Chaim Herzog

Chaim Herzog was Israel's sixth president, its first head of military intelligence, and the ambassador who tore up the Zionism-is-racism resolution at the United Nations podium. He was born in Belfast and raised mainly in Dublin, where his father Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog was chief rabbi of Ireland and a friend of Eamon de Valera; he grew up speaking English, Hebrew and some Irish. He served in the British Army in the Second World War, landed in Normandy, was among the officers who entered Bergen-Belsen, and personally identified Heinrich Himmler in custody. In Israel he built and twice headed military intelligence, and his radio commentary during the waiting period before the Six-Day War in 1967 is credited with steadying public nerve at a moment of genuine panic. As ambassador to the UN he responded to Resolution 3379 in November 1975 by telling the assembly that for Jews it was just another anti-Semitic document and tearing it in half at the rostrum; the resolution was revoked in 1991. He was president from 1983 to 1993, a largely ceremonial office in which he pardoned the Shin Bet officers involved in the Bus 300 affair, which was and remains contested. He wrote several books of military history and practised law between his public appointments. His son Isaac Herzog led the Labour Party and became president himself in 2021, making them the only father and son to hold the office. He is buried on Mount Herzl. He was military governor of the West Bank immediately after 1967. His grandfather and father were both rabbis, and he was known in Israel by the nickname Vivian, from his English given name. He wrote The Arab-Israeli Wars, which was for years a standard single-volume account. He died in 1997 at seventy-eight.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history