– Israeli academic to use cash prize to help Palestinians:
A professor who won the Israel Prize – considered one of the country’s highest honours – has pledged to donate a cash award to an Israeli group dedicated to helping Palestinians.
American-born Israeli David Shulman, a professor of Asian studies at the Hebrew university in Jerusalem who won the award for academic work, said he would donate the $20,000 prize to Ta’ayush – or Living together – an organisation he helped to found that advocates for Palestinians.
Shulman was given the honour this week as part of celebrations to mark the foundation of the Israeli state, an anniversary marked by Palestinians as al-Nakba, or “the catastrophe”.
“I hesitated to accept the prize given the deteriorating situation [in the occupied Palestinian territories] which includes the persecution of Ta’ayush and other peace and human rights activists by the establishment and the far right who seek to perpetuate the occupation,” he said in a YouTube video.
“We in Ta’ayush feel an ethical duty to defend the innocent civilian population and to stand by them in the face of ongoing violence.”
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