Ari Rath Preis für kritischen Journalismus
The “Ari Rath Prize for Critical Journalism” was established based on a private initiative to honour journalists who, in the spirit of the renowned former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post who died in January 2017, have rendered outstanding services in their work to reporting on flight, expulsion and asylum that is both critical and committed to respecting and protecting human rights.
The committed and successful publicist Ari Rath was expelled by force as a child aged thirteen on 2 November 1938 in the aftermath of the assumption of power by the National Socialists in Austria. He found a new home in Palestine and later in the State of Israel. Ari Rath belonged to the generation of such well-known politicians as Yitzhak Rabin, Teddy Kollek and Shimon Peres, and from 1948 onwards was advisor to Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister. In recent years, Ari Rath lived mainly in Vienna, working as a critical advocate towards promoting democratic and peaceful cooperation between the people of Israel and Austria. Having witnessed and experienced the terror of the Nazi regime, he untiringly pleaded for the absolute rejection of racism and xenophobia, a message which he – in addition to and going beyond the rejection of anti-Semitism – shared in his many lectures and discussions with students.