Education minister strips Israel Prize from professor over ICC war crimes petition
Yoav Kisch says he will not honor sociologist Eva Illoutz, citing 2021 document she signed with 180 others urging The Hague court not to trust Israel to probe accusations itself
Education Minister Yoav Kisch said he will not allow the Israel Prize to be awarded to sociologist Eva Illouz because of a petition she filed with others in 2021 urging the International Criminal Court not to trust Israel to investigate war crimes allegations itself.
Kisch on Monday sent a letter to the prize committee members instructing them to reconsider their selection.
In 2021, the ICC said it would open a probe of actions by Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. In May of that year, over 180 Israeli scientists, intellectuals and public figures asked the ICC’s chief prosecutor at the time, Fatou Bensouda, not to rely on Israel to investigate the accusations against it. According to Haaretz, 10 previous Israel Prize winners also put their names to the appeal.
“Independent of academic achievements,” Illouz filed a “serious and unusual request to an international institution that is acting against Israel, against IDF soldiers and members of the security forces, and casts aspersions on the country’s basic systems,” Kisch said in a statement Monday.
His move against Illouz was first reported early in the day by Channel 12
Kisch said he has “no intention of presenting the Israel Prize” to someone “who chose, out of a clear anti-Israel ideology, to approach an institution that does not hesitate to file false complaints” against the army “and is busy collaborating with terrorist organizations.”
Kisch was apparently referring to the court’s issuing of arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes relating to the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip that started on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led a devastating invasion of southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
The minister, who has the final say on approving prize nominations, said he had sent a letter to the prize committee asking its members to pick someone else.
However, Kisch said, if Illouz publicly apologizes and pulls her signature from the ICC document, he will reconsider his position.
Illouz is a member of the Sociology and Anthropology department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in the past was the president of the Bezalel Academy. She has written 12 books that have been translated into 23 languages and won several international prizes.
There have been past clashes between an education minister and Israel Prize winners.
In 2021, then-education minister Gallant refused to award the prize to Mathematician Prof. Oded Goldreich, accusing him of supporting boycotts against Israel. The prize committee went to the High Court, which ruled it should be awarded to him as initially decided.
The prize was eventually given to Goldreich the following year — months after the official Israel Prize ceremony when others were honored — in a private event at the Education Ministry, though the minister at the time, Yifat Shasha-Biton, who had also opposed Goldreich’s nomination, did not attend.
