PM nixes appointment of 3 Israel Prize judges

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the candidacy of three Israel Prize judges: Avner Holtzman, Ariel Hirschfeld and Chaim Sharir. In response, two judges, Ram Levi and Gail Hareven, quit the panel.

The Israel Prize is considered one of the highest honors the State of Israel can bestow. Every year on Independence Day a panel of judges awards the prize to individuals or groups that have displayed excellence in humanities, sciences or the arts. Additionally, every year there is a lifetime achievement award.

Representatives of the Education Ministry, which is responsible for the Israel Prize, reached out to Holtzman, Hirschfeld and Sharir approximately a month ago to invite them to be panel judges. The three were then informed by a representative of the ministry that their final writs of approval would soon be formally signed.

Holtzman and Hirschfeld, who are professors of Hebrew literature at Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University, respectively, were to be judges for the literature prize, while Sharir, a prominent television and film producer, was set to be a judge in the field of cinema.

But last week, Holtzman, Hirschfeld and Sharir were contacted again, after they had already received cartons of material on the candidates and begun the process of judging, and informed that their writ of approval was refused by Netanyahu, who has been acting education minister since the previous minister, Shai Piron, resigned in December.

“A few days ago, the person in charge of the prizes in the Education Ministry, David Felber, apologized profusely and said that the Prime Minister’s Office had refused to approve my appointment. He was unable to tell me the reason,” Hirschfeld told Haaretz.

Hirschfeld linked his dismissal from the panel to an opinion piece he wrote several months ago that critiqued the prime minister’s use of a poem by Hayim Nahman Bialik in a speech on the killing of three Israeli youths this summer. He called it “unconscionable” that his membership on the panel should be revoked suddenly because of what he had written.

Sharir told Haaretz that several days after he had been rejected, Felber, contacted him again to re-offer him a spot on the panel. “This past Friday, in the afternoon, Felber called me one more time, apologized again and asked that I come back to the panel,” he said.

Felber explained to him that the replacement they found had resigned. “I told him that I do not intend to help them with what seems to be an attempt to rearrange the makeup of the judgment panel,” Sharir said. “He called another time on Saturday night, but my position had not changed.”

Hareven, an award-winning author, left the panel of judges in protest, as did Levi, himself an Israel Prize winner in Communications.

Levi decided to step down from the panel “in light of the unethical and illogical management of the issue by the Prime Minister’s Office.”

“I have more than a guess as to why these people were humiliated and why, after they were already offered the position and accepted it and even received materials, they were suddenly notified that, ‘Actually, never mind,'” Levi said.

As a general rule, the Education Ministry adopts a hands-off approach and allows professionals in every given field to appoint the judging panel. So refusing the appointment of three judges is an exceptional occurrence.

But one source close to the event told Haaretz the prime minister “has a right to say that he doesn’t want them on the committee. A minister is not a rubber stamp.”