[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 62 (Tuesday, May 13, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H2549-H2552]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  CONCERNING THE DEATH OF CHAIM HERZOG

  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to 
the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 73) concerning the death of 
Chaim Herzog.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                            H. Con. Res. 73

       Whereas Chaim Herzog, the sixth President of the State of 
     Israel, passed away on Thursday, April 17, 1997;
       Whereas Chaim Herzog, in his very life exemplified the 
     struggles and triumphs of the State of Israel;
       Whereas Chaim Herzog had a brilliant military, business, 
     legal, political, and diplomatic career;
       Whereas Chaim Herzog represented Israel at the United 
     Nations from 1975-1978 and with great eloquence defended 
     Israel and its values against the forces of darkness and 
     dictatorship;
       Whereas Chaim Herzog, as President of Israel from 1983-
     1993, set a standard for honor and rectitude; and
       Whereas Chaim Herzog was a great friend of the United 
     States of America and as President of Israel had the honor of 
     addressing a joint meeting of the United States Congress on 
     November 10, 1987: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate 
     concurring), That--
       (1) the Congress of the United States notes with great 
     sadness the passing of Chaim Herzog, a great leader of Israel 
     and a great friend of America and the Congress sends its 
     deepest condolences to the entire Herzog family and to the 
     Government and people of Israel; and
       (2) a copy of this resolution shall be transmitted to the 
     Speaker of the Knesset in Jerusalem, to President Ezer 
     Weizman of Israel, and to Mrs. Aura Herzog of Herzlia, 
     Israel.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter] and the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hamilton] 
each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter].
  (Mr. BEREUTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this resolution is very simple; it is to 
express the condolences of the House to the family of Chaim Herzog, the 
late President of the State of Israel, and to the people and Government 
of that State. Chaim Herzog was, as many know, the son of a rabbi, in 
fact, the son of the Chief Rabbi of Ireland. He became a soldier in the 
British Army, landing in Normandy and running British intelligence in 
northern Germany. Later he was a lawyer and a diplomat serving in the 
Israeli Embassy in Washington, and as Permanent Representative to the 
United Nations. In the culmination of his career, he became the 
President of the State of Israel.
  The President of Israel is its Head of State, standing above politics 
but critical to the public life of the country and a symbol of its 
unity.
  Mr. Speaker, this Member joins with my colleagues in expressing our 
thanks for the life of Chaim Herzog and our condolences to his family 
in Israel and his friends and admirers around the world.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the gentleman from New York [Mr. 
Gilman] and the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] for bringing this 
resolution before the House. I commend both of them for their 
leadership on this resolution.
  As has been explained by the distinguished gentleman from Nebraska, 
Chaim Herzog was the sixth President of the State of Israel. He had a 
very brilliant military, business, legal, political and diplomatic 
career. He was a great leader of Israel, and a great friend of America. 
Those of us who knew him personally knew him to be a man of 
extraordinary compassion, exceedingly gracious, and had about him a 
great lack of pretense, despite his extraordinary achievements.

[[Page H2550]]

