Israel more united than it seems, Netanyahu says at ceremony reburying remains of Herzl’s grandparents in Israel

Herzl’s paternal grandparents lived near Belgrade, and his grandfather served as a Jewish community leader who helped shape young Theodor’s attachment to Judaism and Zionism.

By Etgar Lefkovits, JNS

The bodies of Shimon and Rivka Herzl, which were exhumed last week in Belgrade, Serbia, were reburied next to the grave of their grandson, the Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl, on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

The ceremony, during which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke, occurred 77 years to the day that Herzl and his parents were reburied at the site in 1949.

“I believe that the unity among us is much broader than one tends to think,” Netanyahu said at the state ceremony.

The prime minister had to leave the ceremony, which ran about an hour in the late afternoon, abruptly after he spoke due to a security flare-up in Lebanon.

He told attendees that U.S. President Trump’s was “the best friend Israel ever had in the White House” and that the Jewish state’s existence, amid continued Iranian threats, is not up for negotiations “with or without an agreement.”

In his remarks, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that there is a need for diplomacy after Israel’s recent military successes.

“At this time, as we stand after nearly three years of a multi-front war, it is precisely the figure of Herzl the statesman that should guide us,” he said.

“After every military victory and achievement, the work of diplomacy and statesmanship must also follow.”

Herzl’s paternal grandparents lived near Belgrade, and his grandfather served as a Jewish community leader who helped shape young Theodor’s attachment to Judaism and Zionism.

Shimon Herzl was close to Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai, a Bosnian rabbi who was one of the influential precursors of modern Zionism.

The event, which a small group of dignitaries attended, involved “completing the last chapter of Herzl’s request,” Yizhar Hess, vice chairman of the World Zionist Organization, told JNS.

Hess, who was part of a small group that went to Serbia last week to retrieve the bodies from the small Belgrade cemetery where they had been buried for more than a century, said that the remains were ready for reburial two years ago.

Organizers decided to wait due to the Israeli hostages, whom Hamas still held in Gaza at the time.

“We felt it was not right to rebury them at the time when we had Israeli hostages living and dead still being held in Gaza,” Hess said.

Last decade, two of Theodor Herzl’s children and his sister were buried on the Jerusalem hilltop, as was his grandson, who took his own life in Washington after learning that his relatives, including his mother, had been murdered in the Holocaust.

On Wednesday, the remains of Herzl’s grandparents reached their final resting place, and the same curtain used to cover the grave of the grandson was used for his grandparents.