Nine outstanding Israelis awarded Israel Prize
Among recipients are father of lone soldiers, the man behind the renovated City of David and a former Olympic athlete
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
Nine outstanding Israelis were awarded the prestigious Israel Prize on Tuesday at a Jerusalem ceremony which wound up the official part of the country’s 69th Independence Day celebrations.
The recipients included one of the most successful Jewish Olympians in history, a leader in cancer research and a pianist credited with opening up the world of classical music to the broader public.
In the presence of President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and other dignitaries, two lifetime achievement awards were also presented.
One was to the controversial right-wing activist David “Davideleh” Be’eri, who has led the movement to renovate the City of David and increase the Jewish presence in largely Arab East Jerusalem.
Be’eri founded the Ir David (City of David) Foundation, known in Hebrew as Elad, whose central project is the renovated City of David archaeological park, just outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls.
Elad also, controversially, purchases homes in the surrounding Arab village of Silwan — sometimes via Muslim middle men — and rents them to Jews, a move that has led to charges that Be’eri is fueling tensions in the city.
The judges wrote that Be’eri initiated, established, and leads Ir David “as a site of heritage, education and national and international tourism of the highest order.”
The other lifetime achievement recipient was Zvi Levy, known as “the father of lone soldiers,” who now suffers from a muscular disease and who accepted his award from a wheelchair, to a standing ovation.
Levy founded the Lone Soldiers organization, which supports some 3,500 young people annually who leave their families, usually abroad, to volunteer for Israeli army service, and more than 1,500 Israeli soldiers who come from disadvantaged backgrounds or are estranged from their parents.
After a long career in the paratroopers unit, he has looked after lone soldiers from more than 40 countries, with most coming from the former Soviet Union, the US, Europe, Ethiopia and South America.
“It began 25 years ago or more,” Levy explained in a video made for the event. “Raful [Rafael Eitan, the late chief of staff, who developed a program for disadvantaged youth to do army service] said, ‘Listen Zvika, there are kids who don’t enlist, who sit around in Migdal HaEmek [a northern town with a high immigrant population], you won’t get them to come. I’ll help you to enlist them.”
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Levy went on, “I would get up at four in the morning to work in the fields and at 3pm, I would wander around the development towns [often poor towns established in the 1950s to house new immigrants] and slowly recruit these youngsters.”
The other Israel Prize recipients were Uri Shaked, for groundbreaking engineering research, Malka Margalit for her research in special education and learning difficulties, Yehuda Liebes, an expert on Jewish mystical literature, Arie Vardi, a classical pianist, conductor and teacher, Agnes Keleti, one of the most successful Jewish Olympic athletes of all time, Yosef Yarden, a leading cancer researcher and Nili Cohen, for her research in the field of law.
The awards were presented at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center.
Also in attendance were Supreme Court President Miriam Naor, Knesset Speaker Yoel “Yuli” Edelstein, Naftali Bennett, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and Education Ministry Director General Shmuel Abuhav.
The prize committee, chaired by Academy of the Hebrew Language chairman Moshe Bar-Asher, included Zvi Hauser, a former cabinet secretary, former Education Ministry director general Dalit Stauber, Eyal Gabbai, a former director general of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, and Pnina Trommer, a linguist at Tel Aviv University.
The selection of recipients was not without controversy, however
Left-wing painter and writer Yair Garbuz missed his chance for an award in the fine arts because of the selection committee’s failure to reach a unanimous decision on his candidacy, which gave right-wing religious Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) the opportunity to veto him.
Two years ago, Garbuz delivered an election rally address where he mourned the left’s loss of the country to a “handful of amulet-kissers and idol-worshipers.”
His remark was perceived as a sharp attack against traditional skullcap-wearers, Sephardi Jews and the right-wing in general, and aroused harsh public criticism from across the political spectrum.
The Times of Israel Community.