The Presidency of Isaac Herzog, the eleventh President of Israel, began after the 2021 Israeli presidential election on 2 June 2021. Herzog was sworn in as president on 7 July 2021.
2021 Presidential election
On 2 June 2021, Herzog was elected President of the State of Israel by the Knesset. Running as an independent against Miriam Peretz, a record 87 of 120 members of the Knesset voted for him.
Inauguration On 7 July 2021, Herzog was sworn in at a ceremony at the Knesset, using the same 107-year-old Bible that his father Chaim Herzog used when sworn in as President in 1983. In his inaugural address, he called for healing the divisions in Israeli society and building bridges within Israel and between Israel and the Jewish diaspora. Herzog said: “Baseless hatred, the same factionalism and polarization, are exacting a heavy price today, and every day. The heaviest price of all is the erosion of our national resilience. My mission, the goal of my presidency, is to do everything to rebuild hope.”
2021
In July 2021, Herzog kicked off the campaign to receive the third dose of the coronavirus vaccine. He did this with his wife Michal Herzog as well as Prime Minister Bennett.
On October 4, 2021, in his first speech to the Knesset Plenum since his election, Herzog called the rise in violence in Israeli Arab society “a state of emergency, which requires us all to take firm action together." Herzog’s calls on successive governments and law enforcement agencies to act against violence in the Israeli Arab sector would become a consistent theme of his presidency.
In October 2021, Herzog announced the establishment of the Israeli Climate Forum under the auspices of the Office of the President, appointing former Member of Knesset Dov Khenin as the forum's chairman. Bringing together figures from different sectors of Israeli society such as academia, local government, the Knesset, culture, media and the economic sector, the forum oversees a number of working groups focusing on different issues and brings together public officials and private citizens to coordinate efforts to combat the climate crisis. In his "Renewable Middle East" speech, delivered at the Haaretz Climate Change Forum, Herzog spelled out a vision for how the climate crisis presented opportunities for regional cooperation across the Middle East and Mediterranean Basin.
Further to his declared objective of embarking on a journey within Israeli society, and as part of his public engagements in Israel and visits to its diverse communities, on 29 October 2021 Herzog participated in a memorial for the victims of the 1956 Kafr Qasim massacre and apologized on behalf of the State of Israel, making him the first Israeli official to ask for forgiveness at the official ceremony in Kafr Qasim. In his speech, Herzog said: "The killing and injury of innocents are absolutely forbidden. They must remain beyond all political arguments."
On 28 November 2021, Herzog lit candles for the first night of Hanukkah at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Herzog declared that recognition of the Jewish people's historical attachments to Hebron "must be beyond all controversy"
In December 2021, Herzog launched his "Think Good" campaign, with the objective of combating cyberbullying. The campaign, in collaboration with Meta, promoted respectful and inclusive discourse online.
2022
On 30 January 2022, Herzog conducted a historic state visit to the United Arab Emirates. This was the first visit of an Israeli president to the UAE and came at the invitation of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
In March 2022, Herzog embarked on a regional tour of neighboring Mediterranean states, taking in Greece, Cyprus, and a state visit to Turkey together with First Lady Michal Herzog, as the guests of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his wife Emine. Following months of dialogue since Herzog's election as president, the presidents met for a summit at the Presidential Complex in Ankara, symbolizing their countries' desire to move on from a period of tense relations. During the visit, Herzog addressed the "baggage of the past", which he said "never disappears of its own accord", and underscored that the Israeli-Turkish relationship would be determined by both states' actions. In the latter part of his Turkish visit, as part of a broader policy of strengthening relations with the Jewish Diaspora during foreign engagements, Herzog and his wife Michal visited the Istanbul Jewish community at the Neve Shalom Synagogue, the target of various terror attacks over the years. On 29 March 2022, Herzog conducted a historic first public visit by an Israeli leader to Amman, Jordan, during which he met King Abdullah II, with whom he discussed to deepen the Israeli–Jordanian relationship, maintain regional stability, and bolster peace and normalization.
In July 2022, Herzog awarded the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor to President Biden.
In July 2022, Herzog appointed Brigadier General Naama Rosen-Grimberg as Military Secretary to the President of the State of Israel. She was the first woman to fulfill this role.
In September 2022, Herzog and his wife traveled to London to pay their respects to the deceased Queen Elizabeth II.
Prior to the parliamentary elections of 2022, Israel’s public broadcaster Kan 11 reported that Herzog told Knesset members that he would “work to establish a unity government as broad as possible” after the elections. In the November 2022 elections, Likud and its far-right allies won a majority of 64 seats in the Knesset. Following this, President Herzog tasked Benjamin Netanyahu with forming the new government. On December 21, 2022, Netanyahu informed Herzog that he had formed a government.
