How About a Nobel Prize for Obstructing Peace?
I don’t go all the way with the cynicism of the American (economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo) who expressed surprise that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “after killing only so few people”; and I really do hope that the current occupant of the White House will be allowed to deliver on the rhetorical commitments that won him the prize. My fear is that events will invite the conclusion that the Nobel Committee had a premature ejaculation and that there never was a real prospect of the egg of hope being fertilized for justice and peace in the Middle East.
And that grim thought provokes an idea.
Why not create a Nobel award – it would have to be one of censure, not actually a prize – for the individual or individuals who do most each year to obstruct peace?
For such an award this year there would be more than a few nominations, but the clear winner would have to be Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu. In his acceptance speech he would have to say that he could not claim all the credit for obstructing the peace because he was merely continuing and consolidating the work started in 1948 with Zionism’s first ethnic cleansing of Palestine. If he wished he could, however, claim most of the credit for stopping Obama in his tracks. (The question of how much he, Netanyahu, was assisted in this effort by the Zionist lobby in America and its stooges in Congress is an open one).
The BBC’s coverage of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama caused me to smile but also posed a question about its fear of offending Zionism too much.
The smile was brought to my face by the corporation’s wry North America editor, Mark Mardell. It seemed to many, he said, that Obama had been awarded for prize “for not being President Bush”.
The assessment of Paul Reynolds, the BBC’s World Affairs correspondent, was puzzling to say the least.
“The risk for President Obama”, Reynolds said and wrote, was that “he might not be able to live up to his billing.” That being so, Reynolds went on, it was perhaps worth looking at some of the problems Obama faces and his intentions in dealing with them in order to take a view on his likelihood of success. The problems Reynolds listed were:
- Nuclear weapons
- Climate Change
- Human Rights
- Iraq
- Iran
- Afghanistan
I found myself wondering why Reynolds did not include the Israel/Palestine conflict on his list. Perhaps he takes it as read that Obama has already been stuffed on that.
Mary S:
October 17th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I think Netanyahu should share the Nobel anti-Peace Prize with his sidekick, Avigdor Lieberman, the most blatantly racist politician to hit the mainstream in Israel in recent years. This Kahanist wonder openly espouses the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from the West Bank. It is obvious that Israel doesn’t give a good damn about reclaiming Gaza; they’re willing to kill everyone living there as a way of intimidating the Palestinians in the West Bank into following the sheepish Abu Mazen and submitting to the endless occupation, and subsequent ethnic cleansing, of that prime piece of real estate. The Israeli government’s continual, and successful, attempts to foment disagreement between Hamas and the Fatah prevents unity, and strength, to develop in the Palestinian leadership. It even leads me to suspect that Israel may be supplying arms to Hamas (how else did they get their hands on white phosphorus during Operation Cast Lead, as reported by Israeli civilians in Sderot? Witnesses claim some Hamas-fired rockets contained white phosphorus) not only to feed this division but to justify continuing their blockade and endless rampages into the Gaza Strip.
In fact, award the anti-Peace Prize not only to Netanyahu and Lieberman, but to the entire Israeli population, more than 90 percent of whom supported the massacre called Operation Cast Lead.