President Isaac Herzog honored 11 outstanding figures from a variety of fields with the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor throughout a ceremony on the President’s Residence on Sunday.
Recognizing their lifelong dedication to the nation, the ceremony highlighted the laureates’ lasting impression on Israeli society by way of science, tradition, academia, and public service.
The medal, established by president Shimon Peres in 2012, is awarded to these “who, by advantage of their abilities, service, or in another manner, have made an distinctive contribution to the State of Israel or to humanity.”
It’s the highest civilian recognition awarded by the State of Israel and is introduced to main figures in Israel and overseas from the fields of presidency, tradition, and public service.
This 12 months’s recipients had been Yona Elian-Keshet, Prof. Hossam Haick, Prof. Mooli Lahad, Prof. Hefziba Lifshitz, Prof. Yossi Leshem, Abie Moses, Ziva Mekonen, Moshe Nissim, Rabbi Haim Sabato, Yehuda Eder, and Prof. Uriel Reichman.
President Herzog honors recipients, highlights Israeli unity
“Each one among you is a beacon in your discipline. Each one among you is a real, private instance of the ability to make a distinction, not solely to the State of Israel and Israeli society, however to an excellent extent to the broader world as effectively,” the president remarked on the ceremony.
“There are individuals right here who merely modified the world, and there are actually individuals right here who made a decisive contribution to the nice identify of the State of Israel across the globe.”
The president additionally addressed the continued adjustments within the nation, together with calling for unity through the election interval.
“It’s exactly amid our disagreements, exactly throughout an election interval, that I’ll say once more and warn once more: elections are usually not a civil warfare! After the elections, we are going to all nonetheless be right here, as sisters and brothers,” he stated
Who’re the 11 recipients of the 2026 Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor?
5 of the recipients had been professors from numerous fields, together with Prof. Hossam Haick, an internationally acknowledged scientist specializing in nanotechnology and biomedicine on the Technion’s Wolfson School of Chemical Engineering; Prof. Mooli Lahad, a psychologist and professor at Tel-Hai College who’s an internationally acknowledged knowledgeable in resilience, psychotrauma, post-traumatic stress, and emergency intervention.
Prof. Hefziba Lifshitz of Bar-Ilan College’s College of Training, a researcher specializing within the studying potential of individuals with mental disabilities; Prof. Yossi Leshem, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv College’s College of Zoology, a outstanding ornithologist and ecologist who has spent practically 5 a long time researching fowl migration; and Prof. Uriel Reichman, a authorized scholar, instructional entrepreneur, and founding president and chairman of Reichman College.
Within the discipline of social advocacy, the president honored Ziva Mekonen, a social activist and the founder and CEO of Moms on Guard, which works in opposition to violence and racism focusing on Ethiopian Israelis, in addition to Abie Moses, who spent greater than three a long time advocating for victims of terrorism and bereaved households and has lengthy served voluntarily as chairman of the Victims of Terror Group.
For his or her work selling the humanities in Israel, Herzog additionally honored Yehuda Eder, a musician, producer, singer, educator, and cultural entrepreneur who based the Rimon College of Music and serves as its president, in addition to Yona Elian-Keshet, one among Israel’s main stage, movie, and tv actresses who additionally serves as chairwoman of the Israeli Union of Performing Arts.
Moreover, the president honored Moshe Nissim, a lawyer and former longtime Knesset member who served in a number of senior authorities positions, together with justice minister, finance minister, trade and commerce minister, and deputy prime minister, in addition to Rabbi Haim Sabato, a rabbi, writer, and co-founder and head of Yeshivat Birkat Moshe in Ma’ale Adumim.
