Israeli academicians file lawsuit in Supreme Court against cancellation of Israel Prize

Several dozen representatives of the Israeli academia, including Nobel Prize winner Prof. Aaron Ciechanover, have filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of Israel demanding to overturn the decision of the Education Minister Yoav Kisch to announce this year's Israel Prize award only in one category.

The plaintiffs also demand that the Supreme Court prohibit the dissolution of the committee responsible for selecting Israel Prize winners.

At the end of February, Education Minister Yoav Kisch canceled the award, claiming that this year it should be presented only to figures who displayed "civic heroism" during the Israel-Hamas war.

Earlier, journalist Ben Caspit reported that the true reason for scraping all of the Israel Prize's traditional categories this year might be an attempt to avoid awarding the prize to Eyal Waldman. The Israeli tech giant is an outspoken critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and one of the organizers of protests against legal reform in Israel. Waldman's daughter and her partner were among those murdered at the Nova music festival in Re'im.

This week, Waldman publicly stated that the decision to cancel the Israel Prize award was imposed on Kisch "from above."