Israel Prize nominee accuses Netanyahu associate of sabotaging his award
Mellanox CEO Eyal Waldman tells Knesset Science Committee that instructions ‘came from above’ to cancel prize categories so he would not win award
Mellanox founder Eyal Waldman told the Knesset Science Committee on Sunday that he had been told that an associate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu actively ensured he would not get the award.
A recent report claimed that Education Minister Yoav Kisch decided to shrink the annual Israel Prize to a couple of war-related categories this year in order to prevent Waldman, a prominent government critic, from winning an award in one of the traditional categories.
Waldman charged that businessman Shlomi Fogel, who has close ties to Netanyahu, exerted heavy pressure on members of the nominating committee for the Israel Prize to recommend another candidate “from the ‘correct’ sector.”
The entrepreneur said that his potential nomination for the award “did not go down well with Education Minister Yoav Kish, the prime minister’s associates, and perhaps the prime minister himself.”
“I believe [Kisch] did not act on his own accord but with instructions from above,” Waldman said.
No statement was immediately made by Netanyahu following the accusation, but a statement on behalf of Fogel said: “Eyal Waldman is once of Israeli hi-tech’s leading officials and is certainly deserving of an Israel Prize. Fogel has no connection to the decision to cancel the prize.”
After the announcement last week that the prize, which is usually awarded in a ceremony on the eve of Independence Day, would not be given this year in multiple categories during the ongoing war, Kisch said in a statement that the decision “stemmed only from wartime situation.”
Waldman, however, challenged the statement during the committee meeting on Sunday, arguing that if Kisch’s claim were true, other Independence Day events such as the Torch Lighting Ceremony and the Bible Quiz should have been canceled too, but all other annual events were currently set to be held as usual.
“The claim that awards are not given out in a time of war is not only an invented claim, but it is also a ridiculous claim,” Waldman told the committee. “It is precisely during war that the civilian fields of entrepreneurship, science, and culture must be strengthened.
“Families sacrifice what is dearest to them and the best of our children have lost their lives to protect and preserve civil society. A country where culture, science, and entrepreneurship are abolished ceases to be a democratic country. It is precisely in these terrible times that civil society must be strengthened,” Waldman said.
Waldman’s daughter Danielle was among 364 people who were murdered by terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7 when Palestinian terror group Hamas led a devastating attack that killed 1,200 people. The thousands of attackers who burst through the border from Gaza also abducted 253 people who were taken as hostages and held in the Strip.
“This is my country, my home for which I fought and whose grounds are soaked in the blood of my beloved daughter Danielle and her dear boyfriend Noam Shay who was like a son to me,” Waldman told the committee in tears.
The Israel Prize has been awarded to Israelis in the fields of social sciences, humanities, life and exact sciences, art, and special contributions to the State of Israel and Israeli society. The prize was created in 1953 by then-education minister Ben-Zion Dinor and has been awarded every year since, even in years when Israel was at war.
