Israel has a new president. And his name is well known across the country. This is Isaac Herzog, former leader of the Labor Party who was elected Wednesday, June 2, by Israeli MPs. And this, while the country is also awaiting the announcement of a deal that would see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leave his post. Isaac Herzog is the heir to one of Israel’s largest families, often compared to the Kennedy family. With this election, he is walking in his father’s footsteps. Chaïm Herzog was head of state of Israel from 1983 to 1993.
“My whole life has been in the service of the State, it will be an honor to serve you as President of our State that we all love”, affirmed Herzog Jr., in his campaign clip broadcast in recent weeks on social networks. The one who will occupy a largely symbolic function for the next seven years had coveted, in 2015, the post of Prime Minister, endowed with much more powers.
The opposite of Netanyahu
The lawyer by training, born in 1960, then had in front of him a formidable opponent: a certain Benjamin Netanyahu. “When I ran for Labor, they said, ‘He has no charisma, no chance.’ And when I said last year that I will be the alternative to Netanyahu’s government, they laughed, ”he told reporters ahead of the 2015 elections.
Mocked for his thin voice, the man with the clear eyes had chosen in 2015 for campaign slogan: “It’s not my voice that counts, it’s yours. Modest, diplomat, Isaac Herzog replaces former president Reuven Rivlin and appears as the exact opposite of Benjamin Netanyahu. Chance of the calendar, he was elected president on the day when opponents of the most perennial prime minister in the country’s history could announce a coalition agreement to oust him from power.
True political dynasty
Isaac Herzog, nicknamed “Bouji”, was first elected to Parliament in 2003. He spent the next decade in government, before taking the head of a Labor Party in crisis in November 2013. His father, d Irish descent, was chief of intelligence in the army, before becoming ambassador to the United Nations, then president.
His uncle, Abba Eban, is a renowned diplomat in Israel. He served in Washington and at the United Nations, then assumed the costume of head of Israeli diplomacy, a post he held during the Six Day War in 1967. And his grandfather, Isaac Halevi Herzog, was the first Ashkenazi rabbi of the State of Israel.
“Herzog carries on his shoulders the heavy weight of his family heritage”, wrote in 2015 the daily Haaretz, speaking of an Israeli version of the Kennedys. Isaac Herzog spent several years in the United States, at his father’s discretion, before serving as a military intelligence officer and then studying law at Tel Aviv University. He was then secretary of Ehud Barak’s Labor government, before holding several ministerial portfolios between 2005 and 2011.
Activist for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
In the past, Isaac Herzog has campaigned for the resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians to become a central part of the Labor Party, which had moved away from it. Barely 10 days after taking office in 2013, he was meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. During the 2015 campaign, he promised to relaunch the peace process, interrupted in April 2014, and even said he was ready to “evacuate” Israeli settlements if necessary.
His most recent assignment was at the head of the Jewish Agency, a paragovernmental organization that deals in particular with Jewish immigration and relations with the Jewish diaspora. He left this post, which he had held since 2018, to run for president. Father of three children and married to a lawyer, he lives in Tel Aviv, his hometown.
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