The Israel Defense Prize, in honor of Eliyahu Golomb, is a prize awarded annually to people and organizations who made significant contributions to the defense of the State of Israel.
The prize was first awarded in 1958 and it is awarded each year by the President of Israel in proximity to the Israeli Day of Independence. It is usually given for exceptional technological breakthroughs, alongside an annual award for lifetime achievements. Until 2003 there have been 730 recipients.
The recipients are chosen by the Minister of Defense on the basis of recommendations given by an external committee appointed by the Minister. In 2008 the award was for the sum of 36,000 NIS.
Recipients of the Israel Defense Prize usually remain in confidentiality for various periods of time. Some of the past recipients include Israel Tal, Moshe Arens, Uzi Gal and various teams of the Intelligence corps, the Mossad, the General Security Service and weapon industries.
Famous quotes containing the words israel, defense 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.
“... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)
“To become a token woman—whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your sisters—is to become something less than a man ... since men are loyal at least to their own world-view, their laws of brotherhood and self-interest.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)