Isaac Herzog
Isaac Herzog has been President of Israel since July 2021, holding a largely ceremonial office that has become unexpectedly consequential. Born in Tel Aviv in 1960 into the closest thing Israel has to a political dynasty, he is the son of Chaim Herzog, the sixth president, and the grandson of Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel. His uncle Abba Eban was foreign minister. He spent part of his childhood in New York while his father was ambassador to the United Nations, trained as a lawyer, and served in the intelligence corps unit 8200. He was cabinet secretary under Ehud Barak from 1999, entered the Knesset for Labor in 2003, and held the housing, tourism and welfare portfolios. He led the Labor Party from 2013 and the Zionist Union into the 2015 election, losing to Benjamin Netanyahu, and served as leader of the opposition until 2018. He then chaired the Jewish Agency for four years before being elected president by the Knesset in 2021 with an unusually broad majority. The presidency has no executive power — it pardons, signs laws and designates a party leader to form a government — but Herzog placed himself at the centre of the 2023 crisis over the government's judicial overhaul, warning that the country was close to constitutional collapse and hosting failed compromise talks at his residence. After the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 and the Gaza war that followed, he became the state's principal public advocate abroad, defending Israel at the International Court of Justice hearings while facing sustained international criticism. The Israeli presidency runs for a single seven-year term and cannot be renewed.
- Lived: 1960 CE – ?
- Nationality: Israeli
- Roles: President of Israel (2021-present)
