Several readers have sent me this article, headed “64 Public Figures, 7 Nobel Peace Laureates, Call for Arms Embargo on Israel for War Crimes.” I write about those seven laureates in my history of the peace prize, of course. (Actually, six of them. There is a Spaniard in there who has never won the prize.) The most harmful of them is Desmond Tutu: because he is a South African hero who, for decades, has peddled the lie that Israel is an “apartheid state.” Coming from him, it is more harmful than from (the countless) others.
As regards the current conflict — or the latest flare-up of the ongoing and endless conflict — the most important Nobel peace laureate is Barack Obama: his statements, his policies.
By the way, his friend Rashid Khalidi, of the PLO, is of course among the above-mentioned public figures who have called for an embargo on Israel and accused it of war crimes.