Yuval Elbashan

Lawyer and social activist Yuval Elbashan was born in Israel in 1969. He studied law at Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He co-founded and was deputy director of Yedid, a network of citizens' rights centers in underprivileged neighborhoods. In 2003, he also established the Human Rights Center for clinical legal education in the law faculty of the Hebrew University. Elbashan has lectured widely in Israel and abroad on poverty and the law; he is senior lecturer at the Hebrew University, advisor on social rights to the Labor Party and writes a weekly column in Maariv. At present, he is Dean for Social Development at Ono Academic College. Elbashan is the author of books on human rights, poverty and the law - his latest (2005) is a set text in all Israeli law faculties - and he also writes essays for the daily Haaretz. In 2005 he has been selected one of the ten most influential people in Israel for his work on human and social rights. Elbashan has beeb awarded the Book Publishers Association's Gold Prize for Forever Flora (2009), the Book Publishers Association's Platinum Prize for The Massada Case (2013) and the Yad Vashem Prize for Unfinished Story (2014).