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00:00 been listening to Israel's President Isaac Hershock delivering an address to
00:04 the US Congress. He's the second Israeli president after his father to address
00:07 US lawmakers. His speech to Congress also marks modern Israel's celebration of its
00:13 75th year. There was a lot of applause during this speech but his visit comes
00:18 at a tenuous time as the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushes
00:22 forward with a controversial overhaul of the courts and on the heels of Israeli
00:27 forces carrying out one of their most intensive operations in the occupied
00:31 West Bank in two decades and as Israel's come under growing criticism from many
00:35 Democrats in the US. Let's bring in our correspondent in Washington, Ketavan
00:40 Gorgiastani. Ketavan, what was President Herzog's message to the US Congress? What
00:45 was he trying to accomplish here today?
00:49 Well the goal here was to remind Americans and those members of Congress
00:57 that he was speaking to about the long-running relationship, the strength
01:02 of the relationship between the United States and Israel and how far back it
01:07 goes and how much these two countries have been through together because as
01:11 you said these are tense times especially between the current
01:15 administrations whether it's the Biden administration and the Netanyahu
01:19 government. There have been quite a bit of tensions between these two
01:24 administrations and this speech from President Herzog was seen in Israel also
01:30 as sort of a mediator, was trying to be a sort of mediator between these tense
01:37 governments and the goal was to really focus on keeping the speech very
01:43 bipartisan between Democrats and Republicans and very balanced when it
01:48 came to some of the issues that they disagree on. Really a far cry from the
01:54 fiery and very aggressive tone that Benjamin Netanyahu had when he gave a
01:59 similar speech in front of Congress back in 2015 and so this message of a unity
02:05 between the United States and Israel was also associated with some of the main
02:12 issues that Israel has. Of course President Herzog spoke about Iran, he
02:18 talked about how this was in a common national security interest for both
02:22 Israel and the United States for Iran not to get the nuclear power but he also
02:29 spoke about the Palestinians and he had some very words, strong words for what he
02:40 sees as an attack on Israel and really saying that Israel wants peace but the
02:46 Palestinians at least some groups in the from the Palestinian side don't want
02:51 peace because they attack Israel. These are things of course that many people
02:55 especially in this Congress disagree with and finally there was this message
03:00 about the criticism coming from the United States. You mentioned the judicial
03:05 overhaul, this was something that he addressed and he compared the US and
03:10 Israel right now with this criticism to a family that disagrees. He said you can
03:16 disagree at the dinner table among family members but don't forget that you
03:21 are a family and the US and Israel are a family that sometimes disagree, they
03:25 accept each other's disagreements but they are still very united because that
03:30 was the overarching message is that even though the US has expressed some
03:36 criticism about what is going on in Israel it does not mean that the US is
03:40 not standing next to Israel and that Israel is not standing next to the
03:46 United States.