Israel Prize stripped from winner over war crimes petition won’t go to anyone else
Award committee unable to agree on alternative after education minister blocked giving award to Eva Illouz for signing 2021 document urging ICC not to trust Israel to investigate itself
An Israel Prize that the education minister pulled from the winner over her petitioning of the International Criminal Court regarding accusations of war crimes committed by the country will not be awarded to anyone else.
The prize for sociology, which was supposed to have gone to Eva Illouz, will be shelved as the award selection committee could not agree on a replacement winner, Hebrew media reported Sunday.
Last month, Education Minister Yoav Kisch said he would not allow the Israel Prize to be awarded to 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 at the time instructed the prize committee members to reconsider their selection. However, they were unable to unanimously agree on an alternative, as is required by protocol, reports said.
Kisch, who has the final say on approving prize nominations, had offered that Illouz could still receive the prize if she publicly apologized and pulled her signature from the ICC petition.
In an op-ed last week published by Haaretz, Illouz declared, “I will not take back my signature because I will not bow to the attempt to force citizens who are fighting for the future of the country to surrender to the dictations of a minister.”
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.
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.
But Kisch said last month 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 Israel Prize, considered among the most prestigious in the country, is a collection of awards presented each year in four categories: Jewish studies, the humanities, and social sciences; life and exact sciences; culture, arts, communication, and sports; and lifetime achievement.
It was first instituted in 1953, and the ceremony is held each year as part of the Independence Day celebrations. The number of actual prizes handed out can vary and, in recent years, has ranged from around eight to fourteen.
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.
The Times of Israel Community.