                              {time}  1600

  It is fitting that the Congress commemorate his life and his work, 
and send its deepest condolences to the entire Herzog family, and to 
the Government and the people of Israel. I urge the adoption of the 
resolution.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to note the assistance of Mr. James 
Soriano, a Pearson Fellow from the Department of State who has been on 
our full committee staff for the past year, and helped us with this 
resolution and many other items during that period.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman 
from New York [Mr. Gilman].
  Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to 
me.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. 
Burton] for offering this sense-of-Congress resolution commemorating 
the life of former President of Israel Chaim Herzog. I appreciate the 
vice chairman of our committee, the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. 
Bereuter], for bringing this measure to the floor at this time. I want 
to commend the ranking minority member, the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. 
Hamilton], for his support of the resolution.
  Mr. Speaker, we were all saddened to learn of the passing last month 
of former President of Israel Chaim Herzog. Mr. Herzog's life mirrored 
the birth and early history of the State of Israel, and during his 
career he served as a distinguished soldier, author, and diplomat.
  Mr. Herzog was born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1918, the son of a rabbi. 
He emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1935. He served as an officer in 
the British Army during World War II, and landed with allied troops in 
Normandy in 1944. Later on he served with distinction in defending 
Israeli from Arab attack during Israel's war of independence in 1948.
  After the June 1967 war Mr. Herzog was appointed Israel's first 
military governor of the West Bank. In the 1970's he served at the 
Israeli Embassy in Washington, and was later named Israel's ambassador 
to the United Nations. He was the author of several books, including 
``Israel's Finest Hour,'' a historical account of the 1967 war. This 
illustrious career continued with his service as Israel's President in 
1983.
  Mr. Speaker, Chaim Herzog has been described by his contemporaries as 
a man of war who loved peace. We extend to his family and to the people 
of Israel our deepest condolences for the passing of a true gentlemen, 
a true leader who helped shape the history of Israel and who also 
pursued peace. We once again thank the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. 
Hamilton] for his thoughtfulness in supporting this measure, and I 
thank the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter] for his leadership.
  Ms. HARMON. Mr. Speaker, the world lost a great statesman and a 
friend of peace last month when former Israeli President Chaim Herzog 
passed away.
  Today, the House considers a resolution which expresses the 
condolences of the American people to the Herzog family and the people 
of Israel on the occasion of President Herzog's death. As a cosponsor 
of the resolution I strongly urge its passage.
  Chaim Herzog led an extraordinary and inspiring life, playing a role 
in many of the events central to the international Jewish community 
during the 20th Century. The son of Ireland's Chief Rabbi, later Chief 
Rabbi of Israel, Herzog first came to the Jewish homeland in 1935 as a 
yeshiva student. By the age of 16, he had joined the Haganah, the 
underground precursor to today's Israel Defense Forces. During World 
War II, as an officer in the British Army, he was part of the first 
Allied formation to cross into Germany and was present at the 
liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
  Herzog also played a vital role in the political and military 
development of the State of Israel from the date of its establishment. 
He helped design the new state's famed intelligence agency and served 
as a general in its army. In the aftermath of the Six-Day War, Herzog 
became the military governor of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
