According to the IDF website, recordings of UNRWA employees highlight them saying, "I'm inside, I'm inside with the Jews," "We have female hostages, I captured one." That refrain about "Jews" rather than "Israelis" was a familiar one, repeated time and again and recorded for posterity on GoPro cameras and other recording devices.

The forwarding of UNRWA as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize also comes less than a month after it was revealed the Biden-Harris Department of Justice backed a call for UNRWA employees implicated in the Oct. 7 massacres to be immune from prosecution.

In addition, there are other organizations and individuals who have not exactly covered themselves in glory over the last 12 months. In January, the ICJ issued a preliminary ruling – through the sponsorship of a case brought by South Africa – which accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. In May the court ruled Israel "must immediately halt its military offensive" in Rafah and other areas "which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."

While the court cannot enforce its ruling, and had its authority also undermined by the heroic stance of Justice Julia Sebutinde of Uganda, who actually looked at the evidence presented, the ICJ used its global soapbox to very publicly push Hamas' narrative and agenda. The court even relied upon evidence submitted by UNRWA to reach its decision.

Secretary-General Guterres too is a highly compromised figure, and his nomination seems reward for indulging in oleaginous pandering to the League of Arab states. The citation for him notes, "is personal courage and integrity in the face of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza." It should be recalled on Oct. 9, when there were still a few Hamas terrorists roaming around southern Israel, when many of the victims of the bestial massacre two days previously, when some 250 hostages – both dead and alive – had been spirited into Gaza, and before Israel had even properly retaliated for the invasion of its borders, Guterres took it upon himself to exclaim, "Hamas' violence did not come in a vacuum."

He has consistently used his bully pulpit to excoriate Israel's actions in Gaza, claiming that the devastation and alleged loss of life is without precedent or equal. In October, Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz banned Guterres from entering Israel after the Portuguese failed to "unequivocally condemn" Iran's missile attack. Some peacemaker he.

The Nobel Peace Prize has for a few decades become a highly controversial award. Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat was awarded it in 1994, along with Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin (who would be assassinated a year later) and Shimon Peres. Arafat's commitment to peace was always tenuous at best, and the latter years of his life and career when he unleashed the murderous Second Intifada in Sept. 2000, was evidence of this.

President Barack Obama was awarded the prize in 2009, barely eight months into his presidency. While he had the good grace to seem a little sheepish to be even nominated, explaining he hadn't done anything yet, he still accepted the award.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump, who did more to promote Middle East peace than pretty much any U.S. commander-in-chief in recent memory, and who was scandalously overlooked – as was Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – for signing the groundbreaking Abraham Accords in 2020, is nominated this year. Elon Musk, the owner of social media platform X, whose Starlink has provided millions of people with internet access is also nominated.