is also good reason to fear that the Israel Defense Forces, which has been until now a people's army, would, as a result of being transformed into an army of occupation, degenerate, and its commanders, who will have become military governors, resemble their colleagues in other nations. In an interview in Haaretz newspaper, Carlo Strenger, who knew Leibowitz personally, stated: Because of his provocativeness, it's easy to miss Leibowitz’s profound moral seriousness and the great relevance of his thought today. He is often pigeonholed as belonging to the extreme left, which is a mistake. Leibowitz, never willing to bow to collective pressure, was the most unlikely of combinations: On the one hand he was a libertarian, an extreme form of classical liberalism, and believed that human beings should be free to determine their way of life without any state interference. On the other hand, he was an ultra-Orthodox Jew who insisted that the state and religion must be separated completely to avoid corrupting each other. Leibowitz became more harshly critical of Israeli policies following the 1982 Lebanon War. He repeatedly called for Israelis to refuse to serve in the occupied territories, and warned that Israel was turning its soldiers into "Judeo-Nazis", writing that if "the law . . . can allow the use of torture as a way of getting confessions out of prisoners, then this testifies to a Nazi mentality." He supported a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. Awards and recognition In 1993, he was selected for the Israel Prize. Before the award ceremony, Leibowitz was invited to speak to the Israel Council for Israeli–Palestinian Peace, where his controversial remarks calling upon Israeli soldiers to refuse orders triggered outrage (and Yitzhak Rabin had threatened to boycott the ceremony). The jury convened to discuss the possibility of withdrawing the prize, but Leibowitz himself announced that he would refuse to accept it, because he did not want to create antagonism when receiving the prize. References External links Yeshayahu Leibowitz (Hebrew) Yeshayahu Leibowitz (English) 1903 births 1994 deaths Scientists from Riga People from Kreis Riga Latvian Jews 20th-century Israeli Jews Jews from the Russian Empire Latvian emigrants to Mandatory Palestine Israeli Orthodox Jews Israeli people of Latvian-Jewish descent Israeli scientists Israeli philosophers Jewish chemists Jewish philosophers Jewish scientists Philosophers of Judaism 20th-century Israeli philosophers Humboldt University of Berlin alumni Academic staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Israel Prize for