  But Herzog's greatest contributions on the world stage came during 
his tenure as Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, where he 
forcefully battled unfair resolutions equating Zionism with racism, and 
as President of Israel, a position he held for 10 years.
  Last Summer, it was my privilege to welcome Ambassador Herzog to my 
congressional district where he spoke at Temple Ner Tamid.
  Mr. Speaker, throughout his long and distinguished career, Chaim 
Herzog held a firm and clear vision of a safe Israel in a peaceful 
Middle East. We would all do well to follow his example in our pursuit 
of that same goal. I urge my colleagues to pass this resolution, as a 
tribute to this great man.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to have 
introduced this resolution expressing the sympathy of the Congress and 
of the American people over the death of Chaim Herzog. I am very 
pleased that we were able to move this resolution to the floor very 
quickly and I thank the chairman of the International Relations 
Committee, my friend Ben Gilman of New York for his support and 
leadership.
  All of us were sadded to learn recently about the death of Chaim 
Herzog at the age of 78. As staunch friends of the State of Israel and 
the people of Israel, we share their grief and their sorrow.
  Chaim Herzog was truly a hero of Israel and also a great friend of 
America. Like Yitzhak Rabin, whose death we also mourned all too early, 
Chaim Herzog lived a life that was a mirror of the drama of his 
country. Born in Belfast, he was the son of the Chief Rabbi of Ireland. 
As a boy, he moved to the land of Israel, where his father became Chief 
Rabbi.
  Chaim Herzog fought in the British Armed Forces in World War II and 
participated in the liberation of the death camps, an experience that 
influenced the rest of his life. During Israel's war of independence 
Herzog played a critical role in the battle for Jerusalem. He then 
became chief of military intelligence.
  During the Six Day War--almost 30 years ago--General Herzog's radio 
broadcasts helped to lift the morale of the people of Israel.
  In 1975, he was named Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations where 
he served with courage and defended his country with great eloquence. 
It was Herzog who stood up to defend Israel against the odious and 
false charge that Zionism is a form of racism. This is what Herzog said 
in his brilliant speech on that occasion: ``The vote of each delegation 
will record in history its country's stand on antisemitic racism and 
anti-Judaism. You, yourselves bear the responsibility for your stand 
before history. For as such, you will be viewed in history * * *. For 
us, the Jewish people, this is but a passing episode in a rich and 
event-filled history * * *. This resolution based on hatred, falsehood, 
and arrogance is devoid of any moral or legal value.''
  Mr. Speaker, to this day, the fact that the United Nations General 
Assembly passed that resolution stands as a severe indictment of the 
United Nations itself. I am very proud to have been a delegate to the 
United Nations in 1991 when that immoral resolution was finally 
repealed and I am proud to have participated in the effort to repeal 
it.
  Let me conclude by noting that Chaim Herzog capped this event-filled 
and achievement-filled life with his election as President of Israel in 
1983. He served for 10 years, set a new standard for dignity, honor, 
and decency and he also addressed a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress 
in 1987.
  Mr. Speaker, it is fitting and appropriate that this Congress express 
its sadness over the death of Chaim Herzog and convey its sympathy to 
the people of Israel and to the Herzog family, Mrs. Aura Herzog and her 
children Joel, Michael, Isaac, and Ronit and their respective families.
  I urge the unanimous adoption of this resolution. Mr. Speaker, I 
would also like to submit into the record the historic and moving 
speech given by Chaim Herzog at the United Nations to which I referred. 
And the obituary written about him in the New York Times.

