The Nobel Piss Prize

When Ziophobia Masquerades as Moral Authority

I have not respected the Nobel Peace Prize since 1994.

That was the year the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to award its most prestigious peace prize to Yasser Arafat—and make it infamous.

Arafat was not merely a controversial politician. He was chairman of the so-called Palestine Liberation Organization, an organization responsible for decades of terrorism against Israeli civilians and instrumental in hijacking the name Palestine for its political project.

And yet the Nobel Committee decided that he belonged among the world’s champions of peace.

That decision changed the meaning of the prize for me forever.

I have called it the Nobel Piss Prize ever since.

Not the Peace Prize.

The Piss Prize.

Because once the Nobel Committee decided that Arafat belonged among its peace laureates, the word peace had already been compromised.

Nothing afterward could whitewash it.

The stain began in 1994

The 1994 prize was shared by Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

I respected Rabin and Peres, but their presence beside Arafat did not rehabilitate him. Arafat’s presence contaminated them. And it contaminated the prize itself.

I was not the only person who thought so. Kåre Kristiansen, a member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, resigned in protest over the award to Arafat. He considered the decision incompatible with his convictions and with his respect for the prize.

He understood something the committee apparently did not:

A terrorist does not become a champion of peace merely because he signs an agreement and receives a medal.

That was the moment the Nobel Piss Prize lost me.

And I have never come back.

Obama and the Nobel Piss Prize

In 2009, the committee awarded the Piss Prize to Barack Obama.

He had been president for less than a year.

The committee praised his self-proclaimed efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation. Perhaps those efforts would eventually have deserved recognition. But giving him the prize almost immediately after taking office made the award look less like recognition of achievement and more like a political bribe—an advance payment for the presidency the committee wished he would deliver.

By then, however, I had already learned the lesson of 1994.

I did not suddenly respect Barack Obama because the Nobel Committee handed him a medal.

Nor did I begin respecting the Nobel Piss Prize because Obama received one.

Quite the opposite.

The Arafat decision had already destroyed its moral authority.

A prize with a very long memory

The Piss Prize has a long record of laureates whose actions and statements make me wonder what exactly the word peace is supposed to mean.

I began paying attention to the Piss Prize in 1994. I was twenty years old—old enough to understand what was happening and old enough to form my own judgment. That was the year the Nobel Committee awarded the prize to Yasser Arafat, and I have never looked at the prize the same way since.

But the contamination did not begin in 1994.

In 1984, when I was just ten years old, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize to Desmond Tutu, who repeatedly compared Israel to apartheid South Africa. I was too young at the time to pay much attention to the Nobel Committee or to form an informed judgment about Tutu. But looking back, the warning signs were already there.

Then came Arafat in 1994.

Arafat’s award, as we have seen, contaminated the prize further.

Jimmy Carter received the Piss Prize in 2002 and later became one of America’s most prominent ziophobes, repeatedly portraying Israel as an “apartheid” state.

The Nobel establishment has repeatedly shown extraordinary tolerance for extreme hostility toward Israel and Zionism.

And now it has gone considerably further.

Navi Pillay

On October 9, 2026, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay.

I cannot think of a better moment to retire the word Peace from the name.

Pillay is not a distant observer of the UNRWA clientele-Israeli conflict. She chaired the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the UNRWA Clientele-Occupied Territory.

Her commission became one of the principal international instruments for propagating baseless accusations of Israeli “international crimes.”

In September 2025, the commission concluded that Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza.

Pillay is personally complicit in the “genocide” libel.

The “genocide” libel has been thoroughly debunked, including by progressive critics of the commission. But the identity of the person who lent this campaign its institutional authority is beyond dispute.

And now its chair has received the Piss Prize.

Not years later.

Not after some historical reassessment.

Now.

Durban

To understand why this is so grotesque, remember Durban.

The 2001 World Conference Against Racism was supposed to fight racism.

Instead, its parallel NGO forum became one of the most notorious episodes of institutionalized antisemitism and ziophobia in modern international politics.

The material included The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Hitler imagery, and propaganda portraying Israel through Nazi and antisemitic imagery.

A conference supposedly devoted to combating racism had become a venue for recycling some of the oldest anti-Jewish conspiracies in existence.

Navi Pillay later participated in the Durban process, including Durban II in Geneva in 2009.

