Soviets, Arabs attack Nobel Prize decision

Associated Press

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“Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, co-winner of the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize with Anwar Sadat, said Saturday he telephoned the Egyptian president to congratulate him and the two agreed that ‘real prize is peace itself.’ New bitterness over the award emerged in some world capitals.

The Soviet news agency Tass printed 600 words of international commentaries that variously described the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision as an ‘insult,’ ‘a bad joke’ and an ‘outrage.’ Begin, who had withheld comment until after the Jewish Sabbath, said in Jerusalem he was deeply honored to receive the award.

‘It is a day of joy for us,’ he said. ‘But the real great joy will come on the day when i will be able to announce that the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel is concluded, signed and ratified.’

Sadat, at a villa outside Cairo, said the honor went to the people of Egypt and all who have supported his peace initiative… Begin said he would receive the prize in the name of the Israeli poooople because ‘there is no other nation on Earth that wants peace more than our people.

I am only the addressee.’… The Soviet Union has made no direct comment except for Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko’s remark in Paris dismissing the award as ‘a joke.’

The Tass compilation of critical commentaries included one report saying the Nobel Committee could have awarded the prize ‘with equal success’ to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who negotiated the Munich pact, which Chamberlain said would bring ‘peace in our time,’ a year before the outbreak of World War II.

In Damascus, Syria, the government-run radio said: ‘It is not an honor for Sadat to share any prize with an anti-Arab terrorist like Menachem Begin.’ A Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman in Damascus said the award comes ‘while Begin is still an aggressor against Palestinian land and rights, while Sadat is Begin’s partner.’

The Algerian government-controlled newspaper El Moudjahid commented, ‘At first sight, one wonders whether to denounce a scandal or a practical joke.’ Describing the two prize-winners as ‘warmongers par excellence,’ the front-page editorial accused them of seeking ‘the disappearance of Palestine and the genocide of the Palestinian people.’

It described Begin as ‘the terrorist leader ... assassin of women and children and perpetual arsonist of the Middle East,’ and Sadat as ‘he who betrayed his people and the entire Arab nation, who denies the existence of the Palestinian people.’”

Context added by this archive

The word “genocide” reaching an American paper in 1978 as a quotation from an Algerian editorial, printed without comment alongside the Nobel announcement. “Poooople” is the paper’s typesetting.

Cite this clipping

"Soviets, Arabs attack Nobel Prize decision," Wilmington Morning Star, 29 October 1978, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1978-002. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1978-002