His father was Yosef Burg, a German-born Israeli politician and longtime government minister for the National Religious Party.

[7][8] When it was cut, he sued to continue to receive these benefits, but lost the court case, with the judge saying, "Burg didn't explain the fact that he also uses the car for his own personal business.

"[9] In 1999, Burg returned to domestic politics, and was elected to the Knesset on Ehud Barak's One Israel list (an alliance of Labor, Meimad and Gesher).

Although Prime Minister Barak backed another candidate, Burg was elected Speaker of the Knesset, a position he held until early 2003.

Following Barak's defeat in the 2001 election for Prime Minister and his subsequent resignation, Burg ran for the Labor Party leadership, and won amid accusations of voter fraud.

Also in 2003, Burg published an article in Yedioth Ahronoth in which he declared, "Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centers of Israeli escapism.

In 2007, a Burg-led consortium won the rights to purchase Ashot Ashkelon Industries, but the sale was cancelled by the Israeli government.

There had also been a review by the State Comptroller and the Israeli Police "into suspicions that [Burg] was a straw-man for Ian Nigel Davis and Aviv Algor.

(Davis and Algor have been indicted in a securities case, on charges of fraudulently obtaining the approval of Middle East Tube Ltd. shareholders for a 250,000-shekel monthly management fee.)

[13] Burg was embroiled in a controversy over an "alleged missing 270,000,000 New Israel Shekels," money lent to Vita Pri Hagalil.

"[14] In 2007, Burg published a book called Defeating Hitler in which he claimed that Israeli society is fascist and violent by the continuing trauma over the Holocaust.

[19] In April 2008, Burg signed a letter of support for the recently created J Street American left-wing lobby group.

On the possibility of one state, he wrote, "It is likely to be a country with nationalist, racist and religious discrimination and one that is patently not democratic, like the one that exists today.

"[24] In early December 2013, he confirmed the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons during a speech at a conference aimed at denuclearising the Middle East.

[2] In a subsequent interview, he criticized Israel for continuing to follow Zionism as a national ideology and calling for the Law of Return to be reduced to a minimum.