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:
“appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 8:5.
Leaders of ancient Israel asking the last of the judges, Samuel, to appoint a king.
“Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose my own. It would indeed give me a certain household joy to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy, or search of stars, and come down to warm sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn always the vanishing of my mighty gods.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)