Nobel aspirations
IT’S impossible not to be amazed by the amount of speculation that preceded last Friday’s announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize. Most of it focused on whether Donald Trump would be the recipient — largely ignoring the fact that nominations close in January, so the US president’s claim that he has halted eight wars counts for nothing. At least until next year.
In recent days his qualification for that annual award has been re-endorsed by, among others, Benjamin Netanyahu and Shehbaz Sharif, at the Knesset in Jerusalem and the so-called peace conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, an otherwise meaningless event in Egypt where a score or more of sycophants gathered to hail the emperor.
“You are the man this world needed the most at this time,” Sharif informed Trump, defying both common sense and global opinion. The US president’s equally cloying response was: “Wow! I didn’t expect that. Let’s go home, I have nothing more to say … That was really beautiful, and beautifully delivered.” He had previously described Asim Munir as “my favourite field marshal”. The Pakistani state must be thrilled by the endorsement, and presumably oblivious to a history of US betrayal ever since the powers-that-be latched on to Washington as a saviour in the 1950s.
The widespread praise for Trump’s role in at least temporarily halting the daily mass slaughter in Gaza tends to ignore the more oblique elements of his so-called peace plan, which excludes any concept of Palestinian self-determination, while an unexplained ‘Trump economic plan’ hangs over a tiny territory more than half of which remains occupied by Israel. Rebuilding all that has been destroyed in Gaza could take more than a decade, and there can never be any recompense for the tens of thousands of lives that have been lost.
The recipient is hardly worthier than Trump.
There could be scope for a longer-term peace beyond this month’s ceasefire deal, but only time will tell whether anyone latches on to that prospect. A genocide that would make way for Eretz Israel remains on the Zionist agenda, and it’s far from clear whether the US under Trump or any other leadership can thwart that outcome, given its role in directly sponsoring the bloodshed.
Trump’s chances of winning the prize next year might be thwarted by continued military action against Venezuela, which is supported, mind you, by this year’s Nobel champion. Maria Corina Machado is a fan of both Trump and Netanyahu, and aligned with the likes of Javier Milei, Viktor Orban and Giorgia Meloni. She dotes on Margaret Thatcher, was complicit in the abortive 2002 coup against the democratically elected Hugo Chavez, and has vowed to “bury socialism forever”. The Nobel citation conveniently overlooks her anti-democratic activities to claim her as a “unifying figure” who has “spent years working for the freedom of the Venezuelan people”.
One of her American fans, The New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, acknowledges that Alfred Nobel’s will dictates the prize should be awarded to someone who “during the preceding year shall have conferred the greatest benefit on humankind”, in an effort to explain why Trump was ignored this year. Fair enough, but he abysmally fails to explain how Machado has “conferred the greatest benefit on mankind”.
This is not the first time that the Norwegian Nobel committee has stupidly erred in conferring its prize. It awarded one to Henry Kissinger, after all, prompting Harvard mathematician and part-time singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer to declare, more than 50 years ago, that satire was dead. Back in 1973, Kissinger’s co-recipient Le Duc Tho sensibly declined the accolade, given the Vietnam war was not yet over.
Today, what lies ahead for Gaza or Venezuela remains shrouded in my-stery. Neither the disastrous Maduro regime nor the depredations of Hamas match the actions of the IDF, whose genocidal activities get a free pass in Trump’s playbook. Beyond the self-adulation and absurd praise for his team, the US president’s Knesset performance focused on his adoration for Israel and its current PM.
The standing ovations that greeted him, notwithstanding a brief disruption, are unlikely to have been replicated at a Palestinian congregation. But the kind of praise he laps up was not in short supply at the Sharm el-Sheikh gathering, where he was prevented at the last minute from dragging along Netanyahu.
Trump is proud of the Board of Peace that he is supposed to head, but what might follow once he gets bored of peace remains to be determined — not least in Palestine but also in Venezuela. Machado, no doubt, will approve of whatever he chooses in the latter sphere. Perhaps her analogue in the Middle Eastern sphere is not so much Netanyahu as Mahmoud Abbas.
Trump could be a potential contender for next year’s Nobel, even though Francesca Albanese, Greta Thunberg or the World Central Kitchen would be infinitely more worthy.
Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2025