AxisMundi Jerusalem

Effort vs. Action

U.S. President Barack Obama’s surprise Nobel Peace Prize win last Friday has generated mixed and wary reactions from the Israeli and Arab public.

(Read our FACTBOX on reactions from the Arab Streets in Iraq, Iran, and Gaza.)

A Twitter search for ‘Obama’, and ‘Nobel’ in Hebrew returned thousands of Hebrew-speaking users sarcastically tweeting their shock and doubt at the news. @shaiinbal tweeted, “Another proof that the Nobel Peace Prize has been used as a political tool. Obama has yet to help resolve the Middle East Conflict. But he might!”. (Read our Q&A on whether the Nobel is a “Peace” or “Political” prize.)

Another tweeter @CandyFlossGirl wrote, “Hope the peace for which Obama received the Nobel Prize will be a bit more successful than the peace for which Rabin and Arafat received the prize.”

Tariq Alhomayed, editor-in-chief of the Arabic daily newspaper Asharq al-Awsat called Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize a “down payment” for future action:

“When I was at primary school, my maternal grandfather would give us a small amount of money as a gift on the first day of our exams. My grandfather, may God rest his soul, used to say to us, “Whoever fails must give me back the money… it is apparent that Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize came as a “down payment” and as a way of [expressing] encouragement and goodwill, especially as Obama himself said that he considered the prize a “call to action.” If Obama achieves [something] then he will have deserved the prize, no doubt, but if he doesn’t, then who knows whether he should return it just as we had to return our grandfather’s money if we failed [our exams] when we were young!”

Using puns against Obama’s election campaign slogans “Change we can believe in” and “Yes, we can,” an Israeli pundit, Gideon Levy, wrote in a scathing editorial for the left-leaning daily Haaretz that Obama did not deserve the prize at all, only at most “a conditional award, an IOU”. In a more tame editorial, the Haaretz staff called Obama’s win “more an award for the hope of peace than a sign of recognition for making peace”.