At an emotional ceremony on Sunday in the outdoor garden of the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, President Isaac Herzog presented 11 Israelis with the Presidential Medal of Honor.
Initiated in 2012 by the ninth president of Israel, Shimon Peres, the Presidential Medal of Honor is awarded to those “who, by virtue of their skills, service, or in any other way, have made an exceptional contribution to the State of Israel or to humanity.”
Speaking at the ceremony, Herzog congratulated each of the winners.
“Each and every one of you is a beacon in your field,” he told them. “Each and every one of you is a genuine, personal example of the power to make a difference, not only to the State of Israel and Israeli society, but to a great extent to the wider world as well. There are people here who simply changed the world, and there are certainly people here who made a decisive contribution to the good name of the State of Israel around the globe.”
He also said that the events of the past few years have made positive changes in Israeli society.
“Amid the changes the country is undergoing, which are certainly challenging as well, we are seeing many positive shifts taking place within our society,” Herzog said. “The prejudices and deep-rooted assumptions many of us have held about various sectors are gradually dissolving.”
He also referenced Israel’s upcoming election, warning of the price that disunity could exact.
“It is precisely amid our disagreements, precisely during an election period, that I will say again and warn again: elections are not a civil war! After the elections, we will all still be here, as sisters and brothers.”
The honorees this year came from all sectors of society and were involved in art, music, social activism and academia. As the third anniversary of the Hamas-led massacre of Oct. 7 approaches, one of the winners was Abie Moses, the founder and chairman of the National Organization of Terror Victims. In 1987, Moses and his family were driving along the Alfei Menashe highway to buy groceries. Their car was fire-bombed.
His wife, Ofra, who was pregnant, was burned to death, and his five-year-old son, Tal, was critically wounded and spent three months in the hospital before he died. Moses and his other two children, Nir, 15, and Adi, 9, also suffered severe burn injuries and spent long periods in the hospital.
In the short film screened about him at the ceremony, Moses said he could have gone home and received a salary just sitting on his couch. Instead, he decided to dedicate himself to the families of victims of terrorism, the number of whom continues to grow.
Another winner was Professor Mooli Lahad, a psychologist and psychotrauma specialist from Kiryat Shmona, which has been hard-hit over the past three years during the war with Hezbollah. A specialist in trauma, Lahad is the founder and former director of the Institute of Dramatherapy and founding president of the CSPC (the International Stress Prevention Centre).
Another winner was Ziva Mekonen, head of the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews. She came to Israel at age 12, and described her journey this way:
“My mother started the trek with six of her children, her mother, and members of our extended family, but without our father (who joined us later in Sudan),” she said in a recent speech. “This pilgrimage was her personal exodus to freedom: on foot, for hundreds of kilometers, through a parched desert, fulfilling her dream of going up to Jerusalem. The daily march usually began at night, to avoid both the police and the heat. As we approached the Sudanese border, we were warned to walk quickly and to continue through the whole night. When all the families reached the thick bushes near the border, my mother asked me, ‘Where are your younger brothers?’ They had disappeared.”
The family was reunited and eventually made it to Israel.
Other winners were Yona Elian Keshet, one of Israel’s premier theater actresses, and Professor Hossam Haick, of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the head of the Laboratory for Nanomaterial-Based Devices (LNBD). He is recognized as a leader in nanomaterial-based sensing technologies.
Another winner was Professor Uriel Reichman, a law professor and founder of Reichman University in Herzliya, whom Herzog described as one of his mentors.
