Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev took to Twitter on Wednesday to slam the selection of the 2020 Israel Prize winners.
Calling the Israel Prize the “last bastion first Israel has,” Regev argued that it does the opposite of what it is intended to do, “it weakens the spirit and harms the independence of Israeli society,” she claimed.
“This is why the Israeli Prize doesn’t interest a lot of people,” she added.
"First Israel" is largely used to mean the established groups in Israeli society, usually European-oriented Jewish people who took part in the historical creation of the country before the large waves of Jewish immigration from Muslim countries arrived.
Regev’s tweet follows an earlier posted tweeted by Interior Minister Arye Deri who lamented that not a single Mizrhai Jew or Arab person was awarded it this year.