A globally acclaimed academic, Eva Illouz has been a vocal advocate of Israel’s right to defend itself in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks that sparked the war in Gaza.
That advocacy, however, has not shielded the French-Israeli academic from the wrath of Israel’s hard-right government, whose increasingly authoritarian bent she has frequently denounced.
Education Minister Yoav Kisch on Monday said he had chosen to disqualify Illouz from receiving the Israel Prize, the country’s highest cultural and academic award, over her decision to sign a 2021 petition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Kisch, a member of Prime Minister [Binyamin Netanyahu](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=france 24 tag)’s Likud party, cited the court’s alleged bias against Israel in a letter to the prize committee, in which he accused Illouz of ideological “hostility” towards her home country.
“There is absolutely no place for awarding Israel's highest state honour to someone who – clearly motivated by anti-Israel sentiment – chose to appeal to an institution (the ICC) that eagerly files false complaints against [Israeli army] commanders and soldiers,” he wrote.
Kisch added that he would reconsider Illouz’s candidacy if she retracted her position and “chooses to publicly apologise”.
ICC petition
Illouz, 63, was the jury’s unanimous choice for this year’s Israel Prize, whose past recipients include writers A. B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz, former prime minister Golda Meir, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust institute.
A French-Israeli dual national of Moroccan origin, the sociologist has published a dozen books and has been translated into more than 20 languages. She currently teaches at the prestigious École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris after a distinguished career in Israeli academia.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz described her as “arguably the leading authority in the sociology of emotions worldwide”.
In 2021, Illouz was among more than 180 Israeli scientists, public figures and intellectuals who signed a petition calling on the ICC to investigate whether Israel had committed war crimes in the Palestinian territories. The text, whose signatories included 10 past winners of the Israel Prize, urged the ICC not to rely solely on Israeli authorities to carry out such an investigation.
Earlier that year, in a landmark decision that angered Israel, the Hague-based court ruled that it had jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza because Palestine was determined to be a member of the court.
The ICC further infuriated the Israeli government last year by issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and then defence minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza.
Defending Israel
A regular contributor to publications including Haaretz, French daily Le Monde and Germany’s Die Zeit, Illouz has been a relentless critic of Netanyahu and his far-right allies, whom she accuses of dividing the country, sapping its democracy and undermining the rule of law.
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05:39
But she has also been fiercely critical of the anti-Israeli bias she attributes to parts of the progressive left in Western countries, lamenting a lack of empathy in the wake of the October 7 attacks and accusing pro-Palestinian protesters in US campuses of effectively denying Israel’s right to exit.
In a recent Le Monde op-ed co-authored with other French intellectuals, Illouz denounced the radical left’s use of the word “Zionist” as an insult, writing: “Only Jews who declare themselves to be ‘anti-Zionist’ are now forgiven for being Jewish.”
Speaking to the French newspaper on Wednesday, Shai Lavi, the head of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, described the government’s veto of Illouz as a tragic own goal for Israel.
“I know of no academic, let alone one of Professor Illouz's international reputation, who has devoted as much time and energy as she has to fighting anti-Semitism and defending Israel in a balanced way over the past eighteen months,” Lavi told Le Monde, lambasting an “extremely stupid decision”.
‘Dismantling democracy’
The controversy comes amid growing concern in Israel about democratic backsliding and an encroachment on academic freedom under Netanyahu’s hardline government – echoing similar concerns in the US under President Donald trump.
“Not a week goes by without scandalous measures being taken against liberal institutions in Israel, particularly higher education establishments,” said Lavi.
Illouz described her case “as a small cog in a larger process of dismantling democracy”. The education minister’s actions, she told Le Monde, “show that Israel is now going down the road of authoritarian regimes, and all Zionist Jews should be very worried”.
While Netanyahu’s government presses ahead with its plans to rein in the judiciary, despite days of mass street protests, judges may yet thwart Kisch’s efforts to deny Illouz her Israel Prize.
Jury members have the option of appealing to the Supreme Court, which has ruled in the past that the prize should be awarded strictly on professional merit.
In 2022, the court ruled that the education minister had no right to deny computer scientist Oded Goldreich the prize over his alleged support for anti-Israel boycotts. In the ruling, Justice Isaac Amit, who now serves as the court’s president, warned that disqualifying Goldreich due to statements he made was “a surefire recipe for politicising the prize” and “an invitation to monitoring, surveilling and persecuting academics”.