Chaim Herzog

Biography

Chaim Herzog was born in Belfast in 1918, the son of Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, and grew up in Dublin, where his father was Chief Rabbi of Ireland. He moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1935, studied at yeshivas in Jerusalem and served with the Haganah during the 1936-1939 Arab revolt. He then read law at Cambridge and University College London, graduating in 1941 and being called to the bar in 1942.

In the Second World War he served as a British intelligence officer, landing in Normandy with the Guards Armoured Division and later interrogating Nazi officials in occupied Germany. In Israel he fought in the 1948 war, twice directed military intelligence, was military attaché in Washington and held regional commands before retiring as a major general in 1962. He was the first military governor of the West Bank after 1967.

Out of uniform he ran the GUS-Rassco industrial group, co-founded the law firm Herzog, Fox & Ne'eman and became a well-known military commentator and author. As ambassador to the United Nations from 1975 to 1978 he denounced the 'Zionism is racism' resolution and tore it up at the rostrum.

He entered the Knesset for the Alignment in 1981 and in 1983 was elected President of Israel, serving two terms to 1993 and making the first Israeli presidential visits to the United States, Canada and West Germany. He died in 1997; his son Isaac later also became president.