President Herzog got another achievement under his belt, at a time when reconciliation is a dirty word in Israel
His grandfather (and namesake) was the chief rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yitzchak (Isaac) Herzog. His father, Chaim Herzog, was Israel’s sixth president. But in the five months since the government’s swearing in, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog has seemed more like the UN Secretary General’s envoy to the Middle East than anything else.
Herzog gained his skills as a consummate sweet talker and mediator over the course of decades as a lawyer and then politician. His Knesset colleagues initially saw him as too much of a nice guy, a sort of English gentleman in Israeli politics, but it wasn’t long before they would learn that Herzog was an expert politician with keen instincts.
After losing reelection as chair of the Labor Party, despite bringing it to its best result of the 21st century in the 2015 election, he used his chairmanship of the Jewish Agency as a springboard to his election as 11th president of Israel by a massive majority, gaining votes from both sides of the political divide, including Netanyahu himself.
Recently, Herzog has had his peacemaking skills put to the test. After protestors against judicial reform took to the streets and Israel found itself in a constitutional, economic, and diplomatic crisis, Herzog tried to assume the role of intermediary, coming out with a “people’s compromise” after talks with both sides. But Justice Minister Yariv Levin perceived the compromise proposal as a death blow to judicial reform, and the right accused the president of taking sides.
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