October 8th, 2024: Four Palestinian journalists nominated for Nobel Peace Prize 2024
(Screenshot of the article Four Palestinian journalists nominated for Nobel Peace Prize 2024)
The grad club was cold this evening. We shivered together, shared sweet potato fries with dip, and discussed the significance of four Palestinian journalists being nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. The nominees are photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, reporter Bisan Owda, TV reporter Hind Khoudary, and reporter Wael Al Dahdouh. For the past year, all have been reporting on the genocide in Gaza from the ground.
Azaiza and Owda have previously been recognized for their journalism.
Azaiza was named “2023 Man of the Year” by GQ Middle East, which described him as “a global figure, a vehicle of resilience, and the embodiment of hope for the people of Gaza and for the rest of us around the world. His work personifies the power of digital activism, and his humanity is an important reminder that bravery appears in many forms. Sometimes we choose it, other times it chooses us, and in the case of Azaiza, choice wasn’t even an option.” (see Motaz Azaiza is our 2023 Man of the Year).
Owda, awarded a Peabody Prize, is described as “reporting from her makeshift tent outside the medical center, she shows what survival looks like for her and the masses around her, reporting through tears and horror when Israeli forces strike an ambulance nearby. Despite a lack of clean water and the increasing scarcity of food, she draws on her indomitable spirit to keep the world informed.” (see It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive).
The Nobel Prize is an international award conceptualized by inventor, entrepreneur, and businessman Trevor Nobel. It is awarded to “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind” in the areas of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. It is considered the most prestigious award in the world.
Azaiza and Khoudary commented on their Nobel Prize nominations on social media. Azaiza expressed gratitude for the nomination; Khoudary doesn’t attach any worth to the nomination.
On Instagram, Azaiza posted: “I have been nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for giving the world an insight into the atrocities in Gaza. Wish me luck, and I hope my people will get peace now. Free Palestine." On X, he posted: "I express my sincere thanks to the Noble Peace Prize Committee, and to Norway’s people and government, for standing on the right side of history and their solidarity."
Khoudary posted on Instagram: "I know that I was nominated for the Nobel Prize for months and I never shared anything related .. What Nobel Prize when my people are being slaughtered? What would this even mean if I have been posting for more than 300 days on all of the atrocities Israel is committing and nothing is slightly changing."
What do we think? Would awarding the most prestigious prize in the world to a Palestinian journalist reporting from Gaza be an act of resistance against genocide-enabling rhetoric? Or would it be a performative action akin to lip service?
Here are our thoughts:
As Khoudary says, winning the Nobel Peace Prize will not put a stop to the genocide. In this sense, it makes no difference whether a Palestinian journalist is awarded the Nobel or not. The prize is awarding efforts for peace, but not furthering peace. This makes the award performative.
On the other hand, the Nobel Peace Prize is internationally renown, respected, and confers a high degree of influential status worldwide. In this sense, awarding it to a Palestinian journalist would meaningfully oppose genocide-enabling rhetoric that the US and Canada, among others, use to justify funding the genocide. The prize would attack the ideological root allowing the genocide to continue, thereby furthering peace.
Building on point 2, conferring the Nobel to a Palestinian journalist would also attack the credibility of Zionist talking points spewed on local and international levels, such as the claim that Israel is for peace and merely defending itself. If Israel is for peace and merely defending itself, why was a Palestinian journalist reporting on Israel’s violence the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize? The prize would help nullify Zionist rhetoric to the point that, with time, there would be no premise for taking any action on its behalf.
Building on point 3, the prize may help extinguish Zionist rhetoric - but to what extent and how quickly? Will its effect on stopping the actual violence in Gaza be so indirect that it’s irrelevant? We argue that we cannot know this, and not knowing shows both i) a limit in the usefulness of the prize as a resistance act; and ii) that the prize cannot not be judged on its future effects, only on its ideological power against genocide-enabling rhetoric. We also argue that these shortcomings can be said of any act that does not immediately stop violence in Gaza, such as protesting, boycotting, and educational events.
Building on point 4, we discuss the usefulness of categorizing actions as “direct” and “indirect”. We loosely defined “direct action” as contributing to immediately stopping the violence (such as an arms embargo), and “indirect action” as an action that gives the premise for a direct action (such as signing petitions to make the government sanction Israel). We argue that these categories are not useful for the morale of resistance movements that is crucial to their sustenance: they rank some actions as “less important” through connotation, when these actions may be the only actions accessible to ordinary people. We propose conceptualizing actions on the individual level: each person should think about what they can do, make a plan to do it, sustain that work, and also think creatively about how they can do more.
We looked up the process for nominating individuals for the Nobel Peace Prize. Who is allowed to nominate individuals? Do we agree with the list of people who are allowed to nominate others, or would we alter it? (see Nomination + Selection of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates).
“According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize is considered valid if it is submitted by a person who falls within one of the following categories, a personal application for an award will not be considered:
1. Members of national assemblies and national governments (cabinet members/ministers) of sovereign states as well as current heads of state
2. Members of The International Court of Justice in The Hague and The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague
3. Members of l’Institut de Droit International
4. Members of the International Board of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
5. University professors, professors emeriti and associate professors of history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology, and religion; university rectors and university directors (or their equivalents); directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes
6. Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
7. Members of the main board of directors or its equivalent of organizations that have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
8. Current and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee (proposals by current members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after 1 February)
9. Former advisers to the Norwegian Nobel Committee”
We discussed that the first criteria (government officials and affiliates) should be changed. Movements for peace are often fought against oppressive governments, so members of all governments should not be allowed to nominate for a peace prize. It is a way of giving an oppressor space to define peace. However, we acknowledge that some governments emerge from successful liberation movements - such as Nelson Mandela’s government following the end to the South African apartheid - and should have a right to nominate (PS - Nelson Mandela received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993). We propose adding a clause to the first criteria that specifies that government officials and affiliates should only have the right to nominate for peace if they are not currently engaged in international law violations. This criteria would invalidate government members in Canada, the UK, and other countries currently aiding and abetting genocide from nominating for the peace prize. We acknowledge that this would not extend directly to the US and Israel, who are not signatories to the Rome Statute.
We are generally happy with criteria 2 (international law scholars). This ensures that the principles of international law - whether they have been upheld or not - have space for defining peace. For example, we are happy that Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Palestine and author of the report “Anatomy of a Genocide” would be qualified to nominate for the peace prize.
We are surprised that criteria five (university professors) excludes professors with expertise in the natural sciences. Professors in the natural sciences may have insight into world peace if their research documents manmade destruction wreaked on the natural world. This is especially blatant in the case of climate change activism, which has become a world peace issue. Climate change, and its detriments, was revealed through scientific reports. Does it make sense that these scientists should not be allowed to select leaders in climate change action? Similarly, in the case of Palestine, scientists contribute reports on land and agriculture destruction in Gaza caused by the genocide and its far-reaching effects. This gives them a sense of what grave injustice, and the extent of harm to humanity, looks like. We believe that these insights make them valuable members for nominating peace prize recipients.
We disagree with criteria five including “university directors”. This is an administrative role that does not contribute or imply knowledge about world peace. We believe it should be removed.
We also discussed the idea that any award is inherently steeped in a colonialist structure. Awards designate people who are different from the norm; the norm is defined by a social structure built by a history of colonialism. Ergo, the norm gives rise to conceptualizations of what is “outside the norm” (and worthy of awards) that are inherently also colonialist. We acknowledge that this may be less so the case for innovations in the sciences, like the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine given to a discovery on microRNA and their facilitation of gene expression.
