Jared Kushner Is Now A Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, Here’s What That Actually Means - Forbes

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Topline

Former White House senior adviser and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize along with his deputy Avi Berkowitz, by a former Trump attorney, for their role in negotiating the normalization of relationships between Israel and four Arab nations as part of the “Abraham Accords.”

Key Facts

Kushner and Berkowitz have been nominated by Alan Dershowitz — who had defended Trump in his first impeachment trial last year.

As per the Nobel Peace Prize’s website, nominations may be submitted by any person who fits the criteria laid out by the award committee which includes politicians, academics, previous award winners among others, and according to Reuters, Dershowitz was eligible to nominate the pair in his capacity as a professor emeritus of Harvard Law School.

Nominations for the award are supposed to be confidential and the list of nominees for a given year is not disclosed until after 50 years have elapsed but the committee previously mentioned that there were 318 candidates for the 2020 award.

Sunday, January 31 was the last day for the submission of a nominee for this year’s award.

In a statement, Kushner said he was honored to be nominated for the prize, the Reuters report added.

Crucial Quote

Seemingly self-aware of the fact that the nominations may be controversial, Reuters reports Dershowitz as writing in his letter to the Nobel committee: “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.”

Key Background

Kushner will join his father-in-law Trump on the list of nominees as the former President was nominated for the peace prize by Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a right-wing lawmaker from Norway in September last year. At the time, Tybring-Gjedde told Fox News he was nominating Trump “for his merit,” adding “I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees.” Tybring-Gjedde had previously submitted a nomination for Trump in 2018, following the former president’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump has at various points in time expressed that he believes he deserves a Nobel and in 2019, he did not congratulate Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed after he won the award, claiming that he—not Ahmed—deserved the award for brokering peace in Ethiopia.

Tangent

Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama won the award in 2009 just after becoming president, something that seemed to greatly irritate Trump. The former president complained in 2019: “I would get a Nobel prize for a lot of things, if they give it out fairly, which they don't,” adding that even though Obama got the prize in 2009, “he had no idea why he got it. You know what? That was the only thing I agreed with him on.”

What To Watch For

Kushner and Berkowitz, who was the Middle East envoy, played key roles in negotiating the deals between Israel and four Arab nations — United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. However, the Biden administration is expected to review all national security deals struck during the Trump administration, including those with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which has also normalized relations with Israel. Some U.S. lawmakers have derided the Morocco deal in particular, as the Trump administration recognized the country’s sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara region in order to secure the agreement.