“A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow.” – Winston Churchill
The late great writer, Sinclair Lewis (1885 - 1951), when notified about his Pulitzer Prize award for his novel, Arrowsmith, observed, “Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, some years ago. I must now decline the Pulitzer Prize.”
The Nobel Peace Prize has long been regarded as the highest award humanity can bestow. It is granted to individuals or organizations that most advance the cause of peace in any particular year.
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One notable winner was former President Barack Obama, who was granted the award only a few months into his presidency, having done absolutely nothing. He later bombed countries such as Afghanistan, Libya, and Pakistan, among others.
Another notable winner was PLO leader and known terrorist, Yasir Arafat. Later, after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak conceded to almost every one of his requests at a summit arranged by then US President Bill Clinton, Arafat turned his back on the offer of Palestinian Statehood and walked away.
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize award has just been announced. The winner is María Corina Machado, an admittedly brave woman from Venezuela, who has been an advocate for change in her country. Nevertheless, the announcement surprised and disappointed world leaders who expected US President Donald Trump to be awarded the prize. Even Machado remarked that Trump should have received the award.
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, speaking on behalf of the committee, after praising Machado, explained that one of the qualifications was “integrity.” People understood him to say that Trump was somehow lacking this virtue.
However, if anyone is lacking integrity, it’s a committee that placed ideology above a reality that produced wide-spanning global results. The committee succeeded in politicizing the Nobel Peace Prize, or if you prefer, the Nobel “Integrity” Prize.
The committee members apparently believe that the actions of a Venezuelan activist are more important to the cause of world peace than the work of a man who ended or prevented eight wars in only nine months, including a potential conflict between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed powers. And, most recently, he ended the seemingly intractable conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Trump’s genius here was to forge alliances to undercut both the political and financial support for Hamas in Muslim nations such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey, to name just a few. Trump also succeeded in isolating and downgrading Iran’s capabilities. Protesters can wave Palestinian flags and shout anti-Israel anti-Jewish epithets while Western nations go through the motions of recognizing a Palestinian state, but both are meaningless gestures.
The Nobel Prize Committee members can congratulate themselves on denying Trump the award but all they have succeeded in doing is to prove the existence of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and confirming that future aspirants for the prize must submit to an “ideological litmus test,” something on the order of being “safe, polite, obedient, and sterile,” as Sinclair Lewis said. The result is that the prestige of the Nobel Peace Prize has been severely diminished. No longer can it be regarded as mankind’s highest award. Now it can be compared to a cheap trinket that one used to get in a box of Cracker Jacks.
Caren Besner is a retired teacher who has written articles published by American Thinker, Sun-Sentinel, The Algemeiner, Jerusalem Post, Jewish Journal, IsraPost, The Jewish Voice, Independent Sentinel, San Diego Jewish World, Arutz Sheva, Jewish Press, The Front Page, The Florida Veteran, Jootube, The Moderate Voice, and Israel National News.