By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News -
A young social media influencer who wants to be Israel’s next housing minister in order to lower apartment prices has been found to own her own home, courtesy of her father.
Hadar Muchtar, 20, leads the Youths on Fire party that is trying to break into politics on a platform “to get renters into the Knesset.” With over 80,000 followers on TikTok, her many posts there and on other social media sites about her own financial struggles, the high cost of living and, especially, the impossibility of buying an apartment, had seemingly struck a loud chord.
On Sunday, Muchtar had to do some quick talking when singer-activist Yoav Eliasi (aka The Shadow) revealed the contract. The wannabe politician owns a small, four-room apartment with a seaside view in Haifa, which her father had bought for her outright for NIS 825,000 ($240,000).
“She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth,” Eliasi said in an angry post, dismissing her claims of poverty. “This young lady…who doesn’t know from want…is cynically exploiting the word ‘apartment’ because she knows this is our trigger…. She has an apartment! Stop with your lies.”
Muchtar contended in response that although the apartment is in her name, she doesn’t feel that it is really hers.
“My only way to get an apartment is through an inheritance,” she said, adding that she wants to be able to buy an apartment with her own money.
“My father bought this apartment with his pension money. My father will be poor because he takes care of his children…. I don’t want to ruin my dad’s pension. That’s why I’m fighting.”
But TV personality Bar Shem-Ur later posted advertisements on his Twitter account showing a different story. Four months after giving his daughter this mega-expensive gift, the “poor” father went looking to buy another – this time in nearby Zichron Yaakov, while the previous March he had searched for a smaller place as an investment, again in Haifa.
“What is this?” Shem-Ur wrote. “How many apartments does the Muchtar family have?”
As one commenter posted in sarcastic response, “If only all of us had a pension (at age 57!) that was enough for 3 apartments.”
Muchtar also went on the attack, tweeting that the media was “lynching” her, “which means that we’re bothering someone. I wonder whom it bothers?”
By Monday morning, however, she posted that she was going to stop all interviews.
“I don’t believe in the establishment media,” the young activist wrote. “I came to make a change, and all day I just get it in the head. I’m really asking, is the establishment so rotten that it can’t be changed?”
In an earlier interview with Channel 12, before the scandal hit, Muchtar, who has not yet served in the IDF, said she would like to do so but “I don’t have any time to waste.”
According to all polls so far, the Youths on Fire, which basically seems to be running an online campaign, is not even close to crossing the electoral threshold of 3.5%.
Image: Hadar Muchtar.
