Michal Herzog thought she knew what she was getting into before she moved into the presidential residence. After all, she and her husband, Isaac Herzog, the current president, married when his father, Chaim Herzog, was the sixth president of the State of Israel. She and Isaac Herzog held the brit milah for two of their three sons at the presidential residence. But nothing they had experienced prepared them for the dramatic events of the past three years: a third and particularly severe wave of coronavirus, a societal rift among the worst seen here, a terrorist attack unprecedented since the establishment of the state, and a long and difficult war that broke out in that attack's wake. This week, the first direct confrontation with Iran was added to the list, "and we have not even reached the middle of our term," Michal Herzog, who does not give many interviews, told Israel Hayom this week.
Isaac Herzog was elected president when Benjamin Netanyahu's government of the time was on the verge of dissolution and took office when Naftali Bennett took over. "The [anti-reform] protests had yet to begin, but we had already gone through three rounds of elections and it was clear that we needed action to unify society, we just didn't know to what extent."
A little more than a year after she and her husband moved into the presidential residence, Netanyahu was re-elected, and the protest was not long in coming. "Even before that, we had launched the "Changing a Word" (Let's Talk) program, which has a double meaning – exchanging words between different groups, and replacing difficult words with words of dialogue," she says. "During the time of the protests, we opened the residence up to everyone. There were a lot of dialogue circles, anger and hugs, and a lot of tears. When you sit and talk, you hear a different story than one you expected to hear."
Then came October 7, which caught the presidential couple at their private home in Tel Aviv's Tzahala neighborhood. "At 6:25 a.m. on the day of October 7, we [heard sirens and] said to each other: What were they upset about? Did we assassinate someone overnight?" About an hour later, they received a message from Naor Yahya, the president's spokesman, with a picture of Hamas terrorists driving around in a pick-up truck in Sderot. "I said to myself: No way is this real, but then we began to understand what kind of situation we were in – as far as it was possible to understand."
Throughout that morning, the president waited to hear from two people who used to contact him whenever rockets were fired at the western Negev: Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council head Ofir Libstein and Sderot Mayor Alon Davidi. "Our feeling was that if we didn't hear from them, then things were obviously serious. Every few minutes, Bougie [Isaac Herzog's nickname] would say to me, "' Nothing yet from Ofir;' we got more and more worried." Ofir was murdered in Kfar Aza when he joined the community response team in his kibbutz. The President eulogized him at a funeral held on October 18 in Even Yehuda. A day later, the body of his 19-year-old son Nitzan was identified, and he was buried next to his father
With the leadership in shock and chaos, the president and his wife, like most Israelis, were updated on events through the media. "The television broadcasts were horrifying," says Michal recounting the moments that will not be forgotten. "People called the studios and whispered, 'Come and save us,' 'My father has been kidnapped.' It was terrible. Good friends of mine, who grew up in Kfar Aza sent me messages that were going around kibbutz WhatsApp groups. We began to realize the magnitude of the horror, and the numbers kept increasing. On Saturday night the figures were still in the region of 400 murdered, on Sunday they went up more and more."
The horror also approached the close circle of the staff of the presidential residence. The daughter of the deputy head of security sent her mother a live location from her escape route from the Nova Festival until she safely reached Moshav Patish. At the same time, the youngest son of the president and his wife received an emergency call-up for reserve duty and joined his comrades in an elite unit heading south.
Two days later, with the Gaza border region still under missile fire, the president and his wife went on a tour of the area. They were the first to tour Kibbutz Beeri, with the smell of smoke still in the air. When they entered Sderot they had to make a quick run to a bomb shelter in Ashkelon where they were caught in a particularly intense rocket attack. They visited all the command and control centers in the area and sang "Am Yisrael Hai" (The People of Israel live) until Michal burst into tears.
"We went out to touch people's hearts and discovered the power of the people," says Michal Herzog, describing her visit to the south. "We went to the Soroka Medical Center, met wounded people and their families. The Nahari family, whose son Roy was a paratrooper officer and was mortally wounded, asked us to come in and be with them when they said goodbye to him. We were there with Ro'i's parents and three brothers. His twin, also a paratroop officer, lay on top of him and refused to say goodbye to him. The mother exchanged glances with me, she clearly understood the situation very well.
