Chaim Herzog

President of Israel

17 September 1918 Belfast, Ireland, UK

17 April 1997(1997-04-17) (78) Tel Aviv, Israel

5 May 1983 – 13 May 1993

Israeli politician; President of Israel (1918-1997) Major-General Chaim Herzog (Hebrew: חיים הרצוג ‎‎; 17 September 1918 – 17 April 1997) was an Israeli politician, general, lawyer and author who served as the sixth President of Israel between 1983 and 1993. Born in Belfast and raised predominantly in Dublin, the son of Ireland's Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1935 and served in the Haganah Jewish paramilitary group during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt. He returned to Palestine after the war and, following the end of the British Mandate and Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948, fought in the Battles of Latrun during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. He retired from the Israel Defence Forces in 1962 with the rank of major-general. After leaving the military, Herzog practised law. In 1972 he was a co-founder of Herzog, Fox & Ne'eman, which would become one of Israel's largest law firms. Between 1975 and 1978 he served as Israel's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, in which capacity he repudiated UN General Assembly Resolution 3379—the "Zionism is Racism" resolution—and symbolically tore it up before the assembly. Herzog entered politics in the 1981 elections, winning a Knesset seat as a member of the Alignment. Two years later, in March 1983, he was elected to the largely ceremonial role of President. He served for two five-year terms before retiring in 1993. He died four years later and was buried on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem. His son Isaac Herzog serves the president of Israel, the first father–son pair to serve as the nation's president, and led the Israeli Labor Party and the parliamentary Opposition in the Knesset between 2013 and 2017.