Yeshayahu Leibowitz - Israel Prize

Israel Prize

In 1993, he was selected for the Israel Prize. Before the award ceremony, Leibowitz was invited to speak to the Israel Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, where his controversial remarks calling upon Israeli soldiers to refuse orders triggered outrage (and Yitzhak Rabin had threatened to boycott the ceremony). The jury convened to discuss the possibility of withdrawing the prize, but Leibowitz himself announced that he would refuse to accept it, because he did not want to create antagonism when receiving the prize.

Read more about this topic:  Yeshayahu Leibowitz

Famous quotes containing the words israel and/or prize:

    For in the division of the nations of the whole earth he set a ruler over every people; but Israel is the Lord’s portion: whom, being his firstborn, he nourisheth with discipline, and giving him the light of his love doth not forsake him. Therefore all their works are as the sun before him, and his eyes are continually upon their ways.
    Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus 17:17-9.

    Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me
    From mine own library with volumes that
    I prize above my dukedom.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)