"We had the privilege to be with them in that moment," the president's wife says through her tears. "A few weeks ago they came here … they said the sister was enlisting now. We keep in touch with a lot of families; it's inspiring. Wonderful people who take their pain and harness it to get things done, to commemorate the fallen, for social enterprise.
Improved treatment for PTSD
Michal Herzog (62), née Afek, grew up in Tel Aviv and Ramat Hasharon. She met her husband during their military service in the Intelligence Corps, and together they built their home in the Tzahala neighborhood of Tel Aviv. She graduated from law school and began working in the law firm of Uri Slonim. Later she moved into philanthropy, managed charitable foundation projects, and served as chairwoman and board of directors of various institutions. Now she has put all her independent activities aside for the time being and devotes herself to the work of the president's residence. "It was clear to us that we have to do this as a team. I have resigned from all my positions, and this is something that should not be taken lightly. I have always been an independent woman, with my own office and my own business. But it was clear to us that this job required us to pool all our energies."
Q: What was important to you when you came into the position?
"In public life, you have to like people, if you don't like people, then you are in the wrong place. We came with an open heart, willing to talk to everyone. That's our character, certainly the president's. I don't have many positive things to say about what it means to be a politician's wife. It is a very difficult life, a daily fight for survival. But there is one good thing about it: you get to reach everyone, you know everything. As the wife of a president, meet people from a totally different position than one would otherwise. It's completely different, and there is a sense of mission."
In line with this sense of mission, Michal Herzog met in the first week of the president's term with Itzik Saidian, a former soldier suffering from PTSD after suffering serious wounds in the 2014 Gaza conflict, who self-immolated in front of the offices of the Ministry of Defense's Rehabilitation Department to protest the treatment of soldiers who have suffered psychological wounds in battle. The following week – just two months after Operation Guardian of the Walls – she and the president visited the mixed-Jewish-Arab town of Lod, which had experienced severe sectarian violence, and met all sectors of the population. "In his inaugural speech, the president said he was going to touch the most painful points, and that's what we did.
"Throughout our lives, we have acted on the principle that there is no place for stereotypes because they are meaningless. Until you talk to a person, you don't really know who that person is. You can't label someone by whether they have piercings or whether they wear a headscarf, people are more complex than their outward features. It's not that you have to agree, on the contrary. Debate is necessary, Judaism is debated, but a proper debate includes listening to the other side. And if you don't agree, you part with a hug, not with a blow."
Q: How can we change the way we talk to each other when even in the wake of October 7 we have gone back to a divisive discourse?
"October 7 shook us all. We needed an external enemy to unite us. The military didn't deploy people by place of residence or what their political position is. People have changed while on reserve duty, they worked together, and when they come home, the difference hits them. The discourse back on the home front remains stuck where it was, but they are no longer there.
On another topic, she says: "As someone who deals a lot with the field of mental health, I was happy to see that today the subject is handled much better. For example, the army holds group processing sessions for combat soldiers just before they are released from the reserves." The President and I asked to join such a meeting. We met combat soldiers from the Egoz unit – from twenty-something-year-olds who are in their tour of duty as reserves, to forty-fifty year olds. Guys who serve together – one studying design at Shenkar, one an educator at the Eli Yeshiva. … They all talk about the need to work together, and then they return to the home front and are shocked to hear incitement. Our message to them is that they must bring that voice home, not let the discourse return to where it was on the eve of the war."
Since the beginning of the war, the Herzogs have met more than 200 bereaved families, and the president makes sure to send personal letters to all of them. A meeting of the families of the hostages took place at the president's residence, and since then the presidential couple have kept in touch with dozens of them. On average, once a week they visit the wounded people in hospitals, and at the beginning of the war, they met with evacuee communities. They maintain continuous contact with the heads of municipalities in the north and south, in an attempt to help them receive budgets for the rehabilitation of the communities that have been hit by the war and also meet with representatives of the various security agencies.
"We were at the shiva of Yossi Hershkovitz, of blessed memory, principal of the Pelach Lebanim High School, a resident of Gush Etzion, who fell in battle in Gaza," Herzog says. "A very impressive family. They revealed to us his will, a call for unity – both in his written will and in a video he filmed for his students. Two weeks ago there was a demonstration in Jerusalem, and his mother Ruhama took a bus from her workplace and came here. She told the guards at the entrance, 'I'm a bereaved mother, and the president told me that whenever I needed something, I should come, so I came.' I went down to see who it was and found her crying. The orphaned grandchildren were at her house; they could hear the demonstration and the shouting, and she told me, if that's the way things are, Yossi was killed in vain.' When the president became available, he joined us. We told her that Yossi was not killed in vain and that her job was to make her and her son's voices heard. We hear the extremists all the time, but the vast majority of Israelis are in a completely different place. Since then, she has appeared frequently on TV and radio, and her voice has been heard. She has influenced a lot of people."
Until they return
An impressive art installation is currently being erected outside the President's Residence – a photographic commemoration of a selection of works exhibited in the gallery at Kibbutz Beer, established by kibbutz resident Orit Swirsky. Orit was murdered in the terrible massacre, and the gallery she founded and nurtured was set on fire and burned to the ground, after 37 years and more than 400 exhibitions. Michal Herzog, who manages the art on display at the President's Residence, chose to place the installation outside the residence so that passersby would also be exposed to it. She also arranged for funds, including a donation from the visiting German president, for the restoration of the gallery at Beeri.
Q: While there has been support and solidarity, there has also been enormous criticism of Israel around the world and a huge increase in antisemitism. Has this surprised you?
"Absolutely. Our enemies were highly prepared with an effective campaign. The TikTok campaign and campus marches began even before our ground incursion, including the slogan 'From the River to the Sea' We weren't prepared. I deal a lot with sexual abuse, and this issue is particularly painful because it is a consensus issue. No one in the modern world thinks that sexual violence is a legitimate weapon war, yet the silence from women's organizations around the world and human rights organizations is intolerable. In Israel, this is something we are experiencing for the first time. This is something we have heard about in other conflicts – Bosnia, Africa, and unfortunately in the last two years in Ukraine. Suddenly, we too are its victims. The world's total disregard for this during the first two months of the war is shocking.
"This changed with the visit to Israel of Pramila Patten, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. She met with women who had returned from captivity in Gaza, saw the pictures, heard from those who were on the front lines identifying and treating such cases, with those who were exposed to the terrible scenes in the Gaza border communities and at the Nova music festival at Re'im. Her visit resulted in a very difficult report. Patten appeared at the UN and showed the systematization of planned sexual violence. This has legal significance. It turns the event into genocide. There is finally an acknowledgment of what happened, with an explicit report that can no longer be ignored. Since then, we have entered into a different debate. Another important landmark was Amit Soussana's testimony in The New York Times. She is a very brave woman; I have no words to describe my esteem for this special woman."
Q: This event is not over yet. As we go into Passover, there are still an unimaginable number of hostages still held captive by Hamas.
"This is a terribly painful event that we never imagined would last so long. The uncertainty is unbearable," replies the president's wife, who adorns the yellow hostage ribbon and wears a hostage dog tag on her neck. "Not a day goes by where we don't meet with or talk to a family of one of the hostages.
"We work with them around the world, we have traveled with them on two different trips, and we use all possible contacts. Until the hostages return, we as a nation will not be able to continue. The impossibility of closing the circle and bringing the missing for burial is also difficult. This issue is also close to my heart because my uncle – the commander of the Ramat David base during the Yom Kippur War, Brigadier General Zorik Lev – is the most senior Israeli whose burial place is unknown. Fifty years of uncertainty. He was supposed to be ninety today."
Q: Your exposure to all kinds of pain of this war is immense. How do you manage to handle this?
"We are exposed to a lot of pain. There are days when I just have no strength left and crawl into bed when the day is over. But our encounters with such wonderful people recharge us. As in the saying, one comes to comfort and leaves comforted. There are broken families who came into this situation already in a bad way and are broken even further. And there are very strong families, and I do not doubt that this is connected to faith. Everywhere there are amazing people. People transcend themselves, and suddenly their powers are revealed.
"Take, for example, Rachel, the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was abducted to Gaza from the shelter where Aner Shapira threw back grenades at Hamas terrorists before eventually being killed. His abduction was documented in one of the first videos released from October 7 which showed his arm amputated. Rachel is an amazing woman, who was always very shy but today interviews all over the world. She was speaking at the United Nations, and she went up to Elon Musk and showed him the video of her son's abduction. Biden mentions her in almost every speech on the hostages (after my interview with Michal Herzog, Rachel Goldberg-Polin was included in Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world). Things like that give us strength.
