Netanyahu Nominates Trump for Peace Prize
Plus: TSA time wasters, in defense of tourist traps, Trump announces new tariffs, and more...
Netanyahu's Peace Prize stunt: Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a letter nominating President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize due to the "pivotal role" Trump has played in establishing greater diplomatic ties between nations in the Middle East. The American president has "created new opportunities to expand the circle of peace and normalization," according to Netanyahu—Trump's partner in bombing Iran last month.
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To be fair to Netanyahu, he is not citing Trump's role in the Iran nuclear site bombing campaign but rather his role—back in 2020, during his first term—in negotiating the Abraham Accords, which established formal ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. (Trump has also worked on getting Saudi Arabia to join, but that effort has stalled for now.) "The accords were a diplomatic victory for Israel, in part because the Arab states abandoned their longstanding condition that relations with Israel could only come after the establishment of a Palestinian state," notes The New York Times.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has nominated US President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Prime Minister Netanyahu gave @POTUS @realDonaldTrump the letter of nomination during their White House meeting. pic.twitter.com/ayGSHoEcmH
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) July 8, 2025
"I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do," Trump wrote on Truth Social last month. "I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between India and Pakistan, I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between Serbia and Kosovo, I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for keeping Peace between Egypt and Ethiopia … and I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for doing the Abraham Accords," he lamented.
Netanyahu appears to be buttering him up as part of their meeting in D.C. "He's forging peace, as we speak, in one country in the region after another," Netanyahu said of his dining companion on Monday. Trump implied his decision to bomb Iran was akin to the U.S. dropping the atomic bomb on Japan to end World War II.
"I don't want to say what it reminded me of," he said, "But if you go back a long time ago, it reminded people of a certain other event."
"Harry Truman's picture is now in the lobby, in a nice location in the lobby, where it should have been—but that stopped, a lot of fighting. And this stopped a lot of fighting."
But Netanyahu and Trump aren't just focused on flattery. At issue is their joint approach toward Iran in the aftermath of the strikes—specifically, what tack to take with regard to Iran's nuclear program—and hammering out a ceasefire agreement to end fighting between Israel and Hamas. As Trump exerts influence on Netanyahu, mediators are helping representatives from both sides of the war hammer out a possible deal in Qatar.
Sticking points so far: Hamas wants the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an aid group backed by Israel, to stop handing out food in the Strip; Hamas contends that Israel has been shooting desperate Palestinians who are trying to get food and that the United Nations should be the only humanitarian group operating in the area. (There are credible accounts of this happening, though the Israeli military denies it.) Israel says that U.N. deliveries have allowed for more rampant corruption and skimming off the top from Hamas, that the terrorist group is stealing aid intended for desperate people and either hoarding it or selling it on the black market. (Many Palestinians attest that this is happening.)
Hamas has also said it needs Israeli troops to fully withdraw from Gaza, whereas Israel has said it needs to maintain control of a portion of southern Gaza for the time being to ensure terrorism doesn't ramp up again.
Netanyahu maintains that the war can only end once all hostages are returned and once Hamas is fully eradicated. "There won't be Hamas," he said, clear about his goal. "We will free our hostages, and we will defeat Hamas." Much of the Israeli right is insistent that this is an important precondition for ending the war and that nothing short of this can be accepted.
Meanwhile, Trump and Netanyahu in Washington seem somewhat stuck on the idea of relocating people from the obliterated Gaza Strip, with Netanyahu claiming he was "getting close to finding several countries" willing to take in Palestinians. "It's called free choice. You know, if people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave," said Netanyahu, possibly responding to criticism from neighboring nations that the duo is attempting forced displacement of the long-suffering Palestinians. "It shouldn't be a prison. It should be an open place, and give people a free choice."
Tallying up the true toll: "Without a government apology—or even an official explanation—TSA is ending this innumerate security policy," writes Bryan Caplan about the shoe-removal policy change covered in yesterday's Roundup. (Does the government ever really apologize for stupid policies?) "What's so innumerate about it? Let's assume that the shoe requirement costs one minute of time per passenger. That's actually conservative, because you have to count not only the time required to remove your own shoes, but also: all the delays forgetful people impose on everyone behind them in line; all the delays TSA imposes on everyone when they enforce the rule on the forgetful. (How many times have you seen a person get up to the scanner, then get turned around to put their shoes on the belt?)"
"The average number of air travelers in the US over this period is about 700M per year," continues Caplan, "implying the destruction of roughly 15 billion minutes of time in the U.S. alone. That's almost 30,000 years of life. If you figure the average American has about 30 more years to live, that's 1000 lives destroyed."
Scenes from New York: Christian Britschgi's "In Defense of the Tourist Trap" is worth a read, though I do disagree with it a bit, as a hater of crowds and people overusing their phones in museums. Also, the thought of people coming to New York and simply hitting up Times Square, the Met, and a few shopping hot spots is just so bleak—but then again, my suggestions (go drink vodka and eat golubtsy until you can't see straight in Brighton Beach; go to Noguchi in Queens; go get Korean BBQ on W 32nd; take the ferry; go to a cocktail bar like Patent Pending or Attaboy or Sunken Harbor Club; dunk yourself in the ocean; hear neighborhood lore from some crusty old Italians) are decidedly odd, so maybe I'm the problem.
QUICK HITS
- "President Donald Trump sowed fresh chaos in metals markets by indicating the US would implement a higher-than-expected 50% tariff on copper imports, spurring a record spike in New York futures and a drop in the global benchmark," reports Bloomberg.
- Relatedly: "TARIFFS WILL START BEING PAID ON AUGUST 1, 2025," the president posted on Truth Social. "There has been no change to this date, and there will be no change. In other words, all money will be due and payable starting AUGUST 1, 2025 — No extensions will be granted."
- "The Trump administration can move forward with plans to slash the federal work force and dismantle federal agencies, the Supreme Court announced on Tuesday," reports The New York Times. "The decision could result in job losses for tens of thousands of employees at agencies including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, State and Treasury." Naturally, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a 15-page dissent.
- It seems like he shouldn't have chosen to go to school in Maine. He has no one to blame but himself!
Imagine going to class with this guy pic.twitter.com/qagVVAvyTS
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) July 7, 2025
- Hell yeah:
Capitalism's ultimate revenge will be when socialists seize the means of production only to realize none of them have ever worked a machine before since capitalism let them all get wealthy studying feminist poetry and working for a radicalist collective newsletter.
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) July 8, 2025
- New from Reason's Zach Weissmueller, and very much worth your time: