Arafat's Prize

[Glensheen'sGirl~]

One of my lovely co-workers sent me an e-mail with this link:

RevokeThePrize

When I did a search on Snopes, I found this:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/nobel.htm

I generally trust Snopes, but I know that not everyone does...

What are your thoughts on this one? And the real thing I was going for here... do you think they SHOULD revoke his prize?

I don't think they should. They gave it to him then for what he was doing then. That's like taking away someone's academy award because they didn't do anything "good" after that.

 

[Anonymous]

I agree - there are a number of Nobel prizewinners who did nothing at all afterwards in the field that their prize was awarded in - this applies especially to the Peace Prize. I'm reminded of two Northern Irish women who won the Peace Prize sometime in the 80s for their work in setting up a peace organisation in the province - one of them promptly took her half of the prize money and sodded off to the West Indies with it and a boyfriend; her organisation quickly broke up and sunk without trace. And then there was good old Henry Kissinger. There's some good arguments to say that he never deserved the Prize in the first place and he's certainly been no peacemonger since. But I've never heard anyone say that his Prize should be taken back.

 

[Anonymous]

We don't really know what's going on out there in Israel/Palestine at the moment. Hype piled on hype piled on hype. Rubble piled on rubble piled on rubble. It all adds to the horrors of the imagination.

One day, we might all be really sorry and ashamed that we let it happen.

Mentioning N. Ireland. Supposing sometime, in the seventies, or, the eighties, the British Government had decided to settle things with the Irish Government in a similiar way. They might just have been accused of losing the plot.

I know it's not the same situation. Nonetheless, I lived in Birmingham in the mid seventies and later, London at the end of the eighties. I had to walk into work in the center a few times after an explosion, or, a bomb scare closed the tube. I never thought, now it's time to neuk Dublin. Thankfully, neither did Callaghan, Thatcher, or Major.

Is it true about the convicted IRA bomber being asked to open the New York St Patrick's Day Parade this year?

I always thought the Nobel peace prize was only supposed to be a significant gesture anyway. A sort of encouragement to keep up the good work. Henry Kissinger, ha ha ha!

 

[Anonymous]

I think these sorts of prizes should be handed out posthumously.
80 years of good work can be totally undone by 1 moment of madness.
You don't know if this is going to happen until the person is dead.