President Moshe Katsav

Moshe Katsav was born in Yazd, Iran, in 1945 and came to Israel as a child in 1951, growing up in the transit camp that became Kiryat Malakhi, where he was elected mayor at the age of 24. A Likud member of the Knesset and minister, on 31 July 2000 he was elected the eighth president by the Knesset, defeating Shimon Peres, and took office the next day: the first president from the Likud and the first born in Iran.

In 2006 former employees accused him of sexual offences. In January 2007 he suspended himself, and Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik became acting president. He resigned on 1 July 2007, two weeks before the end of his term. On 30 December 2010 the Tel Aviv District Court convicted him of two counts of rape, sexual harassment and obstruction of justice; he was sentenced to seven years in prison, the Supreme Court upheld the verdict, and he served five years before his release on parole in December 2016.