Israeli President's son serving on Gaza front line, says first lady

One of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s sons is fighting against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, first lady Michal Herzog said on Monday.

“We have not had any contact with him for some time, but we have hope,” Michal Herzog told Kan Reshet Bet radio, adding, “I think for all mothers, for women in general, I think, these days are difficult.

Article content

“To all the soldiers, and to everyone on the front line, and to everyone, really, here’s to hope and that everyone will return in peace,” she said.

Article content

The president and his wife have three sons: Noam, Matan and Ro’i. Herzog did not say which of the three was serving in Gaza.

Late last month, President Herzog gave a televised address in which he hailed the Israeli nation’s “resilience, spirit and soul.”

“I would like to speak of [a] source of great hope at this time, even now — in the fog, especially now. The Israeli spirit. An unbreakable spirit. The spirit of a storm that rose from ashes and destruction and is already blowing with all its might. This spirit has revealed itself mightily, in thousands of heroic stories from the front line and the home front,” he said.

In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, Herzog revealed that Israeli soldiers discovered a copy of Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” in a children’s room that was used as a Hamas terror base in the northern Gaza Strip.

“After the massacre and atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 — the day on which the largest number of Jews were murdered since the Holocaust — this is another revelation that testifies to the sources of inspiration of the terrorist organization Hamas, and proves once again that all its actions have the same goal as the Nazis — the destruction of Jews,” Herzog stated.

Herzog’s father, Chaim Herzog, was an IDF general and Israel’s sixth president. Isaac Herzog’s brother Michael Herzog currently serves as the Israeli ambassador to the United States.