Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald Trump, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his ground-breaking work negotiating the Abraham Accords. Kushner worked on the Accords in his capacity as White House Senior Advisor, along with his deputy, Special Assistant to the President Avi Berkowitz, who was also included in the nomination.
The nomination was submitted by U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.). The New York Post obtained a copy of the nomination, in which Zeldin wrote, “The Abraham Accords, signed in 2020, represent the most significant diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and Arab nations in decades.” Zeldin emphasized the significance of the men’s work. “Against the background of a centuries-old conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic, rising tensions, and Iran’s growing influence, Kushner and Berkowitz successfully brought together regional leaders, and forged regional alliances better capable of countering Iran’s malign influence.”
The Abraham Accords were a series of four agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco that normalized diplomatic relations between the participating nations. They were a historic accomplishment by the Trump White House, which made more progress towards a peaceful, harmonious Middle East than any prior administration had produced in at least a generation.
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Kushner and Berkowitz were nominated once before, in 2021, by Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz. In the same year, President Trump received two Peace Prize nominations: one for doing “more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees” and one for his “Trump doctrine” against involving the United States in endless wars.
There were also controversial nominees in 2021 who arguably caused more consternation than peace, such as Stacey Abrams, the BLM movement, and Greta Thunberg. The 2021 Peace Prize was ultimately awarded to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, a pair of journalists who worked to preserve freedom of the press in the Philipines and Russia.
Greta “Pippi Wokescold” Thunberg is also renominated this year. Other 2022 nominees include Pope Francis, the World Health Organization, Belarusian dissident Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, and U.K. biologist and broadcaster David Attenborough. Many of the names on this year’s list were nominated for their environmentalist work.
The Nobel Committee will announce the 2022 laureate in October.
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