Erez Biton has become the first person of Mizrachi descent to win the Israel Prize in Literature. Biton was born in Algeria and has been blind since childhood.
The prize committee wrote about Biton, “The five books of poetry he published...are the epitome of courageous dealings, sensitive and deep with a wide range of personal and collective experiences centered around the pain of migration, planting roots in the country, and the reestablishment of the Mizrahi identity as an integral part of the overall Israeli portrait.”