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The Nobel Delusion and the Price of Blood

by Ram ben Ze’ev



The Nobel Delusion and the Price of Blood
The Nobel Delusion and the Price of Blood

For years, President Donald Trump nursed a grievance. The Nobel Committee refused to crown him as the architect of peace he so eagerly proclaimed himself to be. Throughout his first term, during the 2020 campaign, throughout 2024, and right up until the Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado—who symbolically handed it to him—he spoke incessantly of the wars he stopped and the peace he advanced.


Then something changed. The rhetoric of the “Peace President” gave way to the conduct of a man unrestrained.


Dozens were killed in international waters, labelled drug traffickers and executed without trial, without charge, without due process. If American intelligence could track vessels precisely enough to obliterate them, then it could have tracked suspects to a shore, apprehended them, prosecuted them and, if the law so required, executed them lawfully.


That is civilisation. That is justice.


Blowing them out of the water is not justice. It is extrajudicial killing. When a state deploys its military power to kill outside the framework of war and outside the framework of law, it crosses into territory the civilised world once agreed to call criminal.


Then came Venezuela. An invasion. Dozens dead. A sitting president, Nicolás Maduro Moros, and his wife abducted and flown to New York to face what can only be described as politically convenient charges. Whatever one thinks of Maduro—and I think little of him—kidnapping a foreign head of state is not the act of a restrained republic. It is the act of an empire convinced of its own moral exemption.





Iran followed. For days, there was theatre: talk of negotiations, of nuclear timelines perpetually ‘weeks away.’ For three decades Western leaders have sung the same refrain — that Iran is only weeks from a bomb. Thirty years of imminent warnings. Evidence rarely presented. Accountability never demanded.


Then the bombs fell.


The United States, alongside the Israel Defense Forces, launched strikes that have killed hundreds, including Iran’s spiritual leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei, his daughter, her husband and numerous officials. I am Jewish. I am no admirer of Iran. There is little doubt that its regime would erase Israel if it possessed the capacity. But that existential calculus belongs first and foremost to Israel.


Gone are the days when Jews kneel before greater powers. Israel possesses one of the most formidable militaries on earth. If our leaders believed we faced an imminent threat, they had the sovereign right — and the sovereign responsibility — to act. But Israel too often reacts rather than initiates, and usually after Jews have been murdered.


Our tradition teaches: הבא להרגך השכם להרגו — “If someone comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first” (Sanhedrin 72a). Self-defence is not merely permitted; it is a moral obligation. To allow a genocidal enemy to arm itself while vowing our destruction would be a betrayal of life itself.


We do not require Washington, Brussels or London to decide when Jewish blood is at risk.


So why did the man who styled himself as Chairman of the “Board of Peace” feel compelled to ignite another war? Perhaps the title did not satisfy him. Perhaps he grew bored of peace.


Already, at least three Americans have lost their lives. Ten Israelis have been killed, and hundreds more have been injured by Iranian rockets. It is still early days, yet President Trump speaks of four or five weeks needed to “disrupt” the Iranian regime. Weeks measured not in strategy, but in funerals.


What disturbs me most is not merely the American bombs. It is the celebration.


Trump and numerous American leaders celebrated the death of Khamenei. Worse still, many Jews—some of them rabbis—joined the chorus. I shed no tears for a dictator who wished me and every other Jew dead. But there is nothing Jewish about rejoicing in death.


You may oppose a regime. You may believe military action was necessary. You may even believe justice was served. But to mock a grieving man on live television, to laugh at death, to revel in it—that is not strength. It is moral decay.


When our brothers and sisters were slaughtered in October 2023, we recoiled not only at the murders but at the sweets handed out in the streets, the cheering crowds, the grotesque celebration of Jewish blood. We called it barbaric. We called it inhuman. We said: “Not us.”

So what are we doing now?


A Jew does not celebrate death. Even when an enemy falls, we do not gloat. Even when justice is executed, we do not dance over bodies. The Torah commands restraint in victory. Our tradition demands that we remain human even when confronting inhumanity.


And what of the daughter? The son-in-law? Were they combatants? Architects of terror? Or collateral names in social media posts crafted for likes and applause?


Mockery in the face of death diminishes the one who mocks. It does not elevate him. It does not strengthen Israel. It does not honour our murdered.


We are meant to be better. Not because our enemies are. But because we are Jews.


As for the Peace President, I expect nothing more — as his administration eyes Cuba and any other nation upon which he believes he can impose his particular brand of peace.



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