Washington – Met by raucous applause, Israel's President Isaac Herzog dubbed "Palestinian terror" a "moral disgrace" and said that it "undermines any future peace" in a historic address to a joint session of U.S. Congress on Wednesday.

Invited by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Israel's president waxed lyrical about the "shared values" between Israel and the U.S., and drew attention to his father Chaim Herzog's own address to Congress during his presidency in 1987. 

In the first part of his speech, Herzog addressed Iran's nuclear program, which he described as "a threat to the region and beyond." 

"Allowing Iran to become a nuclear threshold state, either through omission or diplomatic commission, is unacceptable," he said, and called for the “Israel and the United States to act forcefully together.”

“The world cannot remain indifferent to Iran’s call to wipe Israel off the map," he added.

Despite the warm reception from both parties, the speech was boycotted by five Democrats, including Palestinian-American Representative Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

The speech also comes in the shadow of a major bipartisan motion to declare that Israel is not a "racist state," after Rep. Pramila Jayapal from the Democratic Party backtracked on her comments describing Israel in these words. 

Herzog praised Israel's cooperation with Egypt and Jordan, and the "warm peace" of the Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco. He also said that he "prays" for peace with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

After speaking at length about normalization agreements, Herzog turned to the Palestinians. The president said that he hopes that Israel will “one day make peace with our Palestinian neighbors,” and claimed that “over the years, Israel has taken bold steps toward peace and made far-reaching proposals."

"However, true peace cannot be anchored in violence," Herzog said. “Palestinian terror against Israel or Israelis undermines any future peace," he said.

He also condemned Hamas for holding the bodies of Israeli soldiers.

Israel's president also commended U.S. President Joe Biden's plan to combat antisemitism, but also pushed the conflation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. "Questioning Jewish people's legitimate right to self-determination is not diplomacy, it's antisemitism," he added.

Biden and Herzog met on Tuesday to discuss "key issues of mutual concern, including enhanced coordination to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and Iran’s growing defense partnership with Russia.  They noted the strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship, based on the bedrock of shared democratic values, and discussed the need for a consensus-based approach to the judicial reform package."

The judicial overhaul has been one of the main causes of a rupture between the U.S. president and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Earlier in the week, the two held a phone call after which Netanyahu said that he had been invited to the White House, though no official date has been set. 

In his speech, Herzog said that Israelis going through a “heated and painful debate…revisiting and renegotiating the balance of our institutional powers in the absence of a written constitution.”

However, he described the fierce division as the “the clearest tribute to the fortitude of Israel’s democracy.”

"As president of Israel I am here to tell the American people that I have great confidence in Israeli democracy, although we are working through sour issues, just like you...Israel has democracy in its DNA," he added.

The White House readout on Biden and Herzog's meeting also said that the U.S. President "reiterated his commitment to maintaining a path for a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the best avenue to a lasting and just peace, and to providing Israelis and Palestinians equal measures of freedom, prosperity and security.  The President stressed the need to take additional measures to improve the security and economic situation in the West Bank and prevent acts of terrorism."