Alan Dershowitz nominated Jared Kushner for a Nobel Peace Prize, citing his work getting Arab states to recognize Israel
Jared Kushner #JaredKushner
Alan Dershowitz, the star attorney who helped defend former President Donald Trump at his first impeachment trial, nominated Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner for a Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday, Reuters reported.
Dershowitz, who has also defended OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Epstein, wants Kushner and his former White House deputy, Avi Berkowitz, acknowledged for their work normalizing relations between Israel and four Arab nations.
The Abraham Accords were hatched between August and December 2020, and involve the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco agreeing to recognize Israel’s sovereignty. The UAE and Bahrain became the third and fourth Arab states to recognize Israel.
As a professor emeritus at Harvard, Dershowitz has the ability to make a nomination to the Nobel Committee.
The committee will then come up with a shortlist of candidates in the spring and announce a winner in October, according to the Nobel Prize website.
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Others nominated for the prize this year include the jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the climate change activist Greta Thunberg, and the World Health Organization. All three of those nominations are backed by Norwegian lawmakers, who have a track record of picking the winner, according to The Guardian.
Trump was also nominated for this year’s prize by a far-right Norwegian lawmaker, who also cited his administration’s work on the Abraham Accords.
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In his letter to the committee, Dershowitz suggested that his nomination would be seen as controversial.
“The Nobel Peace Prize is not for popularity. Nor is it an assessment of what the international community may think of those who helped bring about peace. It is an award for fulfilling the daunting criteria set out by Alfred Nobel in his will,” he wrote, according to Reuters.
“These Accords, which have brought about normalization between Israel and several Sunni Arab nations, fulfill all the criteria for the prize. They hold the promise of an even broader peace in the Middle East between Israel, the Palestinians and other Arab nations. They are a giant step forward in bringing peace and stability to the region, and even to the world,” he continued, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Kushner told Reuters he was honored to be nominated for the prize.
Trump heavily touted the diplomatic-normalization agreements at the time, saying they had brought about “the dawn of a new Middle East.” However, the deals failed to take into account the plight of the Palestinians, and Palestinian leaders described the Abraham Accords as a “stab in the back.”