Israel Prize Winner Warns against Boycotters of Israel

Poet Erez Biton, who was awarded the Israel Prize for Literature on Yom Ha'Atzmaut, used the occasion to warn against sponsors of the Boycott Israel movement.

"Strident voices are being heard in the world including those who are challenging the very existence of the State of Israel," he said. "There are even those among them who are labeling products and I say, without any connection to our internal political debate, we must all stand together in order to rebuff these tendencies.

"I say: Those who label products today are liable to label people tomorrow."

Biton, who has been blind since he was a child, was the first member of the Sephardi community to be awarded the prize.

Reports in Israel's liberal left-leaning establishment media on his receiving the award from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu focused on his being Sephardi, but the reporters, deaf if not blind, omitted his remarks about anti-Israelis.