Nobel winners offer to nominate Trump for Peace Prize if he gets all hostages freed
In letter, 3 Israeli laureates and the president of the Israel Academy of Sciences tell the US president they ‘unreservedly support’ his call for the release of all captives
Four prominent Israeli scientists, including three Nobel laureates, signed a letter on Wednesday sent to US President Donald Trump, saying that they support his call for Hamas to free all the hostages held in Gaza, adding that they will nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize if he succeeds in securing their release.
According to the Walla news site, the signatories of the letter are Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko, who jointly won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2004; Ada Yonath, a crystallographer who won the same prize in 2009; and David Harel, a computer scientist and current president of the Israel Academy of Sciences.
The four wrote to Trump that “we would like to say that we share your deep and sincere concern for the safety and survival of the 76 hostages who have been held by Hamas for 495 days, and unreservedly support your desire to see all of them released as soon as possible, both those who are still alive and those who are not.”
The letter added that if Trump succeeds in bringing about the rapid release of all the hostages, “the four of us, in cooperation with a number of other senior figures, would be very happy to submit your nomination with enthusiasm for the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Asked last week during a press conference alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whether he might win the Nobel Peace Prize if he can get all the hostages back, Trump said: “They will never give me a Nobel prize.”
Any Nobel laureate can nominate a person for the prize, as well as senior scientific officials, members of governments and national assemblies, and others.
Trump has previously been nominated for the Peace Prize for brokering the 2020 Abraham Accords that saw Israel normalize its ties with several Arab neighbors. He wasn’t selected for the prize.
The US president has “a hyper fixation” on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, CBS News reported last month, citing an unnamed Trump aide.
On Monday, Trump called for all hostages to be released by the terror group by the week’s end, threatening that the war should restart if they do not fulfill his demands.
The ultimatum was partially adopted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said Tuesday that the ceasefire would end if hostages were not freed Saturday, without explicitly demanding that all 76 hostages still in Gaza, including the remains of those killed, be released then.
In a series of contradictory statements, the government threatened a return to war if “our hostages” were not released, later revised that to demand that all nine living hostages slated to be freed in the first phase of the ceasefire be released “in the coming days,” and finally reverted to demanding “all of them” be freed, while leaving the door open to various interpretations.
Seventy-three hostages kidnapped on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier killed in 2014 was recovered from Gaza in January.
Hamas has so far released 21 hostages — civilians, soldiers, and Thai nationals — during the ceasefire that began in January. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.
Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
