Meet the 2025 Recipients of the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award
- ACRI
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Every year, the Association for Civil Rights awards the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award to a person or organization that has made a significant contribution to the advancement of human rights in Israel. These are the recipients of the 2025 award:
Jack Khoury, journalist for Haaretz and news director of Radio A-Shams. For two decades, Khoury has consistently and persistently called for human rights and equality, and for mediation between Jewish and Arab society. During the war, he was among the few media figures who insisted on bringing the voices of Gaza residents and the voices of the hostages’ families to the Jewish and Arab public, together with issues of freedom of expression, the right to personal security, and dealing with discrimination and racism.
Dr. Assaf David, head of the Israel in the Middle East program at the Van Leer Institute. Dr. David is the co-founder and academic director of the Forum for Regional Thinking, a group of Jewish and Palestinian experts who make professional knowledge about the Middle East accessible to the Jewish public in Israel and promote critical discourse on the issue of Israel and the Palestinians. During the war, Dr. David was among the few who brought the voices of Gaza’s residents to the Jewish public in Israel, through Hebrew translations of posts, articles, and testimonies about life in Gaza during wartime.
Michal Deutsch and Matanel Ciechanowski are among the founders of "Changing Direction" (Meshanim Kivun), a climate movement that emerged during the resistance to the judicial overhaul. After October 7th, Deutsch and Ciechanowski, together with other activists from the movement, focused on leading nonviolent protests calling for voting out the government, ending the war and its atrocities, and the return of the hostages. They paid a heavy personal price for their determined and relentless activism: dozens of arrests, and being subjected to police violence and harassment.
