Israeli women’s team crushes competition at World Universities Debate Championship

Some of the many Israeli debaters that came to the competition were given the rare honors of competing in the parallel judge’s panel competition and to serve as judges.

By World Israel News Staff

Debating is an increasingly popular activity in Israel, and in recent years the government has been encouraging it at high schools and universities.

The effort is paying off in leaps and bounds.

For the third year in a row, Israel has won the World Universities Debate Championship in Bangkok, Thailand.

In competitive debating, teams of two argue either for or against a motion announced 15 minutes before the start of each round, and the winner is decided by the judges. Each category lasts nine rounds that cover an array of subjects, such as democracy, feminist iconography, and geopolitics.

This year’s competition took place during the last week of 2019, and Hadar Goldberg and Maya Saveliev from the Open University Debate Team became the first Israeli team of women to defeat a field of 750 other speakers around the globe in the English Second Language (ESL) category.

Israel was in good shape to take down the title, as Annie Schwartz with Dannie Haran and Asaf Hanani with Nadav Kornblum from Tel Aviv University made it to the semifinal.

Some of the many Israeli debaters that came to the competition were given the rare honors of competing in the parallel judge’s panel competition and to serve as judges.

Il Hayut-Man, the Ben Gurion University debate team trainer, served as a judge for the entire competition, while Sela Nevo from Tel Aviv University was on the judges panel for the English Primary Language (EPL) category, and Dan Lahav, also from Tel Aviv University, was on the judges’ panel for the final English Foreign Language (EFL) debate.

The competition did not come without drama. During the EPL finals, Chinese debaters stepped out and contacted their government after the subject of the China-Hong Kong conflict came up for debate. As a result, their names were requested to be removed from the roster and the video was removed from all social media.

In 2016, Israel became the first country outside the Anglosphere to win the world championship which was held in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Israel