By Vishwamithra –

“Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. The ordinary person today lives better than a king did a century ago but is ungrateful!” ~ Gustave Flaubert

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Benjamin Netanyahu‘s name is not one that is being mentioned in international fora and assemblies with any favorability or any tasteful pun. Accusations against him, especially in regard to various domestic corruption charges when he was Prime Minister of Israel in his previous term have not gone away. It is widely speculated that if elections are held in Israel today, Netanyahu’s defeat is as sure as the very existence of Israel itself. It is also speculated that his military incursions into Gaza, Lebanon and Syria and now Iran are shrewdly calculated moves in order to create a ‘true Jew’ image for himself. It looks like Netanyahu is winning on that front.

In two short terms as Prime Minister, Netanyahu has managed to destroy the image of ‘clean and innocent victim of international conspiracies’ side of the Jewish State; it is now being named as one engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing. The atrocities committed on the Palestinian people in Gaza by Israel’s military forces under Netanyahu’s direct orders are a shameless medal on humanity and its powerlessness in the presence of the draconian forces of Israel backed by the United States of America is fast becoming a matter of the forgotten past. Stories emanating from Gaza are a stain on the vast fabric of humanity and what is even more pathetic is the deafening silence of some leading Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Power of money and oil seems to be  immeasurably greater than plain common good as perceived by any reasonable man or woman. At the foot of all this transgression is Benjamin Netanyahu who has been yearning for a more  personally amenable US President than Barack Obama or Joseph Biden.

For the misfortune of the powerless Palestinians and the rest of the world, Netanyahu found his fellow traveler in Donald Trump. Two birds of the feather came together. One, Netanyahu is an international pariah while the other, Trump, is a convicted felon in his own country. An obscene marriage is being consummated before the eyes of the world. The sadder side of this lamentable story is that this mutually destructive union is not being challenged on a level playing field. A crucial military game is being played by two sides, namely Trump/Netanyahu vs Palestine/Iran with no umpires and referees. How unfair can a game be?           

Netanyahu’s government has been accused of genocide in Gaza, culminating in the South Africa v. Israel case before the International Court of Justice in December 2023. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant in November 2024 for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity as part of the ICC investigation in Palestine.

When Hitler sent millions of Jews, both in Germany itself and in Europe, to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka and other concentration camps, the rest of Germany looked the other way. They opted to either deny the whole phenomenon of the infamous Holocaust or pretended that they knew nothing of the sort. Mussolini, who originally showed Hitler what Nazism was, did not go that far as sending his real and perceived enemies to death, but had established his own authoritarian  rule in Italy.

Between 1925 and 1927, Mussolini progressively dismantled virtually all constitutional and conventional restraints on his power and built a police state. A law passed on 24 December 1925—Christmas Eve for the largely Roman Catholic country—changed Mussolini’s formal title from “President of the Council of Ministers” to “Head of the Government”, although he was still called “Prime Minister” by most non-Italian news sources. He was no longer responsible to Parliament and could be removed only by the King. While the Italian constitution stated that ministers were responsible only to the sovereign, in practice it had become all but impossible to govern against the express will of Parliament. The Christmas Eve law ended this practice, and also made Mussolini the only person competent to determine the body’s agenda. This law transformed Mussolini’s government into a de facto legal dictatorship. Local autonomy was abolished, and Podestàs appointed by the Italian Senate replaced elected mayors and councils. A textbook transformation of a democracy to one of authoritarianism came about in a short time. And the people of Italy accepted it.

In Germany Hitler also established himself as the singular dictator of the ruling machine. No opposition, no disloyalty, no infidelity was ever tolerated. Hitler’s goon squads saw to it that those who dared to even whisper about resistance were appropriately treated to their consequential end. In addition to the private goon squads, Hitler had his own official SS, Storm Troopers, headed by the dreaded Reinhardt Heydrich. Any opposition to the Third Reich was not a reality, at least in the open.

The average German, as the average MAGA supporters do not see the hidden dangers of Trumpism, did not see the nuanced shapes and designs of the Hitler-regime. Those who saw it ignored it totally because their faithfulness to Nazism had its open and vicarious benefits. The white Aryan race had no match, no challenge and no defiance in Germany. Hitler had designed a system the would-be dictators of the twenty first  century would follow, even under a well established democracy such as America.

The brazenly executed powers invested in the Executive Presidency were at the mercy of Donald Trump; facilitated and on some occasions enabled by the Supreme Court, he knew how to exploit those powers via an incorrigibly vulnerable MAGA grassroots movement. Into this mix fell in Benjamin Netanyahu with his conspiracy theories of Iran being imminently becoming a nuclear power. Netanyahu had one single project: convince his pal Trump to preemptively attack Iran and destroy her nuclear construction facilities. Trump wanting a foreign policy victory to embellish his macho image in the domestic scene, used his rarely used B-2 bombers to drop ‘bunker busters’ on three Iranian nuclear sites. Trump in his usual flamboyant style told the world that Iranian capabilities to construct nuclear weapons was ‘obliterated’. However, the jury still out on that statement by Trump.

Thsi is the guy Netanyahu is nominating for Nobel Peace Prize. In the past, those who have been awarded the Peace Prize have stopped wars through more humane and reasonably practical ways such as international treaties etc. Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Dag Hammarskjold and Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger have all worked tirelessly to attain peace. Contributions by Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu to the cause of humanity cannot be measured by mundane yardsticks. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have taken every perceivable step to prevent peace from being approached and established. It is an absolute desecration of the institution of Nobel Prize to mention Trump’s name in the same passage of that august ceremony.

The assumption of Benito Mussolini nominating Adolf Hitler for Nobel Peace Prize would have been a more persuadable proposition than Donald Trump’s speculated nomination. Donald Trump’s narcissism has reached its pinnacle. In his own delusional mind, he must be genuinely convinced that he deserves to be named a Nobel Prize winner. The man who created birtherism by questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship, the one who said that all immigrants of Hispanic origin are rapists and murderers, the one who has created great tension among various ethnic groupings and the one who engineered a greatly prejudicial treatment by the forces of law and order simply does not fit into the exalted circle of Nobel Prize winners. Nobel Peace Prize is not another ‘man of the year’ award presented to the winner on the strength of donations made to the organization that presents such ludicrous awards.

Donald Trump, you don’t deserve to be mentioned along with the prestigious winners of the past. You simply don’t belong there. You may have been elected by an abysmally uninformed public led by the MAGA cohorts. The disgrace and debasement that you unveiled on the otherwise supremely gifted land of America is more than enough. Her built-in political infrastructure would withstand even more outrageous attacks by more repulsive men and women. Men and women who roam the corridors of power in Congress, whose fidelity is intertwined with their own political and business ambitions would continue to support Donald Trump, come what may. But that is not what the country at large says now. However, that jury is still out.

*The writer can be reached at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com