Award Ceremony 2017
The Shimon-Peres-Prize was first awarded on October 10, 2017 by Federal Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on the occasion of the first anniversary of the death of the former Israeli president. The jury had chosen two German-Israeli cooperation projects which had shown outstanding dedication to civil society in different areas.

With the first Shimon-Peres-Prize award ceremony, that brought more than 400 guests to the Glass Courtyard of the Jewish Museum Berlin, we wanted to make a stand: for German-Israeli cooperation, for stronger voices of young people in the bilateral dialogue, for giving support to an active civil society. In his speech, Gabriel thus linked the awarding of the prize with a plea: “Whatever it takes, we must preserve spaces for social activism – in Germany, in Israel, and everywhere in the world where we can.”

Prof. Tsvia Walden, daughter of Shimon Peres, was among the guests at the public event. In her moving speech, she recalled the words of her father, who once said that “a person’s greatness is determined by the size of their dreams. Dream great dreams and you will become great people!”

Popular Israeli musician Idan Raichel provided a musical accompaniment to the program. Alongside his most well-known numbers, a very special song also formed part of his repertoire: years before, Shimon Peres had asked him to set one of his own self-written poems to music. At the behest of the Peres family, Raichel now sung this song for the first time ever in Germany.

The program for the event can be found here.