Last night in Israel we bestowed this year’s Truth To Power Prize to one of the faces of the hostage protest, a single mother from Ofakim named Einav Zangauker whose son Matan has been in captivity in Gaza for 262 days.
Our Truth to Power Prize is the New Israel Fund’s top human rights award, and it was created to honor the memory of Bill Goldman, a man who was an NIF board member, a champion of Israel’s civil society, and a dear, dear friend. Bill was a wise, funny, and tireless leader of the New Israel Fund, who we lost far too early, and far too young.
This prize, in his name, is given each year to a single outstanding activist who has demonstrated their willingness to speak truth to power.
This year’s awardee, Einav, is a bright beacon of hope during these dark times. Through her astonishing bravery and fierce dedication to her cause, she has been instrumental in exposing the hypocrisy, abusiveness, and bigotry of Israel’s most powerful. NIF has been supporting the coalition of all the families of the hostages since the beginning, and Einav, an activist working tirelessly to bring her son home, is a heartbreakingly powerful symbol of their struggle.
Not long after October 7 when Matan was kidnapped by terrorists, she pitched a tent outside of the IDF headquarters and said she would not leave until she could hug her son again. She was showered with support—food, pillows, anything that would make her, her daughters, and Matan’s partner, Ilana, more comfortable there. Eventually, many others—including other hostage families—joined her. Together they’ve built a new protest movement—one that is unafraid, one that is defiant, one that will not back down no matter how much the current government demonizes them, no matter what Minister of National Security Ben Gvir’s police do to them. When, back in February, Einav, a lifetime Likud voter, was hit directly in the face by a police water cannon, she said what she had been saying from the beginning. “The Prime Minister is responsible for this horrible situation I’m in today…I say to him: go home.”
In her speech last night, Einav said that she never thought she’d be standing on a stage getting a prize. She was grateful, she said, but she’d give it up a thousand times to have Matan home again. All of us in that room were deeply, deeply moved. We were all in tears by the end of her speech.
Einav’s courage—the courage to stand up to bullies, to fearlessly speak truth to power no matter the price in reputation, relationships, and even personal safety—is incredibly powerful to behold.
I’ve been thinking about that kind of courage a lot lately. Last week, walking in London, I saw a statue of the late 19th-early 20th century British suffragist and campaigner for women’s rights, Millicent Garrett Fawcett. In her hands she held a sign, inscribed with the most famous phrase associated with her: Courage calls to courage everywhere. This idea that courage can be contagious, communal, and cumulative moved me deeply.
That message from over a hundred years ago moved me so much precisely because it is not really about the past. The courage of those who came before us, speaking truth to power, inspires us and kindles our own courage in our dark times, just as Eniav’s courage gives us courage today.
It is true: we do not have the kind of power that those who have led us to this dark place have. But we have something they don’t have, something they can never extinguish: Champions like Einav with the courage to speak out and speak up, no matter how hard or dangerous that might be.
May Einav’s courage—and the courage of all those who speak truth to power in Israel and around the world today—serve as a pillar of fire for us all, lighting the way to a better, fairer, more just and peaceful tomorrow.