For their “defense of the rights of the Jewish people,” an international panel has selected the late Senator Henry Jackson, imprisoned Soviet Jewish activist losif Begun and former French Cabinet Minister Simone Veil as the recipients of the first “Jabotinsky Prize: Shield of Jerusalem” awards, it was announced here today. The three will share the $100,000 award.
The panel, meeting privately here, also gave a special award of $100,000 to former Israeli Premier Menachem Begin for his “life-long dedication to the defense of the Jewish people, which is unique in our era.”
The creation of the awards was announced last summer by Eryk Spektor, chairman of the Jabotinsky Foundation, a New York based non-profit educational organization. Spektor said he hoped the Jabotinsky Prizes would become “the Nobel Prize of the Jewish world.” Spektor contributed $50,000 to the prizes with the balance coming from Jewish leaders.
The jurors for this year’s award included: Spektor; Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winning economist; I.I. Rabi, physicist; Morris Abram, attorney and educator and chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry; Reuben Hecht, an Israeli industrialist; Charlotte Jacobson, president of the Jewish National Fund; Milton Petrie, philanthropist; Simon Rifkind, jurist and attorney; and Lord Weidenfeld, a British publisher and government advisor. Spektor said all the selections were approved unanimously.
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