2023 In January 2023, Herzog launched the "Time to Talk" movement. Confronted with the challenge of polarization in Israeli society and a general inability to manage disagreements, President Herzog has decided to focus his efforts on making the State of Israel and Israeli society more cohesive and capable of engaging fearlessly with the disagreements that divide it. “Time to Talk” translates the President’s vision into an action plan. This broad plan outlines the establishment of an innovative and educational visitors’ center as well as spaces for consensus-building at the President’s Residence and beyond it, across Israeli society and the whole Jewish world.
On 12 February 2023, in the midst of the public debate on legal reform, Herzog delivered a speech to the nation in which he sought to reach a compromise on the issue. He asked the head of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Simcha Rothman, to stop the legislation, and not to bring the bill to a first reading in the Knesset.
In March 2023, using the office of the President, Herzog invited both sides to the President's Residence for negotiations.
As the legislation and protests against it progressed, on 9 March, President Herzog delivered a speech to the nation, in which he called for the legislation to be stopped and replaced with a different outline, stating: "The entire body of legislation currently being discussed in committee must be thrown out quickly. It is wrong, predatory, and undermines our democratic foundations." On 15 March, Herzog presented the 'People's Outline' for a compromise. On 12 June, he called for the army to be kept out of the debate: "As citizens, reservists have the full right to any opinion and protest, like all citizens in a healthy democracy. As soldiers in the reserves, wearing uniforms, refusal is out of bounds. We must not endanger Israel's security because it is in our souls."
In July 2023, Herzog condemned the attacks on Christians in Israel. “I utterly condemn violence, in all its forms, directed by a small and extreme group, towards the holy places of the Christian faith, and against Christian clergy in Israel in general, and in Jerusalem in particular. This includes spitting, and the desecration of graves and churches,” he said.
On 19 July 2023, Herzog was invited to deliver a speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress to mark the 75 years of independence of the State of Israel. In his address, Herzog highlighted the strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship, the regional challenges facing Israel, and threat of terror as an obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
In the immediate aftermath of the 7 October attacks by Hamas on Israel, President Herzog delivered a special address to the nation in which he stated: “This heinous act, which began in the middle of the Sabbath on a Jewish holy day, crossing the border to carry out the attack, is an unforgivable sin. A sin that was led not only by a murderous terrorist organization, but by an evil axis whose base is in Iran and whose malignant cells repeatedly work to undermine us, our spirit, our sovereignty, and who we are as a people and as a country. My brothers and sisters: we are in a war for our home, and we will win!”
Writing in the New York Times shortly after the attack, Herzog wrote: “Against our will, we in Israel find ourselves at a tipping point for the Middle East and for the world and at the center of what is nothing less than an existential struggle. This is not a battle between Jews and Muslims. And it is not just between Israel and Hamas. It is between those who adhere to norms of humanity and those practicing a barbarism that has no place in the modern world.”
At a press conference for the international media held shortly after the 7 October attacks, President Herzog was asked about Israel's possible military response and said that "an entire nation out there is responsible", a remark that was later cited in accusations that he had assigned collective responsibility to the Palestinian people. President Herzog strongly rejected those claims, arguing that his words had been “purposely distorted” and taken out of context. In the same answer at the press conference, he stated: "We are working, operating militarily according to rules of international law. Period. Unequivocally. But we are at war. There are many, many innocent Palestinians." This comment would, in September 2025, be described by a United Nations inquiry into the Gaza Genocide as "incitement to genocide", forming part of a pattern of behaviour demonstrating genocidal intent in the actions and statements of Israeli political leaders.
On 17 October 2023, Herzog said that accusations that Israel caused the al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion were "a 21st-century blood libel". On 22 October, he told Britain's Sky News that Hamas fighters captured by Israel were carrying instructions from al-Qaeda on how to make chemical weapons, including a chemical bomb, saying "we are dealing with ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Hamas".
On 1 December 2023, Herzog attended the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he met with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and had a handshake with Qatar's Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
2024
During Herzog's 2024 visit to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office announced that it was investigating a criminal complaint against him. The nature of the complaint was not disclosed and was later dropped.
He called South Africa's genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) a "blood libel" against Jews.
On 28 March 2024, Herzog said he considered U.S. President Joe Biden to be a "great friend of Israel". On 12 November 2024, Herzog arrived in Washington, D.C. for a state visit and met with Biden. He told Biden: "In the Bible, it says that Joseph will strengthen Israel. And clearly, Mr. President, you've done that."
Herzog expressed his support for the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into Hamas’s October 7 massacre.