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The Israeli Labor Party veteran pledges to heal deep divisions in society while swearing in office.
Isaac Herzog pledged to heal deep divisions in Israeli society when he was sworn in as Israel’s 11th president.
Her hand on a Torah in front of the Knesset – the Israeli parliament – Herzog, 60, took a ceremonial stance designed to be the country’s moral compass on Wednesday.
Herzog promised to be “president of all” by adding the “central hope” of all Israelis “from me, all of us, is to lower the tone, lower the flames, calm things down.”
“My mission, the mission of my mandate, is to do everything to rebuild hope,” he said in his inaugural speech.
Event
The chamber of parliament was decorated with a large bouquet of white lilies for the inauguration. The military rabbis played ram horns followed by a performance by the children’s choir. Those gathered sang the Israeli anthem.
Amid applause, outgoing President Herzog and Reuven Rivlin walked away together.
“It’s true that I have a little bit of your envy,” Rivlin said in a letter to Herzog on Twitter.
He said it was a “great and wonderful privilege” to be president of all Israeli communities – Jewish and Arab, religious and secular, young and old.
Herzog, whose father Chaim was president of Israel in the 1980s, will serve a single seven-year term. Chaim Herzog was also the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.
The new president’s grandfather, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, was the country’s first chief rabbi. His uncle, Abba Eban, was a foreign minister and ambassador to the UN and the United States.
Herzog was elected by the Knesset to the presidency last month. He was previously the leader of the Labor Party and leader of the opposition in parliament.
After leaving politics in 2018, he headed the Jewish Agency, a non-profit organization that collaborates with the Israeli government to promote Israeli Jewish immigration and serve foreign Jewish communities.
‘President of all’
When he took office during a time of deep divisions in Israeli society, Herzog said in the election that he wanted to be “the president of all” and work to preserve Israeli democracy.
Although most of the office’s duties are to receive foreign authorities and other ceremonial duties, the President has the power to grant pardons.
That could become part of the national agenda if former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, convicted of corruption charges, is ever convicted.
The president is also tasked with forming a governing coalition after the parliamentary elections and electing a political party leader as prime minister – Rivlin has served five times in office since the March 23 parliamentary election.
Herzog’s inauguration came a month after Israel swore in the new government on the orders of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who struck a coalition deal with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.
Netanyahu was ousted after a 12-year term as prime minister – the longest in Israel’s history – and is now the leader of the opposition.
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