"We are in a very difficult time, but one loaded with meaning. One comes to understand the significance of this place – it is not about us, Isaac and Michal, but about the institution of the presidency. Sadly, we have discovered all these wonderful people in times of crisis, but we really do have a wonderful, inspiring people. I was at the reopening of the command center at Nahal Oz, the girls there are lionesses, and it's incredibly impressive. It is inspiring."
Last week, Binyamin Ahimeir, a high school student who volunteered as a shepherd on Fridays, was brutally murdered. The motivation to kill us is at its peak on all fronts.
"The murder of a 14-year-old boy is inconceivable; we cannot accept terrorism... I hope that those who committed this terrible act will be caught and brought to justice as soon as possible. I'm sure the security forces won't stop until they find them. They know how to do their jobs, and they should be allowed to operate without interference."
Ahead of the national holidays
The presidential couple celebrated the Passover Seder with lone soldiers. The interview took place before the holiday when Michal Herzog said: "We will leave a chair not only for Elijah but also for the hostages and we will pray that the holiday will be Festival of Liberty and a Spring Festival that will bring to our souls the spirit of spring."
After Passover come the national days of remembrance and commemoration, Independence Day, Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers, and Holocaust Remembrance Day. This year, they will take place amid a reality, the likes of which we have never known. "Trust in the state has taken a hit," Herzog says. "Even back on October 9 when we met with evacuated residents of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, the first thing that came up in our conversation with them was the issue of trust. This was repeated in different encounters with different communities. There's a lot of work to be done to rebuild that trust. But we also saw that in many places the power of the community was maintained. We see communities moving into new residences together, albeit temporarily. I follow the work of the Tekuma Directorate and they do a good job, involving communities in their programs.
"Last week, we hosted a screening of Lisa Peretz's film about a massacre that took place in Kiryat Shmona in 1974, exactly fifty years ago. It was literally like October 7 on a smaller scale: three terrorists infiltrated from Lebanon during the Passover holiday and intended to take over a school, but the children were on vacation. They changed plans and attacked two apartment blocks in the city; they went from one apartment to the next and shot people. Sixteen civilians and two soldiers were massacred. There were the same scenes of children hiding in a closet. You watch it today and think: What have we learned? The same chaos, the same waiting for the army until they realized what was happening. But in the end, people came back to live in the city, loving it and seeing it as home. If we want residents in the north and south to return home, the state must cooperate and not put up obstacles. It's up to elected officials and government ministries to make sure this happens."
The catastrophes that have befallen the Jewish people came together when Holocaust survivors were attacked by Hamas murderers and lost loved ones. "Holocaust Remembrance Day takes on many meanings this year. There was a recent event here for Kindertransport survivors – the Jewish children who were saved after being taken to England just before the Holocaust. One of them, Miriam Beit Talmi Shapiro, was three years old when she was evacuated. Over the years, she never gave much thought to the Kindertransport, up until October 7 that is. She is a resident of Kibbutz Zikim who was rescued only on Sunday morning (the day after the attack). When the soldiers told her she had half an hour to pack, she abruptly returned to the girl she was, who had to leave everything in an instant and get on the train. Once again, she had to pack up and run. After Holocaust Remembrance Day, we have Memorial and Independence Days, each with its baggage."
Disputes over how to celebrate
"Nothing will be in its usual, festive format. On the one hand, we must rejoice in our state, the only Jewish state and the only place we will continue to build together and strengthen. On the other hand, as long as we are still fighting and as long as the hostages are still in Gaza, we must take into account the bereaved families and the families of the hostages. We must rejoice in our independent state, but we must also envelop in love and understanding those who have sacrificed the most precious of all, and those who live in uncertainty. We have to go through this journey together."
Q: It is as if there are two forces struggling against each other, those that push for unity and those that pull for division.
"I don't think these are equal forces. It seems that the central, overwhelming force is the power of togetherness. There is a reason that people enlisted immediately, there is a reason that when we hear that someone is in distress or when there is a funeral of a lone soldier, people turn up. A lot of people who never knew the dead or their families come to the homes of mourners come to offer their condolences. They come to say thank you and show solidarity. The past few months are actually proof of our ability to be together and our desire to continue living together. This is the prevailing force; this is our future and this is the beauty of our people. I'm optimistic."
