News that President Obama received the Nobel Peace elicited a gasp from the anchor of afternoon newsreel of Israel Broadcasting Authority Radio on Friday – “Well, now that is a surprise”, she said with some spontaneity.

Within an hour of the announcement, Reuven Rivlin, veteran speaker of the Israel Knesset Parliament, warned that “Someone who gets a peace prize should not force-feed Israel with his version of peace”, going on to say that he hoped that the peace prize would not inspire the president to “dictate a peace accord to Israel”

Israel has reason to be concerned.

The committee that awards the Nobel Peace prize is comprised of officials from the Norwegian political elite, as opposed to other Nobel prizes for excellence in science, education, health or other scholarly concerns.

The announcement of this prize occurs at a time that Norway remains almost the only European nation to recognize, aid and abet the Hamas regime in Gaza, at a time when Norway sanctions boycotts of some Israeli companies, and at at time when Norway openly funds movements in Israel that advocate the expulsion of Jewish communities from Judea, Samaria, the Golan and Jerusalem.

Things are so bad between Norway and Israel that the Israeli Foreign Ministry is now considering filing a formal request to expel Norwegian peace keeping observers from Hebron.

In other words, for many Israelis. Norwegian endorsement of the peace posture of President Obama reads like a kiss of death for Israel.

Norway’s position is that the US should lead the world community to establish a Palestinian state, even if that state would launch aerial attacks on Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, much as the Palestinian entity in Gaza now fires freely on Sderot and the Western Negev.

Will the Nobel Peace Prize give President Obama the leverage that he needs to lower the boom on Israel?

Time will tell.

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David Bedein
David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.

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