Education Minister Yoav Kisch retracted his cancellation of several categories in this year’s Israel Prize awards and announced on Wednesday that the prizes will be awarded as usual.
“I chose to change the initial decision and award the Israel prizes in the various categories, alongside the prize in the Revival category,” the education minister stated on Wednesday.
Kisch said the legal advisers did not back his position regarding the Israel prize in court.
“It is clear to everyone that we do not have the luxury of further unnecessary debates, and the aspiration of every one of us should be for widespread unity,” he added.
Israel Prize backlash
In February, Kisch announced that he had eliminated the traditional Israel prize categories and created one category instead: ‘civic heroism,’ which would be awarded to six recipients.
The decision sparked a severe backlash, with some alleging it was made to avoid granting the prize to Eyal Waldman, co-founder of Mellanox Technologies and staunch critic of the judicial reform legislation that the government pushed before October 7.
Waldman’s daughter, Danielle, and her partner, Noam, were killed at the Nova music festival on October 7.
In December, Maariv’s Ben Caspit reported that the committee had decided to award the 2024 Israel Prize in entrepreneurship to Waldman.
Following Kisch’s decision, the High Court of Justice ordered the minister to explain why the prize was canceled.
On Tuesday, Kisch announced the Israel Prize in the revival and civic heroism category would be awarded to Menachem Kalmanson and Ithiel Zohar, the “Elchanan Team.” On October 7, Zohar, Kalmanson, and Kalmanson’s brother Elchanan headed from Otniel to the Gaza border communities, where they saved dozens of residents of Kibbutz Be’eri, returning repeatedly to the beseiged kibbutz to rescue people.
During one of the rescue attempts, Elchanan was killed by a terrorist.
Leon Kreim and Matan Wasserman contributed to this article.