Israel’s President Isaac Herzog arrived Wednesday morning in Brussels for talks with European Union and NATO officials.
The talks will precede Herzog’s address to the European Union Parliament and Holocaust survivors on Thursday, marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“I will tell the story of the Holocaust’s victims and survivors,” Herzog promised in remarks to reporters prior to his departure.
“I will be moved to think that eighty years ago, nobody could have imagined that the head of a state of the Jewish People would stand before a European parliament and mark the most terrible event in the history of humanity.”
In all his meetings, Herzog vowed to “of course raise the enormous challenge facing us and the whole Middle East in the form of Iran, which is racing toward nuclear weapons, using terror throughout the Middle East, and supplying weapons used against the Ukrainian people. I shall also raise the issue of the hostages and MIAs, our sons, whom we call for Hamas to release immediately and return to Israel.”
Herzog is scheduled to meet with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and with a forum of ambassadors to the alliance to brief them on the security and political situation in the Jewish State.
Herzog was received at midday by Belgium’s King Philippe at the Royal Palace of Brussels, after which he visited the Athénée Ganenou Jewish school and met with pupils of all ages studying there.
Herzog thanked the monarch for the “warm attitude that the kingdom attributes to its Jewish communities” and suggested that Israel and Belgium should “deepen the friendship” and “work together to promote the common vision and values.”
He met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in the late afternoon, prior to his scheduled visit to the Great Synagogue of Europe in Brussels, and meetings with members of the Jewish communities in Brussels and Antwerp as well as with leaders of world Jewish organizations.
