Within the newest instalment of the “can’t-make-this-sh*t-up” contest in international politics and diplomacy, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has nominated United States President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In different phrases, the individual at present presiding over the genocide of Palestinians within the Gaza Strip has proposed that the world’s prime peacemaking prize be awarded to the first enabler of that genocide – the person who in March announced that he was “sending Israel every part it wants to complete the job” in Gaza. That “every part” has entailed billions of {dollars} in deadly weaponry and different help.
From October 2023 to the current, almost 60,000 Palestinians have formally been slaughtered within the diminutive territory, though the true demise toll is little doubt far greater contemplating the excess of our bodies misplaced underneath the pervasive rubble. More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in latest weeks whereas in search of meals at help distribution websites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Basis, an organisation backed by each the US and Israel.
Since resuming workplace in January, Trump has additionally managed loads of do-it-yourself exercise of a decidedly unpeaceful nature, similar to wantonly bombing civilians in Yemen and illegally attacking Iran.
Certainly, it’s a surprise that media retailers have managed to report on Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination with a straight face. CNN, for instance, notes that “the award has change into Trump’s final fixation, one he says is nicely deserved for his efforts to finish conflicts across the globe”. The president was knowledgeable of his nomination on Monday, when Netanyahu confirmed up for dinner on the White Home as a part of his third visit to Washington this 12 months.
Thanking Netanyahu for the honour, Trump remarked: “Wow … Coming from you, specifically, that is very significant.”
And whereas “significant” is definitely one strategy to put it, the time period doesn’t fairly convey the utter preposterousness of the entire association.
Then once more, it’s not just like the Nobel Peace Prize enjoys a really stable observe document when it comes to residing as much as the stipulation that or not it’s awarded to the individual “who shall have executed probably the most or the perfect work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or discount of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.
In 2009, the distinguished accolade was bestowed on newly inaugurated US President Barack Obama, who would go on to stimulate worldwide “fraternity” by bombing Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Syria.
Obama additionally operated secret “kill lists”, whereby he authorised navy assassinations overseas in accordance along with his personal private whims.
Different esteemed recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize have included Colombia’s right-wing former President Juan Manuel Santos, who, because the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in 2013, was “proud” to have his nation referred to as “the Israel of Latin America”. As defence minister through the blood-drenched reign of his predecessor Alvaro Uribe, Santos was embroiled within the so-called “false positives” scandal that noticed Colombian troopers homicide an estimated more than 10,000 civilians and move the corpses off as “terrorists”.
Given Israel’s aptitude for massacring civilians within the identify of preventing “terrorism”, the nation comparability was notably apt. And what have you learnt: the roster of Nobel Peace Prize laureates additionally includes the late Israeli politician Shimon Peres, who was co-awarded the prize in 1994 – two years earlier than he supervised the slaughter of 106 refugees sheltering at a United Nations compound in Qana, Lebanon.
In 2021, Trump’s personal son-in-law Jared Kushner was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by ex-Harvard Regulation College professor Alan Dershowitz, who has devoted a lot of his authorized profession to justifying Israel’s killing of Arab civilians. On this case, Kushner’s nomination was based mostly on his starring function in producing the Abraham Accords that normalised relations between Israel and numerous Arab states.
Now that genocide has successfully been normalised, too, Trump has proposed that the US take over the Gaza Strip, forcibly expel the native Palestinian inhabitants, and transform the devastated territory right 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 each leaders speak of evacuating Gazans” – The Occasions of Israel specifies that “Netanyahu mentioned the US and Israeli strikes in opposition to Iran had ‘modified the face of the Center East’ and created a chance to develop the Abraham Accords”. In any case, there’s nothing that claims “fraternity between nations” like merely eliminating Palestine altogether.
Reflecting on the overzealous assault on Iran that earned him the Peace Prize nomination, Trump favourably compared his motion with US President Harry Truman’s resolution to drop atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki throughout World Conflict II.
After all, it ought to go with out saying that anybody who positively invokes the nuking of a whole lot of hundreds of civilians needs to be categorically ineligible for any type of severe peace prize. However in a world wherein the supposed pursuit of peace is so typically utilised as an excuse for extra struggle, Trump’s nomination would possibly very nicely be significant, certainly.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