                [From the New York Times, Apr. 18, 1997]

              Chaim Herzog, 78, Former President of Israel

                             (By Eric Pace)

       Chaim Herzog, Israel's outspoken president from 1983 to 
     1993, died on Thursday at Tel Hashomer Hospital in Tel Aviv. 
     He was 78, and lived in Herzliya Pituach, a suburb of Tel 
     Aviv.
       The cause was heart failure after he contracted pneumonia 
     on a recent visit to the United States, said Rachel Sofer, 
     spokesman for the hospital.
       Herzog, a former general, was Israel's chief delegate to 
     the United Nations from 1975 to 1978, a critical period, 
     after serving as its director of military intelligence and, 
     in 1967, as the first military governor of the occupied West 
     Bank. Over the years, he was also a businessman, a lawyer, an 
     author and a Labor Party member of the Israeli Parliament.
       In his two successive five-year terms as Israel's sixth 
     chief of state, he strove to enlarge the president's role, 
     which in Israel is

[[Page H2551]]

     largely ceremonial, by making public declarations on issues 
     that leaders in government would not, or could not, address.
       Herzog argued in favor of greater rights for the Druse and 
     Arab populations in Israel, declaring: ``I am the president 
     of Arabs and Druse, as well as Jews.'' He worked actively to 
     make political pariahs of Rabbi Meir Kahane and his fervently 
     anti-Arab Kach Party.
       In addition, Herzog was an outspoken though unsuccessful 
     lobbyist for comprehensive change in the Israeli voting 
     system, which has spawned a jigsaw-puzzle of political 
     parties and frequent parliamentary stalemates.
       By late 1987, as his first term was drawing to a close and 
     while a national unity government was in power, he had 
     probably become more influential and popular than any 
     previous Israeli president.
       This was largely because the Labor and Likud party partners 
     in that government were always bickering and frequently 
     turned to him to arbitrate their disagreements. Moreover, 
     groups of Israelis, like farmers and nurses, were always 
     looking to him for aid that they could not get from the 
     deadlocked Cabinet.
       Through the years, Herzog also made use of the Israeli 
     president's power to pardon convicted criminals--and 
     sometimes was criticized for doing so. In addition, he 
     exercised the president's power to determine, after 
     elections, which political party has the first opportunity to 
     assemble a government.
       His urbane, outgoing nature and his earlier roles in his 
     country's life fitted him to serve as a symbol of Israeli 
     unity during his years as president.
       A descendant of rabbis, and a witness of Nazi 
     concentration-camp horrors while he was an officer in the 
     British army in World War II, he was steeped in the splendors 
     and sorrows of Jewish history. He was also cosmopolitan, with 
     the trace of a brogue from his native Belfast, Northern 
     Ireland, and an education gained largely in Britain.
       As the chief delegate to the United Nations, Herzog led 
     Israel's defense against Arab attempts to oust it. In 1975, 
     when the General Assembly passed a resolution equating 
     Zionism with racism, he went to the rostrum and defiantly 
     tore a copy of the resolution in two. Seventeen years later, 
     the Assembly repealed the resolution.
       Herzog was in the Israeli Defense Force at his country's 
     birth in 1948, rose to the rank of major general and served 
     twice as director of military intelligence, from 1948 to 1950 
     and from 1959 to 1962.
       Then he retired, only to return as the West Bank's military 
     governor just after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in which 
     Israel, in an overwhelming victory, captured the West Bank 
     and other territory from neighboring Arab countries.
       He also became noted, among Israelis, for radio 
     commentaries he gave on military subjects before and during 
     that six-day war. He used the radio to urge Israelis to stay 
     in their air-raid shelters during alerts, and in one widely 
     quoted broadcast he told his listeners that they were in much 
     less danger where they were than was the attacking Egyptian 
     air force.
       Herzog was first elected president by the Israeli 
     Parliament, in 1983, in a rebuff to Prime Minister Menachem 
     Begin's governing coalition of that day. By a vote of 61 to 
     57, with two blank ballots, Parliament chose him over the 
     government's candidate, Justice Menachem Elon of the Supreme 
     Court, to succeed President Yitzhak Navon of the Labor Party.
       In 1988, Herzog was elected by Parliament to a second term, 
     the maximum permitted by Israeli law. In that balloting, he 
     was unopposed, having the sponsorship of the Labor Party as 
     well as wide backing from the right-wing Likud bloc, Labor's 
     partner in the coalition government of the time.
       He was succeeded on May 13, 1993, by Ezer Weizman, a former 
     defense minister and the nephew of Israel's first president, 
     Chaim Weizman. Ezer Weizman had been elected by Parliament on 
     March 24, 1993.
       As president, Herzog was sometimes acid in his criticisms 
     of the Israeli national voting system. In an interview in 
     1992, he said: ``The system we have is a catastrophe. It 
     allows for fragmentation and wheeling and dealing and gives 
     inordinate power to small groupings.''
       He was also something of a gadfly on a variety of other 
     issues during his presidency. He was one of the few prominent 
     figures in Israeli politics to comment regularly on Israel's 
     high incidence of fatal vehicular accidents. By late 1992, 
     drivers had killed 20 times more Israelis in the last five 
     years than had the Palestinian uprising, almost 2,300 
     people.
       ``If the enemy had slain us to this extent, the country 
     would quake and we would be shaking in our foundations,'' 
