Nothing noble about the peace prize

When we heard that a retired South African judge had won the Nobel Peace Prize, I am sure every one of us wanted to celebrate and feel proud. That is until we found out that it was Navi Pillay, the former United Nations (UN) human rights chief who has graced the pages of the SA Jewish Report whenever her bias against us has shown itself. 

Unfortunately, as a Jew, I am horrified that she was given this internationally prestigious award for her work towards peace. She is clearly not a person who wants peace in the Israeli Palestinian crisis. She has for a long, long time made this clear and, in her actions, has rather entrenched the animosity and hatred between the two. 

Five years ago, UN Watch called for Pillay to resign from heading a UN inquiry into clashes between Israel and Hamas the previous May. The organisation alleged that she had violated UN rules by failing to disclose statements and positions demonstrating her unapologetic prejudice against Israel. In my view, the inquiry’s subsequent outcome confirmed the concern that she had prejudged the matter and could not approach Israel objectively. 

“Never throughout her UN tenure did Pillay use such dismissive language regarding any other country, not even against serial abusers such as China, Russia, Iran, Syria, or North Korea,” says Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch and an international human rights lawyer. 

“Her narrative of who is the villain is set in stone. Ms Pillay has long ago made up her mind. Asking Navi Pillay to head an inquiry examining Israel is like asking a vegetarian to review a steakhouse. When it comes to Israel, as our legal brief demonstrates, Pillay is the complete opposite of impartial.” 

Her hostility towards Israel was established already by 2009, when she led the UN’s Durban Review Conference in Switzerland, the follow-up to the 2001 World Conference against Racism, which had descended into an antisemitic spectacle. Pillay repeatedly lambasted Jewish community activists for challenging decisions made at the conference. 

As UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2010, she again nailed her colours to the mast, saying “the Israeli government treats international law with perpetual disdain”. Then in 2017, she declared Israel guilty of apartheid, a declared crime against humanity. 

In 2023, she gave a lecture in which she declared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians “inhumane” and defended the systematic singling out of Israel under a targeted agenda item at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). She then signed a South African Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (SA-BDS) coalition petition to sanction Israel. 

And so it continued. Five years back, the then South African Zionist Federation chairperson, Rowan Polovin, said, “Pillay is well known for her ongoing and extreme anti-Israel rhetoric and meetings with Hamas. She’s a highly compromised individual whose obvious bias should render her unfit for any objective inquiry into Israel.” 

In the months preceding 7 October, Pillay chaired a UNHRC inquiry into “all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law” in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, arising from events in May 2021. Although 27 UN member states condemned the inquiry, the council produced findings that, in my view, portrayed Israel as predictably depraved. It is little wonder that critics described the process under Pillay as an “anti-Israel inquisition”. 

Following 7 October, while her commission didn’t deny Israeli women were sexually abused by Palestinians, she took a far harder line in condemning Israeli soldiers for their alleged sexual assaults on Palestinians. She was also at the helm of the first UN commission to “declare” that Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza. How could such an impartial person even accept this role? Does this sound like a peace icon? 

In her position at the UN, she constantly went after and demonised the Jewish State. 

This self-same woman is now being held up as an international icon of peace, someone said to have devoted her life to reconciliation. She has undoubtedly done good work in other areas, but that cannot erase the central question raised by her record on Israel: how can someone whose interventions have repeatedly delegitimised the Jewish State credibly be celebrated as a champion of peace? 

We aren’t privy to whom Pillay may have been up against because the Nobel Committee doesn’t make the unsuccessful nominees public. But public speculation included Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, a network of civilian volunteers providing food, healthcare, and other essential assistance amid the civil war. Had it won, the prize would have highlighted courageous grassroots humanitarian action in a gravely underreported crisis. That would have been a worthy choice. 

Mykola Kuleba and Save Ukraine were also said to be contenders. Kuleba’s organisation worked to bring Ukrainian children and other vulnerable civilians back from Russian-controlled areas. This would have emphasised protecting children from the consequences of war. 

And I am sure there were many other legitimate recipients. However, in Pillay’s case, her record on Israel surely raised legitimate questions about her impartiality, which should have been red-flagged by the Nobel Committee. 

What exactly has her recent contribution been towards humanitarian protection, peace, and stability? In my view, she has done exactly the opposite in thriving on and nurturing the hatred against Israel. 

The fact that Hamas – the very terrorist organisation that massacred 1 200 Jews in Israel and violated, raped, and brutalised so many more in southern Israel on 7 October – congratulated Pillay for her prize is profoundly telling. What kind of peace activist is lauded by terrorists? 

Now, as we have acknowledged, it is not that in her lifetime Pillay hasn’t done good. She has. However, it is not just Israel she has crossed. Under her leadership, the UN human rights office was said to have exposed more than 50 vulnerable Uyghur activists to the Chinese government, putting their and their families’ lives at risk. The World Uyghur Congress has formally objected to her peace prize. 

I recognise that when Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, there were many who felt De Klerk shouldn’t have won it. Perhaps it can be a controversial prize. However, when someone holds an office where they make international decisions and inquiries into humanitarian issues, surely the very position itself demands that you need to be impartial, unbiased, and fair. 

Nothing in Pillay’s behaviour has shown her to be anything but unapologetically anti-Israel. Her behaviour, I believe, has impacted on the world’s view of Israel and the Jewish people. When there is such a huge increase in antisemitism the world over, giving such a person a peace prize is a true slap in the face to the Jewish world. 

Shabbat Shalom! 

Peta Krost 

Editor