious figure as a protege of Lieberman, who has advocated that Israel's minority Arab citizens be stripped of their citizenship and transferred to Palestinian rule. She termed the appointment a month ago of Israel's first Arab Muslim Cabinet minister a "calamity" and supported a defeated bill that would have revoked the citizenship of anyone who did not sign a loyalty oath to the state.
But it was Lieberman's decision to nominate the ultranationalist parliamentary backbencher as tourism minister that led to explosive disclosures about her qualifications -- which, it turns out, are mostly false.
When Lieberman, who himself has a reputation as a ruthless political strongman, named Tartman this week, he cited her "background in economics." Tartman, 49, herself trumpeted her economics credentials in defending her suitability for the job.
But the two Israeli universities where she said she studied -- Hebrew University and Bar-Ilan University -- said on Wednesday she was never enrolled. Her bachelor's degree apparently came from New York City's Touro College branch in Israel, an institution of lesser standing Army Radio reported.
In a 20-minute tirade before microphones and cameras, Tartman excused her inaccuracies, declaring, "If I had only said I studied toward a Master's instead of having a Master's, nothing would have happened."
Tartman's false claims drew further scrutiny of her resume.
Media reports said Tartman claimed she was a vice president at Bank Yahav, a state employees bank. Bank Yahav said she actually held the lower level job of deputy department head.
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