Israeli Arab MK Mohammed Barakeh is gathering a lobby of intellectuals and Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to back his initiative to pressure the Nobel Prize committee to take away Foreign Minister Shimon Peres’s Nobel Peace Prize, reported Haaretz newspaper on Tuesday.
Barakeh met with leaders in Italy who threw their weight behind his initiative, and he will soon meet with people in France and Germany on the same mission, said the paper.
Barakeh said Monday that the MEPs he met with favored the initiative because Peres, in his capacity as foreign minister in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government, was the figurehead for a policy of war crimes against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories.
Peres won the Noble Peace Prize in 1994 along with slain prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat – Albawaba.com
