In the latest instalment of the “can’t-make-this-sh*t-up” contest in global politics and diplomacy, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has nominated United States President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In other words, the person currently presiding over the genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has proposed that the world’s top peacemaking prize be awarded to the primary enabler of that genocide – the man who in March announced that he was “sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job” in Gaza. That “everything” has entailed billions of dollars in lethal weaponry and other assistance.
From October 2023 to the present, nearly 60,000 Palestinians have officially been slaughtered in the diminutive territory, although the true death toll is no doubt far higher considering the surplus of bodies lost under the pervasive rubble. More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in recent weeks while seeking food at aid distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an organisation backed by both the US and Israel.
Since resuming office in January, Trump has also managed plenty of do-it-yourself activity of a decidedly unpeaceful nature, such as wantonly bombing civilians in Yemen and illegally attacking Iran.
Indeed, it is a wonder that media outlets have managed to report on Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination with a straight face. CNN, for example, notes that “the award has become Trump’s ultimate fixation, one he says is well deserved for his efforts to end conflicts around the globe”. The president was informed of his nomination on Monday, when Netanyahu showed up for dinner at the White House as part of his third visit to Washington this year.
Thanking Netanyahu for the honour, Trump remarked: “Wow … Coming from you, in particular, this is very meaningful.”
And while “meaningful” is certainly one way to put it, the term does not quite convey the utter preposterousness of the whole arrangement.
Then again, it’s not like the Nobel Peace Prize enjoys a very solid track record in terms of living up to the stipulation that it be awarded to the person “who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.
In 2009, the prestigious accolade was bestowed on newly inaugurated US President Barack Obama, who would go on to stimulate international “fraternity” by bombing Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Syria.
Obama also operated secret “kill lists”, whereby he authorised military assassinations abroad in accordance with his own personal whims.
Other esteemed recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize have included Colombia’s right-wing former President Juan Manuel Santos, who, as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in 2013, was “proud” to have his country called “the Israel of Latin America”. As defence minister during the blood-drenched reign of his predecessor Alvaro Uribe, Santos was embroiled in the so-called “false positives” scandal that saw Colombian soldiers murder an estimated more than 10,000 civilians and pass the corpses off as “terrorists”.
Given Israel’s flair for massacring civilians in the name of fighting “terrorism”, the country comparison was particularly apt. And what do you know: the roster of Nobel Peace Prize laureates also comprises the late Israeli politician Shimon Peres, who was co-awarded the prize in 1994 – two years before he supervised the slaughter of 106 refugees sheltering at a United Nations compound in Qana, Lebanon.
In 2021, Trump’s own son-in-law Jared Kushner was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by ex-Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, who has devoted much of his legal career to justifying Israel’s killing of Arab civilians. In this case, Kushner’s nomination was based on his starring role in producing the Abraham Accords that normalised relations between Israel and various Arab states.
Now that genocide has effectively been normalised, too, Trump has proposed that the US take over the Gaza Strip, forcibly expel the native Palestinian population, and remodel the devastated territory into a brand-new “Riviera of the Middle East”. Anyway, it’s all in a day’s work for a Nobel Peace Prize nominee.
In its writeup of the Washington rendezvous – headlined “Netanyahu surprises Trump with Nobel nomination as both leaders talk of evacuating Gazans” – The Times of Israel specifies that “Netanyahu said the US and Israeli strikes against Iran had ‘changed the face of the Middle East’ and created an opportunity to expand the Abraham Accords”. After all, there’s nothing that says “fraternity between nations” like simply doing away with Palestine altogether.
Reflecting on the overzealous attack on Iran that earned him the Peace Prize nomination, Trump favourably compared his action with US President Harry Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
Of course, it should go without saying that anyone who positively invokes the nuking of hundreds of thousands of civilians should be categorically ineligible for any sort of serious peace prize. But in a world in which the supposed pursuit of peace is so often utilised as an excuse for more war, Trump’s nomination might very well be meaningful, indeed.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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