Likud activist calls for Nobel Peace Prize for Netanyahu
MK Hasson: If Obama got prize without making peace, so can Netanyahu.
By GIL HOFFMANUpdated: MAY 3, 2018 01:30Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference at the Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv, Israel, April 30, 2018(photo credit: REUTERS/AMIR COHEN)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deserves to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his success in waking up the world to the threat of a nuclear Iran, Likud activist Lior Harari said on Wednesday.Harari sent a letter to Yisrael Aumann, Ada Yonath, Dan Shechtman, Avraham Hershko, Aaron Ciechanover, Daniel Kahneman and Arieh Warshel, asking them to nominate Netanyahu for the prize. Harari said he was aware that most of the Israeli Nobel winners did not support the prime minister politically, but that the Iranian nuclear issue unites Israelis politically.“I believe everyone must thank Netanyahu for revealing the plot of a country that threatens the entire enlightened world,” Harari told The Jerusalem Post. “If someone would have revealed the Nazis’ plans and stopped the Holocaust, they would have deserved the prize.”Asked why Netanyahu deserved the prize and not the Mossad, which retrieved an enormous amount of information on Iran’s nuclear program from Tehran, Harari said the prime minister had authority over the Mossad and other intelligence agencies.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu adresses Iranian nuclear activity, April 30th, 2018. (Credit: GPO)“Giving it to him would be giving it to the Mossad and others involved as well,” he said. “Netanyahu has been leading the issue internationally for decades. He even got the Arab world to wake up and realize what a problem they have.”Harari noted that Netanyahu’s first speech to Congress warning the world to take action to stop Iran’s nuclearization was not in March 2015 but in July 1996.The 1996 speech showed that he is decades ahead of the world,” Harari said. “Others don’t open an umbrella until it starts raining.He gets the umbrella years in advance and then gets the evidence to persuade the skeptics.”Opposition MKs mocked Harari’s proposal, saying that Netanyahu deserved the Nobel Peace Prize even less than former US president Barack Obama.“If Obama got the Nobel Prize without making peace or any significant diplomatic step, it makes sense to me that the prize committee will adopt the initiative of the Likud activists to give Netanyahu a Nobel Peace Prize for the peace he did not make, the nuclear agreement he did not prevent and the Hamas regime in Gaza he has failed to end,” Zionist Union faction chairman Yoel Hasson said sarcastically.
Joint List MK Ahmad Tibi said it was “a bad joke to give a Nobel Peace Prize to the ultimate peace rejector who takes pride in preventing the creation of a Palestinian state.”Giving Netanyahu the prize would be “like the police giving a certificate of merit to the neighborhood thief,” Tibi said.
