Chaim Herzog (17 September 1918-17 April 1997) was the President of Israel from 5 May 1983 to 13 May 1993, succeeding Yitzhak Navon and preceding Ezer Weizman.
Biography[]
Chaim Herzog was born on 17 September 1918 in Belfast, Ireland, United Kingdom, the son of Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog. His father became known as the "Sinn Fein Rabbi" for his support of Irish independence during the Irish Civil War - his father fluently spoke Irish and was a supporter of the First Dail. Chaim studied at Wesley College in Dublin and later joined the Federation of Zionist Youth before making aliyah to Mandatory Palestine in 1935. He served in Haganah during the 1936 Arab Revolt, assisting the British authorities in putting down the anti-semitic Palestinian rebels. He became a tank commander in an armored division of the British Army during World War II and was nicknamed "Vivian", which another Jewish soldier claimed was the English equivalent of "Chaim", which his fellow British soldiers could not pronounce. Herzog served in the liberation of many concentration camps in Germany and captured Heinrich Himmler at the end of the war in 1945.
After the war, Herzog returned to Palestine. He served as an officer in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) of the newly-independent state of Israel after May 1948 during the Israeli War of Independence. Herzog fought in the battles for Latrun against Egypt. From 1948 to 1950 he was the chief of intelligence for the IDF, and he retired in 1962 with the rank of Lieutenant-General. He operated a private law practice until 1967, when he was made the military Governor of East Jerusalem in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. In 1972 he founded Herzog, Fox, & Neeman, one of the largest law firms in Israel. From 1975 to 1978 he was the ambassador to the United Nations for Israel. During his term, the UN passed General Assembly Resolution 3379, which said that Zionism was racism. He tore up the resolution symbolically as his father had done with one of the British white papers regarding Mandatory Palestine, and said that the resolution was devoid of any moral or legal value. In 1981 he joined the Knesset as a member of the Alignment political alliance, and on 22 March 1983 he was elected as the sixth President of Israel.
In 1985, he visited Ireland's Wesley College, where he unveiled a statue of his childhood friend Cearbhall O'Dalaigh (who became the fifth President of Ireland) and also opened the Jewish Museum. He left office on 13 May 1993, and he died of natural causes on 17 April 1997, and he was buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.