Netanyahu and the art of sucking up

It is the year 1719 and the composer Johann Sebastian Bach has arrived in Berlin. He has travelled a long way on bad, pre-Autobahn roads to buy a new harpsichord.

Christian Ludwig, the margrave of Brandenburg (and brother of the Prussian king), hears Bach is in town and orders him to his palace for a private show. Ludwig likes the music. A lot. Bach dutifully grovels before his royal highness for noticing his “little pieces”. They are named the Brandenburg Concertos.

There is more than a whiff of similar grovel in the scenes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu handing a copy of a letter to Donald Trump at the White House this week, which he claims is his letter to the Nobel committee recommending that the 47th US president be awarded the peace prize.

Netanyahu may, of course, be indulging in easy flattery to a Zeppelin-sized ego, possibly in the hope that Trump is not quite finished with bombing Iran.

If it seems unlikely that the Nobel committee would honour a man who just ordered air strikes on a sovereign nation without the authority of his legislature, that’s because it is.

Then again, it did award the 1973 peace prize to US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, along with North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho, for the Paris Peace Accords aimed at ending the war in Vietnam.

That Kissinger had been at state while the US bombed North Vietnam and Cambodia, and had conducted a covert and murderous anticommunist operation on behalf of right-wing juntas in South America in the 1970s, was apparently not an obstacle.

Kissinger, whose enduring sycophancy had earned him the nickname “Ass” Kissinger at university, was a master at playing off sides against each other. A bit like Netanyahu and Pakistan (who also nominated Trump for a peace prize).

Leaving the rest of us with little comfort except to remember Groucho Marx, who said: “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”