At Durban II, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used the international stage to attack Israel and Zionism as racist. Pillay, then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, was seated behind him.

And this is the institutional ecosystem from which today’s Piss laureate emerged.

“The Jewish lobby”

In 2022, Pillay’s own so-called commission became embroiled in another controversy.

Commission member Miloon Kothari referred to social media as being controlled by “the Jewish lobby” and questioned Israel’s continued membership in the United Nations.

The phrase was rightly condemned as an antisemitic conspiracy trope.

Kothari later apologized.

Pillay, however, defended him.

This is important because we are not discussing an anonymous activist on social media. We are discussing the chair of an international commission supposedly conducting an impartial investigation into Israel.

If someone serving on that commission invokes the “Jewish lobby,” that should have been disqualifying.

Instead, the chair defended him.

And four years later, that chair received the Piss Prize.

Enter Trump

And now we come to Donald Trump.

Trump has openly wanted the Nobel Peace Prize for years. In January 2026, he even told Norway’s prime minister that because Norway had failed to give him the prize for what he described as ending eight wars, he no longer felt obligated to “think purely of Peace.”

On October 7, just two days before this year’s award, Trump said that he deserved the prize but doubted that the Norwegian committee would give it to him.

Then, after the announcement of Pillay’s award, he erupted again, calling the decision disgraceful and saying Norway would carry an “indelible stain.”

I understand Trump’s frustration.

But here is something I would like to tell Trump:

Why do you want this prize?

Seriously.

Why would any decent person want to have his name permanently associated with Yasser Arafat?

Why would anyone want the same medal that was awarded to Arafat, and now to Navi Pillay?

Why seek validation from an institution that has repeatedly demonstrated such contempt for Israel and such tolerance for ziophobic politics?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a mere Trumpist.

I am a devoted Trumpilier.

I support Trump in everything he does, especially when it comes to supporting Israel—and, when necessary, despite what he says.

So, Mr. President, if you ever get the Nobel Piss Prize, don’t expect me to congratulate you.

In fact, I’ll definitely congratulate you if you refuse it.

That would be far more impressive.

And then there is Rybinsk

There is an additional irony here that is personal.

The Nobel name is part of the history of Rybinsk, my hometown.

The Nobel brothers—Robert, Ludvig, and Alfred—had major industrial interests in Russia, including Rybinsk. Their enterprises contributed to the city’s industrial development, and the Nobel name remains part of Rybinsk’s historical landscape.

Alfred Nobel ultimately created the institution that bears his name.

So the Nobel name has a genuine place in my personal history.

And perhaps that makes the transformation of the Piss Prize particularly frustrating.

The original Nobel legacy is associated with invention, science, industry, and philanthropy.

I still respect the scientific Nobel Prizes.

Physics is physics.

Chemistry is chemistry.

Medicine is medicine.

A scientific discovery does not become false because the Norwegian Nobel Committee makes a foolish political decision.

But the Piss Prize is different.

It is a moral judgment.

And moral judgments can be corrupted.

The Nobel Piss Prize

So let me be completely clear.

I have no respect for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I lost that respect in 1994.

I have not recovered it.

I do not care how many famous people have received it since then.

I do not care whether the recipient is a president, prime minister, dissident, bishop, activist, academic, diplomat, or international judge.

The medal does not erase the history.

The ceremony does not erase the history.

The title “Nobel Peace Prize laureate” does not confer moral authority.

And Navi Pillay certainly does not restore it.

If anything, her award confirms everything I have been saying for thirty-two years.

The same institution that decided terrorist Yasser Arafat belonged among the world’s champions of peace has now decided that the chair of the UN commission that accused Israel of “genocide” deserves the same honor.

No.

I am not buying it.

I will not stand in line to shake the hand of someone merely because the Nobel Committee has placed a medal around that person’s neck.

And I will not allow the Nobel Committee to outsource my conscience.

For me, the Nobel Peace Prize ceased to be a prize for peace in 1994.

It became the Nobel Piss Prize.

And nothing the committee has done since has convinced me otherwise.

If anything, the 2026 award has made the case stronger.

The Nobel Piss Prize is not a badge of moral authority.

It is a declaration of political bankruptcy.

And when that declaration repeatedly accommodates terrorism, antisemitism, and ziophobia, I want no part of it.

Not now.

Not since 1994.

And not ever.

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See Also

They Signed Letters — Not History