As Haaretz declares, Israel’s so-called left Zionists such as the sociologist Eva Illouz [pictured] have distinguished themselves by their moral blindness in face of the genocide their own government is inflicting on the people of Gaza.
The Israel Prize for Blindness Goes to Zionist Intellectuals – Opinion – Haaretz.com
Hanin Majadli Mar 27, 2025 10:16 pm IST
Education Minister Yoav Kisch disqualified Eva Illouz from receiving the Israel Prize because of her “anti-Israel ideology.” The reason: In 2021, she signed a petition urging the International Criminal Court to investigate whether Israel has committed war crimes in the West Bank.
In response, Illouz told Haaretz, “For the past 18 months, I have devoted my energy to writing for the international press out of a desire to defend Israel. In the pages of the most prestigious newspapers in Spain, France and Germany, I never ceased explaining that Hamas is a terrorist organization, that Israel had the right to respond to a ground invasion of its territory, that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism and that the genocide accusations against Israel are nothing but a continuation of this same antisemitic discourse.”
In other words, after a year and a half in which Illouz was a loyal mouthpiece for the most right-wing Israeli propaganda, after she sacrificed personal ties and was publicly scorned for her positions, the country that she defended is also slapping her in the face. Maybe now Illouz will be forced to understand that this is the nature of the country she worked so hard to defend abroad.
Effectively, there’s no real difference between Illouz’s response to the war and its crimes and that of any other garden-variety Zionist leftist in Israel. This professor of sociology, with her broad knowledge and intellectual acuity, would have been expected to demonstrate profound morality and humane wisdom. Instead, none of these traits prevented her from displaying the same bias and dishonesty toward what Israel has done over the past year and a half.
It is no accident that Illouz, who is identified with the Zionist left, ultimately proved to be insufficiently Zionist for Kisch. What could be more Zionist than supporting and justifying massive death and destruction as part of the fight against “a world that doesn’t understand anything”? But for right-wing nationalists like Kisch – how predictably – it will never be enough, because they want her to also justify the crimes being committed in the West Bank and, in fact, any injustice Israel has ever committed or is now committing.
I have trouble understanding how Illouz and all the other Zionist intellectuals who like to call themselves, or pretend to be, leftists have dedicated so much of their writing since October 7, 2023 to deciphering esoteric strains of antisemitism in the global left, all for the purpose of averting their gazes from the murders perpetrated in their name and their country’s name in the Gaza Strip. Even if this wasn’t their intention, they have become agents of Israeli propaganda.
Education Minister Yoav Kisch, in the Knesset.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
After all, Illouz could have achieved instant fame and glory by refusing to accept any prize awarded by a state that has killed tens of thousands of Gazans. She should have refused to be a cog in the whitewashing machine of a country that killed more than 200 children in a single night. Instead, she did what everyone who identifies as a Zionist leftist is doing these days – she looked at Israel through a veil of illusions while ignoring the violent reality it has created.
How long will these people judge Israel by its “good intentions,” which somehow end in bloody tragedy for another people?
Will the day ever come when the academic community, including Illouz, understands that the Israel Prize is not a badge of honor but rather of shame? Apparently not. Illouz, of all people, symbolizes the Zionist left’s ongoing failure to apprehend Israel as it truly is, not as it would like it to be. It is an Israel Prize for blindness.
