Press Releases

Your Excellency, Dear President Herzog,

It gives me great pleasure to be hosting you in your first official visit to our country after the assumption of your high duties as the President of the State of Israel.  

Dear Isaac, this might be your first visit in your current capacity, but your ties with the island have been forged before your own birth.  

Let me offer a brief glimpse into this connection, which is in itself an example of the unparalleled links between our countries and peoples throughout history.  

Your grandparents were an integral part of what might be called the island’s first large-scale business venture in agriculture in the 1930’s. What began as a vision of reclaiming the marshes and putting them into good use, is still in place today, in what we all know as the Fasouri plantations.

This formed a permanent connection to the ever-enterprising spirit of the Israeli people.  

The next decade of the twentieth century found, then-colonial Cyprus, becoming a place of internment for 53,000 Shoah survivors, on their way to their Homeland.

The Herzog family, making the best use of its connections to the island, provided concrete and significant assistance towards the interned Jews, giving them a glimmer of hope in humanity in those darkest of times. 

Dear Isaac, as Head of the Jewish Agency, your personal contribution in establishing close cooperation between the diasporas of Cyprus, Israel and Greece, parts of our societies we all cherish and count on, was both decisive and deeply appreciated. 

Your campaign against antisemitism is well-known and is more topical than ever in these challenging times of surging revisionism and xenophobia.

Therefore, it is only fitting that, in line with our governmental policy and echoing the public sentiment in Cyprus, our country has recently obtained the status of an observer member to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), as proof of our strong commitment to respect for diversity and combatting anti-Semitism in all its forms.   

This message of tolerance reflects exactly the philosophy of the Republic of Cyprus, as testified by its efforts to establish a culture of dialogue and understanding among the states of this troubled region. 

Dear Isaac, in view of your heritage, your contribution to-date and of your future efforts in promoting universal values and enhancing the ties between our two nations, I wish to grant you one of the highest honors the Republic of Cyprus can bestow:

The Grand Collar of the Order of Makarios the Third. 

(RM/MG/IK)