Give Benjamin Netanyahu the Nobel Peace Prize next year

Iran and possibly Türkiye sought to use the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, to derail rapprochement with Israel. For a while it seemed to be working. Professional peacekeepers who worked in Washington think tanks or around President Joe Biden chided that Hamas’s actions showed that Palestinian aspirations could not be circumvented.

The State Department legitimized Hamas through negotiations, and many European leaders and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres rewarded Hamas by recognizing the state of Palestine at the United Nations, setting aside the demands of the Oslo Accords that Palestinians must first renounce terrorism.

Despite growing calls for a ceasefire and compromise, Netanyahu stood firm. He succeeded. In just over a year, he single-handedly redefined the fight against terrorism by killing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. No true supporter of peace should mourn anyone who has been struck by Israel. Hamas without apology calls for genocide in his covenantand Nasrallah, as you know joked“If all (the Jews) gather in Israel, it will save us from having to chase them around the world.”

By shattering the illusion that terrorism can defeat Israel and that the United States and Europe can contain it, Netanyahu has advanced the prospects for peace throughout the region. With grandiose dreams of victory over Israel dashed, 88-year-old Mahmoud Abbas may now be replaced by more sober leaders. Holocaust–negation chairman of the Palestinian Authority, now serving the 20th year of his elected four-year term, or fill the vacuum in the Gaza Strip. In the Gaza Strip, local clan leaders may take over now that Israel has removed Palestinian implants from abroad.

Of course, the Norwegian Nobel Committee will not want to choose Netanyahu. Norway is currently competing with the UK to be the second most anti-Semitic country in Europe after Ireland. Selecting Netanyahu would represent both a willingness to abandon progressive virtue signaling and an acknowledgment that he has in the past espoused a caricature of the Israeli leader who dominates Western society.

However, a sober assessment suggests that Netanyahu is committed to peace, but differs from previous leaders in that he is steady and permanent. Netanyahu, for example. I don’t mind two hourso state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but rather rightly insists that mutual recognition and respect require Palestinians to openly recognize Israel as a Jewish state and that a Palestinian state cannot become a satrapy for Iran, Turkey or other rejecting states.

Netanyahu’s Nobel Prize also does not signify his political support. He will still have to bear responsibility for the intelligence failures that preceded the October 7, 2023 attack. Like former Israeli Prime Minister Gold Meir after his intelligence failure during the Yom Kippur War, this likely means resignation.

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Rather, the Nobel Peace Prize would be a simple recognition that Netanyahu, through creativity, stubbornness and military leadership, has contributed more to peace in the Middle East than any leader in the last half century, if not all of Israeli history.

Those who strive for real peace must recognize that pacifism often leads to its opposite. Brute military force defeated Nazism, fascism and the Imperial Japanese Army. The Vietnamese invasion, not the engagement and diplomacy suggested by the American Friends Service Committee, brought an end to the odious Khmer Rouge regime. Likewise, the former president was sent by the Tanzanian army, not diplomacy. Uganda’s Idi Amin, the cannibal dictator, is sent into exile. Netanyahu understands history. The time has come for Norwegian politicians and the Nobel Committee to recognize this.

Michael Rubin is the author Washington Examiners Beltway Confidential Blog. He is the director of analysis for the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.