Defense Minister Israel Katz has been installing party activists and political allies in professional roles for which they are unqualified by employing them as external consultants, thus bypassing the ordinary hiring processes for salaried employees, a Channel 12 report alleged Monday. The report comes in an election year, ahead of planned primaries for Katz’s Likud party, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It focused on party officials who have run or are planning to run in primaries, or who have close connections to movers and shakers within Likud. One of these, Yair Shalom, had previously served as political adviser to now-Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, now-Transportation Minister Miri Regev, and the chief of staff of Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman. According to the Monday report, he now works for Katz at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv.…