     Herzog declared then in a message for the Jewish New Year.
       Earlier that year, at a time when Jewish settlers in the 
     Israeli-occupied territories had taken various measures in 
     retaliation for Arab acts of violence, he denounced 
     vigilantism, saying in a radio broadcast: ``The phenomenon of 
     taking the law into one's hands, of attacking innocents and 
     interfering with the dedicated work of the security forces, 
     endangers our foundations and future.''
       Later in the year, with Israel not able to integrate all 
     the new arrivals from the former Soviet republics fully into 
     its economic life, Herzog proposed setting up soup kitchens 
     for immigrants, and was criticized for doing so.
       He also spurred controversy sometimes by his use of the 
     presidential power to pardon. In the mid-1980s, he was 
     criticized for pardoning agents of the Shin Bet security 
     service and its chief, who was charged with commanding that 
     two Palestinian bus hijackers be summarily executed.
       In an interview in early 1993, Herzog noted that he had 
     condemned ``what had happened.'' But he added that Israel was 
     locked in combat with terrorists, and that to take the 
     security-service personnel ``and put them on trial, and have 
     each one bringing all sorts of evidence to prove that he 
     wasn't the worst and so on, could have torn the Shin Bet to 
     pieces just when we didn't need that.''
       In addition, loud dissent arose after Herzog commuted the 
     sentences of members of what was called a Jewish underground 
     organization that had tried to kill local Palestinian 
     functionaries.
       He later contended that reducing the penalties against some 
     of the convicted members, and making them decry their deeds, 
     had helped to shatter their group.
       As president, he traveled widely. He was among the world 
     figures who, along with survivors of the Holocaust, gathered 
     in Washington in April 1993 to dedicate the U.S. Holocaust 
     Memorial Museum. There he described his horror when he came 
     upon Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi death camps as a British 
     officer.
       ``No one who saw those terrifying scenes,'' he said, ``will 
     ever forget.''
       In 1992, to mark the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of 
     the Jews from Spain, Herzog went to Madrid and prayed 
     together with Spain's king, Juan Carlos, in a gesture 
     symbolizing reconciliation between their peoples.
       But Herzog did not become reconciled with the nations that 
     had presented the 1975 U.N. resolution. In the 1993 
     interview, while still president, he said:
       ``Of the three countries that presented the Zionism as 
     racism resolution, one has relations with us although no 
     embassy--that's Benin. Two still don't have relations--one 
     which has relations with nobody, namely Somalia, and one 
     which is in great trouble, namely Cuba. They were the three 
     sponsors of that resolution, these bastions of democracy and 
     freedom.''
       Herzog was born on Sept. 17, 1918, in Belfast, the son of 
     Rabbi Isaac Halevy Herzog, who was the chief rabbi of Ireland 
     and later became the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of 
     Israel, and the former Sarah Hillman.
       The Herzog family emigrated to Palestine in the mid-1930s, 
     and the future president had three years of schooling at the 
     Hebron Yeshiva there. The educational institutions where he 
     later studied included Wesley College in Dublin, the 
     Government of Palestine Law School in Jerusalem, and London 
     and Cambridge universities.
       In the British army during World War II, he served with the 
     Guards Armored Division and in intelligence on the Continent. 
     He was discharged and then joined the Jewish underground in 
     Palestine before Israel was founded.
       After his retirement from the military in 1962, he was for 
     some years a high executive of a conglomerate of industrial 
     enterprises that Sir Isaac Wolfson, a British businessman, 
     owned in Israel.
       Over the years he wrote, was a co-author of, or edited more 
     than half a dozen books, including ``The Arab-Israeli Wars'' 
     (Random House and Vintage, 1982), ``Heroes of Israel'' 
     (Little, Brown, 1989) and ``Living History: A Memoir'' 
     (Pantheon, 1996).
       He is survived by his wife of 50 years, the former Aura 
     Ambache; three sons Joel, Michael and Yitzhak, and a 
     daughter, Ronit Bronsky. All his children live in Israel 
     except for Joel, who lives in Geneva. Herzog is also survived 
     by eight grandchildren.
       In his memoirs he wrote: ``I pray that my children and 
     grandchildren will see a strong and vigorous Israel at peace 
     with its neighbors and continuing to represent the traditions 
     that have sustained our people throughout the ages.''

  Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, I wish to add my support for this 
resolution honoring Chaim Herzog, former President of Israel and friend 
of America.
  When Chaim Herzog gave that tremendously moving speech at the United 
Nations, he was defending not only Israel, but democracy and decency 
everywhere.
  The United Nations which condemned Zionism also gave Fidel Castro a 
standing ovation. The fight for moral values which Chaim Herzog carried 
out with such courage, still continues.
  In this very Chamber, Chaim Herzog addressed a joint meeting of this 
Congress on November 10, 1987, the anniversary of his U.N. speech and 
of Kristallnacht, the Nazi riots that signaled the beginning of the 
Holocaust in 1938. Chaim Herzog will be missed, but will always be 
remembered.
  Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter] that the House suspend the rules 
and agree to the concurrent resolution, House Concurrent Resolution 73.

[[Page H2552]]

  The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor 
thereof) the rules were suspended and the concurrent resolution was 
agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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