You Gave My Peace Prize To WHOM?!

By Alfred Nobel

Wait, wait, run that by me again: the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded my flagship prize to a lifelong terrorist? If I weren’t dead already I’d die from shock. You folks evidently have no idea what you’re doing.

Yeah, to you that’s old news. It happened in 1994. So kill me. I’ve been dead more than a century – there’s no rush on this side of the grave. But it almost slew me all over again to find out: a guy signs a “peace” agreement, all the while insisting to his constituency that it’s but a stage in the multiple-phase plan to wipe out the enemy, and you treat him like some saint. Gandhi you ignored – but Arafat? Sure! Help yourself, Rais! Just make sure you don’t hock it to buy weapons from Iran, that’s all we ask.

While you’re at it, give it to Pol Pot – oh wait, I see you already gave it to Henry Kissinger….and… what’s a Barack Obama? Our servers here on the Other Side are notoriously slow – haven’t been upgraded since like 1995 – but I don’t see any accomplishment of any Barack Obama that would deserve my peace prize except Not Being George W. Bush. You have to employ slightly more selective criteria than that, gentlemen. But I digress.

You might accuse me of speaking with the benefit of hindsight. Touché. I’m six feet under. At this point hindsight is all I’ve got. But you don’t even need hindsight to see which Peace Prize laureate was speaking out of both sides of his mouth even as his candidacy was being bandied about the halls of Oslo. You don’t need to look as far ahead as the Second Intifada and the Karine-A. All your evidence was right there in front of you. One gets the impression you were so hellbent on extracting concessions from Israel you didn’t care to whom.

All that means you’re likely to make the same mistake again. I’m not fully conversant in the ongoing crises of the second decade of your century – a bit too distracted right now just catching up on movies and TV shows – goodness, those writers for The Simpsons are good – but you’re heading for a repeat. If any agreement goes down soon between Israel and the Palestinians, you’ll probably wax epic about it and reward Mahmoud Abbas with the same prize. And he’ll justify your acknowledgment of his noble (see what I did there?) pursuits by continuing to pay pensions to the families of murderers, continuing to libel Israel with every accusation imaginable, and continue to laud the heroic achievements of Jew-killers. Don’t believe me? You’re already doing it across Europe with all those votes recognizing a Palestinian State, recognition that rewards Abbas for his inflexibility. Way to promote peace, gentlemen.

Perhaps I should give you the benefit of the doubt. After all, physics is one of the realms in which I ordained an award – and you might just be in the running for one by developing a method to generate electrical power by making me spin in my grave.