All that was missing was a Nobel Prize against Israel. The one awarded to Pillay is a macabre peace prize following 7 October

Following the Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to Yasser Arafat, Mairead Corrigan Maguire (“Israel: a state of apartheid”), Jodi Williams (“genocide by starvation and thirst in Gaza”), Jimmy Carter (“Palestine: peace, not apartheid”) and Tawakkol Karman (“ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza”), finally a figure who is not against Israel: Navi Pillay.

The Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee has awarded the prize to the South African lawyer of Tamil origin, who “has dedicated her career to the defence of human rights, the fight against discrimination and the strengthening of international justice”. The award rewards the idea that peace begins with the fault of a single state. “Now that the Nobel Committee has rewarded the greatest lie of the 21st century, Goebbels is applauding from hell,” stated Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar. Pillay is so impartial that, a year before 7 October, the then Mayor of Berlin, the Social Democrat Franziska Giffey, stripped her of the Otto Hahn Peace Medal.  As head of the “Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and East Jerusalem”, established by the UN Human Rights Council, Pillay signed a petition in 2020 calling for sanctions against “apartheid Israel” (an accusation made all the more serious because it was made by someone who experienced racial segregation first-hand in South Africa). One of Pillay’s colleagues on the commission is Miloon Kothari.

“We are disheartened by social media, which is largely controlled by the Jewish lobby,” said Kothari, who later regretted his comments about Jews but was nonetheless defended by the new Nobel laureate. With its automatic majority of authoritarian states, the Human Rights Council has issued more condemnations against Israel than against the rest of the world combined.

In 2001, Pillay was one of the driving forces behind the infamous Durban conference (in her South African hometown) against racism, which marked the beginning of the Palestinian cause being embedded within the human rights struggle against Israel. Following speeches by Mugabe, Castro and Arafat, who condemned the ‘colonialist’ West and the ‘racist’ Israelis, numerous states attempted to downplay or eliminate any reference to the Holocaust and to redefine or ignore anti-Semitism. The closing speech, delivered by the Cuban dictator, was followed by the timeless slogans of ‘Free Palestine’, accompanied by the more sinister cries of ‘Death to the Jews’.

In August 2009, Pillay published a report in which she praised Hamas for having “issued public statements committing itself to respecting international human rights and humanitarian law”. Pillay is also known for having questioned the legitimacy of the killing of Osama bin Laden. “The United Nations condemns terrorism, but there are basic rules that must be respected,” Pillay commented. The al-Qaeda leader would have been happy to appear before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. There was no need for a UN official to praise the raid in Abbottabad. She could have remained silent, just as they remain silent on the massacres carried out by the Iranian regime.

A year later, Pillay refused to attend the ceremony at which the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. An intellectual, scholar and political prisoner, Xiaobo was never able to travel to Oslo: the Chinese regime had effectively sentenced him, who was suffering from cancer, to death behind bars.

In a study published in 2011 during Pillay’s tenure as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Watch examined Pillay’s record during her years at the helm of the organisation: absolute silence on abuses committed in Cuba, North Korea, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Belarus, Syria and 27 other countries classified as ‘not free’ by Freedom House. In the first two years of her term, Pillay issued twenty-one statements concerning countries in the Middle East and North Africa: of these, nine concerned Israel, which, until proven otherwise, is the only democracy in the region.

During the Gaza war in the summer of 2014, Pillay criticised the United States for failing to provide the people of Gaza with a missile defence system, unlike the Israelis, who had the Iron Dome. The indomitable lawyer made no mention of the fact that Hamas was a terrorist organisation launching rockets at Israel whilst hiding in Palestinian urban centres.

At ‘Durban II’, Pillay did not stand up and walk out in protest, as the European ambassadors did, whilst Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the end of the Jewish state. UN footage shows Pillay watching as the democratic states walked out of the chamber in protest, despite the fact that she and her staff had received a copy of the speech in advance, in which the Iranian leader denied the Holocaust.

After all, the South African woman was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize two days after the third anniversary of 7 October precisely for having told the world that Israel had committed genocide. And who doesn’t believe it? Guilty until proven innocent.