As Benjamin Netanyahu’s status as prime minister hangs in balance, MPs have elected a scion of prominent political family

Isaac Herzog’s election by MPs as Israel’s new president, set against the backdrop of coalition deliberations that could seal the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s long grip on power as the country’s prime minister, is a neat piece of symmetry and certainly symbolic.

As Allison Kaplan Somer put it in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, Herzog is as close to “royalty” as Israel’s political system can conceive, part of the once-dominant Ashkenazi elite – referring to Jews who arrived from Europe – who shaped the Israeli state for decades after its founding in 1948.

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Source: The Guardian