Israeli President to visit Greece and Cyprus before trip to Ankara

Israeli President Isaac Herzog will visit Greece and Cyprus in the next two weeks before heading to Turkey for talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Jerusalem Post reported on Tuesday.

“The trips are meant to assure Athens and Nicosia that a rapprochement with Ankara will not come at the expense of the close ties Israel has developed with them in recent years,” the report said.

Herzog’s one-day trip to Athens is planned for next Thursday, and his half-day trip to Cyprus is expected to take place the following week.

The paper said Herzog’s visit will be the first by an Israeli leader in more than a decade, following a period of tensions between the two countries.

Isaac HerzogQ Who is the 11th President of Israel

Isaac Herzog, born in 1960, attended elite schools in the United States when he wasn’t attending Camp Ramah. After he served in army intelligence in Israel, he attended Tel Aviv University Law School and joined his father’s law firm before turning to politics. The younger Herzog served as Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s cabinet secretary before running on the Labor Party slate between 2003 and 2018. He led that party the last five years before leaving politics.

The Israeli presidency, although ceremonial, encompasses several responsibilities. Only the president can grant pardons, a topic that has attracted attention recently in Israeli politics as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fights corruption charges in three current cases in court.

Rosenfeld, whose wife Sharon is director of development and board relations for Camp Ramah Darom in Georgia, speaks about Herzog with respect. But he also notes how humble, unassuming and modest Herzog was as a teenager. Indeed, some political pundits over the years have suggested that these attributes kept him from becoming prime minister of his country.

Rosenfeld’s description of Herzog contrasts from that of columnists, who compare the Herzog family to royalty. Not only was Herzog’s father Israel’s president, his uncle Yaakov served as political adviser to Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion, and later as director general of the prime minister’s office under Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir. He also served as a diplomat in the United States and in Canada.

In addition to Herzog’s sister Ronit, who is a clinical psychologist in Tel Aviv, he has two brothers: Michael, who retired as a brigadier general in 2010, and Joel, the eldest, who is a businessman living in Geneva.