Day before court deadline, education minister reinstates regular Israel Prize categories
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel

The Israel Prize ceremony will be held as usual on Independence Day, with the traditional award categories alongside two new categories created after the October 7 attack, Education Minister Yoav Kisch announces.
The notice comes a day before a deadline given by the High Court of Justice for Kisch and the government to respond to petitions demanding the reversal of the earlier decision to drastically pare down the Israel Prize for 2024. It also comes a day after Kisch announced that the 2024 Israel Prize for “Civilian Heroism” would be awarded to Menachem Kalmanson and Itiel Zohar, of the West Bank settlement of Otniel, for their bravery in battle outside the Gaza Strip on October 7.
In a statement, Kisch says that after talking with Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who “unfortunately could not defend my position at the High Court… I chose to change the previous decision and give the Israel Prize in the various categories” alongside the new awards.
The award ceremony will be held “in a different format” in light of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, the minister notes.
In mid-February, the government announced that the traditional categories for the prize, the country’s highest civilian honor, would be canceled for 2024, and two new categories related to the ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza would be awarded instead: “Societal Responsibility” for civic efforts and volunteering, and “Citizen Heroism” for civilian acts of bravery.
The Maariv news outlet later reported that Kisch had made the change to avoid bestowing the Entrepreneurship Award on the leading candidate, businessman Eyal Waldman, a prominent critic of the government’s judicial overhaul agenda whose daughter was murdered in the Supernova massacre on October 7.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.