Maimonides Award to Felipe González

The former President of the Spanish Government Felipe González has received the 7th Maimonides Prize awarded by the Association of Friends of Tel Aviv University in Spain. 

Surrounded by more than 200 people, the former President of the Government thanked the award by recalling the important figure of the Sephardic Jewish sage Maimonides, who revolutionised the thinking of his time. 

Felipe González assured that he ‘will never forgive’ the massacre committed by the terrorist organisations Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Israel, that he knows the peace process well through his friends Shimon Peres and Shlomo Ben Ami and that ‘we must strive to seek peace as soon as possible, with the prior condition of the release of the hostages’ who have been held by Hamas for more than a year. 

On the growing anti-Semitism plaguing Europe, he said that it is not a problem of security, but of public opinion, and that politicians must have the talent to win over public opinion. In relation to the current political situation in Spain, he pointed out that ‘let us not make conflict into domestic politics’. 

As for national current affairs, he recalled that when Bilbao was flooded in August 1983, ‘I sent the army that same night’. 

Isaac Querub, Governor of Tel Aviv University, Honorary President of the Association of Friends of the TAU and former President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, presented the award-winner as a brave man committed to the truth who is capable of balancing ideals with realities. 

Felipe González, said Querub, ‘built a free and plural Spain, consolidating our democracy’. He also recalled that it was during González's first government that Spain established full diplomatic relations with Israel and recalled the words that the former Prime Minister said on El Hormiguero referring to 7 October: ‘Silence in the face of barbarity makes us accomplices’. 

For her part, the president of the Association of Friends of Tel Aviv University in Spain, Patricia Nahmad, called for a minute's silence for the victims of the DANA in Valencia and Albacete, assured that Tel Aviv University is deeply committed to democratic values and regretted that the Spanish public university had cut ties with the Israeli academy. 

Among the more than 200 people attending the event were the former president of Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the Peruvian politician and 2016 presidential candidate, Alfredo Barnechea, the ambassador of Panama, Queenie Altamirano, the former president of the Balearic Islands, José Ramón Bauza, the journalist Miguel Ángel Aguilar, the businessman Pedro Trapote, the former minister José Barrionuevo, and the designer Elena Benarroch.