Isaac Herzog, Accused by UN Panel of Inciting Genocide, to Deliver JTS Commencement Address

The Jewish Theological Seminary, a leading US rabbinical school, said late Thursday that Isaac Herzog, the president of the State of Israel, will deliver its commencement address next month.

A United Nations commission concluded late last year that Herzog incited genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, quoting comments he made shortly before Israel’s 2023 invasion saying Gazan civilians were responsible for Hamas’s October 7th attack on southern Israel.

JTS also said it would confer an honorary degree on Debra Messing, the early 2000s-era sitcom actor who has remade herself in recent years as a Zionist social media personality. Last fall, Messing drew national attention for posting a meme on social media that called Zohran Mamdani, at the time a candidate for New York City mayor, an “America-hating jihadist.”

The seminary, located in uptown Manhattan, is among the most important institutions of Jewish learning in the US. Though it has been committed to political Zionism since 1948, students and alumni have condemned Israel’s assault on Gaza, and in recent years some students have been agitating for more space for anti-Zionist ideas on campus.

With the decision to honor Herzog and Messing, the leadership of the seminary appears to be reasserting its institutional support for Israel, and pushing back against internal dissent.

JTS did not respond to a request for comment on Friday morning.

Late Thursday, students at JTS’s undergraduate school, List College, told Jewish Currents that they planned to voice their opposition to the invitation to Herzog internally.

Herzog, a former leader of Israel’s centrist Labor Party, has held the presidency of the State of Israel, a largely ceremonial role, since 2021. On October 13th, 2023, days after Hamas’s October 7th attacks, Isaac Herzog said of Gazan civilians: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true, this rhetoric about civilians who were not aware and not involved. It is absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état.”

In the two years that followed, Israel committed genocide in Gaza, according to international experts. An order by the International Court of Justice in early 2024 cited Herzog’s comments as potential evidence that charges of genocide against Israel are “plausible.” A separate report by a UN commission published in September of 2025 said that while Herzog “did not expressly call for the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza,” his comments in context “may reasonably be interpreted as incitement to the Israeli security forces personnel to target the Palestinians in Gaza as a group.”

Herzog has defended his October 13th comments, maintaining that he had said that “innocent civilians are not considered targets.” Yeshiva University, the modern Orthodox institution in uptown Manhattan, awarded Herzog an honorary degree in December.

Messing, who starred on the hit NBC sitcom Will & Grace from 1998 to 2006, emerged as a leading anti-Trump liberal during the first Trump administration. Vocal since her time on Will & Grace as a supporter of LGBTQ rights and other liberal causes, Messing was a prominent figure in the “Resistance” scene of the early Trump years. Since the October 2023, Messing has pivoted to using her social media platform for strident pro-Israel activism.

“It’s frankly outrageous,” said Audrey Sasson, executive director of Jews For Racial and Economic Justice, the New York-based left Jewish group. “It’s hard to wrap my head around giving an honorary anything to either of these individuals. What is it for? Unhinged racism and the active promotion of genocide? That a Jewish institution is celebrating them is that much more disturbing and stomach-turning, and an indication of the utter brokenness in our so-called legacy organizations.”