Left-wing writer David Grossman won cash prize from a fund sponsored by the Prime Minister's Office Wednesday – but refused to shake hands with the prime minister.
Grossman joined 10 other people who will share a $1 million prize from the AMEN Fund but chose to limit his handshakes to Prize Commission Chairman Judge Gavriel Bach and one other panel member. He then took a step back, deliberately avoiding a handshake with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who glowered back at him, according to the report by Channel 2 TV.
Grossman lost his son, Sgt. First Class Uri Grossman, in the final days of the 2006 Second Lebanon War when his tank was hit by a missile in the southern Lebanese village of Khirbet Kasif.
Prime Minister Olmert was held responsible by the interim report of the Winograd Committee for the mismanagement of the Second Lebanon War, together with Defense Minister Amir Peretz and former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz.
Haaretz reported that the Prime Minister was informed ahead of time that Grossman would not be shaking his hand. Grossman also did not shake hands with Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, who sat next to the Prime Minister, further away from Grossman. Both remained seated, therefore, when Grossman accepted the prize. Beinisch said, however, that she had been told before the ceremony Grossman would not shake her hand publicly. She added that she was not surprised by this; "I shook his hand earlier," she told reporters. It was not clear what prompted Grossman to avoid a public handshake with the Supreme Court President.
Grossman, author of The Yellow Wind, a controversial book on Palestinian Authority Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, has been extremely vocal in his criticism of the Olmert government and its handling of the 2006 war.
The AMEN Fund's EMET prize, which is supervised by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is awarded annually to recognize special contributions to society in the fields of art, science and culture.
The AMEN Fund was established by a group of South American Friends of Israel in 1999. A special prize committee that includes representatives from the PMO each year determines who the lucky winners will be.
Echoes of Another Snub
IDF St.-Sgt. Hananel Dayan, a tank driver from the Northern Command who lives in the Binyamin town of Psagot, was the last person to make headlines with his refusal to shake hands. When presented with an award for outstanding service, he refused to shake then-Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz’s outstretched hand. Dayan saluted, as is required, but informed the IDF chief that he was unable to shake his hand. When President Moshe Katzav, standing alongside him, asked why, he answered, “Because my family was expelled from Gush Katif.”
An uncomfortable scene ensued, with President Katzav scolding Dayan, saying his behavior was “unsuitable.” Dayan simply saluted the Chief of Staff and descended from the stage.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, the head of the IDF Personnel Corps Brig.-Gen. Elazar Stern, a religious Jew, approached Dayan and began reprimanding him, demanding that he apologize to the Chief of Staff. Dayan stood his ground, telling Stern that when he looked at the Chief of Staff, he saw the bulldozers that destroyed his grandparents’ home in Gush Katif. He said he stood by his refusal to shake the army chief’s hand.
Dayan faced wall-to-wall criticism on Israel's state-run stations and in the paper. He has still not received the monetary scholarship he was awarded at the time, and was discharged from his military stint as an IDF commander. Four days later, his unit suffered the loss of two soldiers and the capture of Gilad Shalit. A few weeks later, when the Second Lebanon War began, Dayan received emergency call-up orders and went off to fight.