Hitler, Netanyahu, and The death of irony — Che Ran

Hitler, Netanyahu, and The death of irony — Che Ran


Wednesday, 09 Jul 2025 10:38 AM MYT


JULY 9 — Imagine living in a world where Benjamin Netanyahu — the same man who’s turned Gaza into a graveyard of children, journalists, women, doctors, aid workers, and dreams — is somehow allowed to nominate someone for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Insane? Of course. But let’s not kid ourselves. Humanity has been doing insane since forever. Back in 1937, a Swedish MP nominated Adolf bloody Hitler for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yes, that Hitler. The one who thought genocide was a great infrastructure project.

So no, we shouldn’t be surprised. History is full of these cosmic punchlines.

This week, as the International Criminal Court gathered in The Hague — the same city where Slobodan Milošević sat in a cell for orchestrating mass slaughter, where Charles Taylor was sentenced for crimes that left Sierra Leone awash in blood and diamonds — Reed Rubinstein, a US legal adviser, swaggered up to the mic with all the grace of a drunk uncle at a wedding, declaring that the ICC’s investigations against Israel and the US were “illegitimate and baseless.”

Baseless?

Tell that to the families of the 16,000 Palestinians killed since October, almost half of them children. Tell that to the more than 100 journalists slaughtered while reporting from craters that used to be apartment blocks, hospitals, UN schools. Tell that to Médecins Sans Frontières staff, who keep pulling corpses from rubble while dodging bombs dropped by a military that tweets hashtags like #HumanitarianPause.

Rubinstein thundered on, promising America would use “all appropriate and effective diplomatic, political and legal instruments to block ICC overreach.” Translation: We’re the sheriff, jury, judge, and hangman. International law is for everyone else.


And yes, this is the same ICC — the world’s only permanent court for atrocity crimes, birthed after we said never again at Nuremberg, after Cambodia’s killing fields, after Rwanda’s churches overflowed with hacked corpses. A court established so no war criminal could hide behind a flag ever again.

But here we are, in 2025, back in the circus. A man accused of war crimes nominates people for peace prizes. America threatens judges for daring to uphold the Rome Statute they themselves helped draft but never ratified.

It’s almost funny, if you’re the kind of person who finds dark humour in mass graves and history’s endless loops.



US President Donald Trump holds a bilateral dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in Washington, DC, July 7, 2025. — Reuters pic



Because when Hitler got his nomination, it was quickly withdrawn. Maybe there was still some decency left then. Today? Netanyahu could nominate himself, and half the world would applaud while sipping single-origin coffee, posting #PrayForGaza from their iPhones built by children in other occupied territories.

The Romans crucified people by the roadside to remind the world who was boss. We sanction judges. Same empire, different branding.

So no, don’t be surprised. We live in a world where Hitler was nominated for peace, Netanyahu bombs refugee camps, and America lectures the ICC about justice.

Irony didn’t just die. It was executed. Probably with a Hellfire missile fired from a Reaper drone hovering politely outside a hospital’s neonatal ward.