Isaac Herzog

Isaac Herzog was born on September 22, 1960, in Tel Aviv, the third of four children of Chaim and Aura Herzog.[7] Known by the nickname "Bougie," he was named after his paternal grandfather, Rabbi Dr. Yitzhak Isaac Halevi Herzog.[1][7] His mother founded the International Bible Contest and the Council for a Beautiful Israel.[8]

Herzog attended the Tzahala, Moriah, and state-religious Zeitlin schools in Israel. When his father served as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations during the 1970s, the family moved to New York and Herzog studied at the Ramaz School in Manhattan.[7] During high school, he volunteered with the Legal Aid Society for the Elderly in Brooklyn, assisting impoverished elderly people, war veterans, and Holocaust survivors.[9]

Herzog studied at Cornell University and earned a law degree from Tel Aviv University.[1][8] He served as an officer and commander in Unit 8200 of the IDF Intelligence Corps, working at ten bases and reaching the rank of major during reserve duty.[7] Before entering politics, he became a senior partner at Herzog Fox & Neeman, where he founded and led the telecommunications and communications department.[7]

Herzog lives in Tel Aviv with his wife, Michal, and their three sons.[5]

Herzog's grandfather and namesake, Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Halevi Herzog, served as chief rabbi of Ireland, chief rabbi of the Land of Israel under the British Mandate, and the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the State of Israel.[3][4]

His father, Chaim Herzog, was a major general, head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, and the country's sixth president from 1983 to 1993.[4] Isaac's brother Michael is a retired IDF brigadier general who became Israel's ambassador to the United States in November 2021.[4] His aunt Suzy was married to former foreign minister Abba Eban.[10] Tel Aviv University's Haim Herzog Institute identifies Isaac Herzog as the first son of an Israeli president to serve as president himself.[4]

At Herzog's inauguration, he was sworn in using the same 107-year-old Torah scroll that his father had used when assuming the presidency in 1983.[2]

Before entering the Knesset, Herzog served as secretary of Israel's Economic-Social Council from 1988 to 1990, government secretary under Prime Minister Ehud Barak from 1999 to 2001, and chairman of the Israel Anti-Drug Authority from 2000 to 2003.[1]

Herzog also worked as a senior partner at Herzog Fox & Neeman.[3] His military intelligence experience remained relevant to his public career: during the 2006 Second Lebanon War, he was one of Israel's major spokespeople.[3]

Herzog entered the Knesset in 2003 after winning the eleventh position on the Labor Party list, and he remained a member until 2018.[7][11] During those fifteen years, he held ministerial portfolios covering housing, tourism, social welfare, and Diaspora affairs.

He became minister of housing and construction in January 2005, minister of tourism in May 2006, and minister of welfare and social services in March 2007.[7] He held the welfare portfolio for four years under Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu. His initiatives addressed Holocaust survivors, people with disabilities, children and youth at risk, poverty, medication discounts, care for the elderly, and the "Savings for Each Child" program.[7] He also served as minister for Diaspora affairs, society, and the fight against antisemitism.[7]

As a Knesset member, Herzog served on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. At a Washington Institute forum in 2011, he was also identified as a candidate for the Labor Party chairmanship and a former welfare and social services minister.[12]

In November 2013, Herzog was elected chairman of the Labor Party. He served as leader of the parliamentary opposition in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Knessets from 2013 to 2018.[7][11]

Before the 2015 general election, Herzog formed a joint list with Tzipi Livni's HaTnuah party called the Zionist Union. The alliance won 24 seats; the presidential biography describes this as Labor's strongest electoral result since Yitzhak Rabin's premiership.[1][7] Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud-led coalition nevertheless retained power, leaving Herzog in opposition.

Herzog's pre-presidential position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was detailed in a rapporteur's summary of his June 2011 Washington Institute address. The plan supported two states for two peoples based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps and accepted the Arab Peace Initiative as a negotiating framework.[12] It envisioned a demilitarized Palestinian state, refugee return to that state, Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, Palestinian sovereignty over Palestinian neighborhoods there, and joint administration of holy sites.[12]

In the same forum, Herzog supported Labor's positioning as a centrist party on war and peace and a social-democratic party on socioeconomic policy.[12]

In June 2018, after fifteen years in the Knesset and nearly two decades in national public office, Herzog became chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel. The organization's Board of Governors elected him unanimously to succeed Natan Sharansky.[5][11]

The Jewish Agency is an international nongovernmental body that works to strengthen relations between Israel and Jewish communities worldwide and to promote Jewish peoplehood.[13] Herzog served as its chairman from 2018 to 2021.[5]

Herzog argued that strong ties with American Jewry strengthened Israel's national security. He identified differing worldviews, insufficient mutual knowledge, and cultural distance as challenges in Israel-Diaspora relations, and he advocated recognition of pluralism within Jewish life and a shared framework for understanding Jewish identity.[14]

Sources differ slightly on immigration during his tenure. The presidential biography cites 85,000 new immigrants from 90 countries, including arrivals during the COVID-19 crisis and rescue operations, while a Knesset biography gives a figure of 80,000.[7][8]

In July 2022, already serving as president, Herzog gave a special introduction at a webinar marking the centenary of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.[11]

Herzog announced his presidential candidacy in May 2021.[7] In the Knesset's secret ballot on June 2, he defeated Miriam Peretz by 87 votes to 26.[1] His total was reported as the widest support received by a presidential candidate in Israeli history.[6]

The presidency is a largely ceremonial head-of-state office, and the Knesset elects the president to a single seven-year term.[1][13] Herzog succeeded Reuven Rivlin as Israel's eleventh president and was sworn in on July 7, 2021.[2] He was the first president born in the State of Israel after its establishment in 1948 and the first son of a president to hold the office.[15][4]

At the Knesset ceremony, Herzog took the oath on the same 107-year-old Torah scroll used by his father in 1983.[2] He warned that Israel's "common ethos and shared values are more fragile than ever" and said: "My mission, the goal of my presidency, is to do everything to rebuild hope."[2]

From the outset, Herzog made national unity and social cohesion central themes of his presidency. "I intend to be the president of everyone," he said after his election.[1] He later described his aim as working "to lower the walls between groups as much as possible, and encourage dialogue, trust and at least knowledge of one another."[16]

The presidential role includes representing Israel at home and abroad, strengthening Israeli society, nurturing the country's Jewish, democratic, and moral values, improving ties between the Jewish majority and minority populations, promoting Israeli art and culture, and serving as a symbol of national unity.[17] Herzog has described the presidency's "immense soft power" as a means of advancing Israeli interests abroad and addressing divisions at home.[16]

At the Second Ashmoret Conference in January 2023, he cited more than 10,000 registered cases of violence against medical staff over four years, more than 3,000 files opened over road violence in 2022, and a nearly 40 percent rise in school-violence case files.[7] He also said that 77 percent of the public considered a more cohesive Israeli society important.[7]

In November 2022, Herzog delivered virtual remarks at a Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion dedication in Jerusalem attended by more than 200 religious, academic, and political leaders.[18] He said Israel, as a Jewish and democratic state, was committed to minority rights, the rule of law, freedom of expression, and human rights.[18]

The U.S. State Department's 2023 religious-freedom report records several of Herzog's interreligious interventions. On October 6, 2023, he urged Israelis to set aside differences during Simchat Torah.[19] Earlier that year, he condemned attacks against Christian holy places and clergy, visited the Stella Maris Monastery, and called attacks against Christians in places of prayer, cemeteries, and streets "extreme and unacceptable."[19]

Herzog has used the presidency to represent Israel internationally, with particular attention to the Jewish Diaspora, the United States, and Middle Eastern diplomacy.

He was reported as the first Israeli president to visit the Gulf states and the first to attend the coronation of a British monarch. He was also reported as the first Israeli president to visit the United States twice in less than a year and the second to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress, after his father.[20] The U.S. State Department lists Herzog visits to Washington on October 26, 2022; July 18–20, 2023; and November 12, 2024.[21]

Herzog addressed Congress on July 19, 2023. Speaking from the podium where his father had addressed Congress in 1987, he called the experience "the honor of a lifetime."[9] He identified free and fair elections, minority rights, human and civil liberties, and an independent judiciary as elements of Israeli democracy, and pledged to "preserve, protect, and defend the State of Israel's democracy."[9]

Herzog's engagement with the American Jewish community has remained a presidential priority. An HUC-JIR introduction stated that many regard him not only as Israel's president but also as a president of the Jewish people, an attributed characterization rather than a constitutional title.[17]

In November 2024, the Washington Institute presented Herzog with its Scholar-Statesman Award, citing his "unifying leadership at a time of unprecedented national trauma."[6] During a public discussion of Hamas's October 7 attack and the ensuing war, Herzog said: "We did not seek this war. But once it was imposed upon us, we have to make clear that history changes its course."[6] He also discussed efforts to release the hostages and pursue regional security and peace.[6]

On October 7, 2023, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorists breached the Gaza border and killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis and foreigners, including at least 843 civilians, according to the U.S. State Department.[19] The attack and ensuing war became a major focus of Herzog's public diplomacy.

On December 29, 2023, Herzog said the terrorist attacks were incompatible with the Gospels, Jewish teachings, and moderate Islam.[19] In November 2024, he said Israel had not sought the war but could not tolerate repeated terrorism.[6]

Herzog also called for the release of hostages held in Gaza and expressed support for a regional framework aimed at security and peace.[6]

Herzog occupies a distinctive place in Israeli political history as the eleventh president and the first son of a president to hold the office.[4] His grandfather served as chief rabbi of Ireland and later Israel, while his father served as a general, diplomat, and president.[4]

Before the presidency, Herzog spent fifteen years in the Knesset, held several ministerial portfolios, led the Labor Party and parliamentary opposition, and chaired the Jewish Agency for three years.[5][11]

His emphasis at the Jewish Agency on Israel-Diaspora relations and Jewish pluralism recurred in his presidential focus on unity, social cohesion, and minority religious communities.[2][14] His congressional address and reported diplomatic firsts also expanded the international profile of the presidency.[20][9]

The Washington Institute's 2024 Scholar-Statesman Award reflected recognition of his public role during the national trauma following the October 7 attack.[6]

Several of Herzog's public statements have attracted significant dispute. Days after the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack, he said: "It's an entire nation out there that is responsible. It's not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved."[22] When immediately asked whether all Gazan civilians were therefore legitimate targets, he replied: "No, I didn't say that. I did not say that. I want to make it clear." His remarks at the same briefing also referred to the IDF's stated efforts to distinguish terrorists from civilians and reduce harm to the population.[22]

A UN commission later cited the original statement as evidence of genocidal intent. Herzog maintained that his words had been taken out of context, while the commission acknowledged that the statement did not expressly call for genocide.[23] The dispute concerns whether his immediate clarification and concurrent references to protecting civilians alter the meaning of the original statement.

Herzog's 2015 comments on demographic trends have also received conflicting interpretations. In a discussion of territorial withdrawal and demographic separation, he warned that Arabs between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean could become a majority and said: "I don't want 61 Palestinian MKs in Israel's Knesset. I don't want a Palestinian prime minister in Israel."[24] The remarks occurred during the period in which he publicly advocated a two-state solution rather than a binational state.[12]

His support for a two-state solution and the Arab Peace Initiative was a documented position from his years in partisan politics, before he assumed the formally nonpartisan presidency.[12]