Trump, the Nobel Prize and the Ivory Tower

Academics, like political pundits, often feel invisibly compelled to become classic killjoys. Such is the case with regard to the recent Middle East peace deals, orchestrated by the Trump administration, between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain. What should be a cause for universal celebration has predictably been downplayed, not only in the international press but among those ensconced in scholarly ivory towers. Jonathan Cristol, Research Fellow at Adelphi University, cynically observed, “…these deals do not usher in some sort of new era of peace and harmony.” Middle East professor at Lehigh University, Henry Barkey, declared, “The Trump administration should be in these countries’ debt because they gave it an excuse to gloat about the diplomatic achievement.” He went on to assert that a Biden administration would have been careful to consider all the “ramifications” of the deals before promoting and entering into them. By “ramifications” he is echoing the criticism of Notre Dame professor of religion and peace studies, Atalia Omer: “The main problem behind this ‘peace deal’ is it ignores the Palestinian struggles and demands.”

Leave it to academics to confuse serious progress toward a more peaceful region, and by extension a more harmonious world, with the rejectionist rantings of the corrupt Palestinian Authority, intent on establishing what would effectively amount to a terrorist state on the order of Gaza, situated on the very outskirts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It takes no scholarly pedigree or Ph.D. to recognize that what has for decades been referred to as a “peace process” with the Palestinians is in fact nothing short of a “war process.” It is hardly practical to imagine that the tiny state of Israel, no larger in area than New Jersey, could realistically be subdivided into two sovereign nations, that of the Palestinian Arabs inexorably committed to the destruction of their Israeli neighbors. It is precisely in the ivory tower that the world of theory expresses itself in sharp disconnect with the practical realities of this war-torn region. However the academics might fantasize to the contrary, the Middle East is not Switzerland, where men in lederhosen come yodeling over the hillsides. 

Having lived in Northern Galilee and worked for a television news gathering operation in southern Lebanon, I have, unfortunately, seen the face of terrorism “up-close and personal.” When my friend and colleague, a Christian man from Ohio, was murdered in his own living room by radicalized Lebanese Shiites, just a few kilometers from Israel’s northernmost villages, it became obvious to this observer that genuine hope for this troubled region must be found, not by catering to the demands of the Palestinians and their professorial acolytes in other countries, but by building bridges with the moderate Arab states in the region, who recognize, as Israel does, the need to form a bulwark against Islamic radicalism and forge a future built on shared values of peace and security. For the agreement with both the UAE and Bahrain, President Trump has surely earned not one but indeed two Nobel peace prizes. For this he deserves the gratitude of the region and the world.