There are moments when the moral pretensions of the international establishment become so grotesque that satire falls short. Today is one of them. The Nobel Peace Prize, the most prestigious humanitarian accolade in the world, has just been awarded to former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay.
If you aren’t already aware of the 85-year-old firebrand, then the words “UN human rights chief” should ring bells of their own. In her case, however, every one of them is rightfully rung, and more so. Pillay’s time in charge of the UN's Commission of Inquiry into Israel was dogged by accusations of bias, a failure to condemn antisemitic tropes and the "genocide" smear, the foremost blood libel of our times.
Born in Durban in 1941, the daughter of a bus driver, she rose through the racial barriers of segregated and then apartheid South Africa to become a lawyer who defended anti-apartheid activists. As a judge on the Rwanda tribunal, she helped deliver the landmark ruling that rape could constitute an act of genocide. She went on to sit on the International Criminal Court. Later in her career, however, she threw her considerable moral weight behind the "genocide" libel.
It all began in July 2022, with an interview given by Miloon Kothari, one of the three members of Pillay's commission, to the website Mondoweiss. Social media, he complained, was "controlled largely by the Jewish lobby". He also wondered aloud why Israel was "even a member of the United Nations".
Deborah Lipstadt, the historian who served as America's special envoy on antisemitism, condemned the comments. Michèle Taylor, the US ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council, said Washington was "outraged". British and Canadian officials spoke out. Yair Lapid, then Israel's prime minister, urged the UN Secretary-General to disband what he called a "tainted" inquiry.
Yet Pillay wrote to Federico Villegas, the president of the Human Rights Council, in her colleague’s defence. Kothari's comments, she said, "seem to have been taken out of context" and had been "deliberately misquoted". Happily, Villegas was not persuaded. Kothari's words, he responded, "could reasonably be interpreted as stigmatisation of the Jewish people". Days later, Kothari himself apologised. It had been "completely wrong", he wrote, to describe social media as "being controlled largely by the Jewish lobby"; his language had been "incorrect, inappropriate, and insensitive".
Pillay was left high and dry on an outcrop of bigotry, ending up more forgiving of the "Jewish lobby" remark than the man who had made it in the first place. Quite how the Nobel Prize committee can have looked at this woman and concluded that she was the best candidate this year is inexplicable. Or rather, it is a phenomenon for which the most obvious explanation is likely the correct one.
The commission was contentious from the start. Set up in 2021, it was the first UN inquiry of its kind with no end date, and it was tasked with investigating the "root causes" of the conflict. Its critics, including the United States, objected to yet another permanent UN body fixated on the sole democracy in the Middle East, which also happens to be Jewish.
In January 2009, as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Pillay called for the inquiry that became the Goldstone report into the Gaza war, which accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians. "I lend my full support to Justice Goldstone's report," she declared. In 2011, Richard Goldstone himself recanted that central charge, writing: "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document." Once again, Pillay was left exposed.
Then came October 7, the anniversary of which fell this week. Pillay's commission managed to bring itself to criticise Hamas's crimes, but saved its most passionate condemnation for Israel. That month, the American branch of the International Law Association dropped her from its flagship conference in New York.
Then came the most significant moment. In September 2025, her commission shamefully concluded that Israel had committed "genocide" in Gaza, and Pillay – with the moral weight of her biography – deplorably drew comparisons with Rwanda. Of course, Israel rejected the findings outright. Critics questioned the commission's methods, its independence and its handling of the evidence.
Not since the prize was handed to Barack Obama in 2009, when nominations closed a mere 12 days into his presidency, before he could actually do anything, has it been so brazenly put to political use. Until today, the worst Oslo had done was to reward a man who had done nothing to deserve it. How the times have changed.
Alfred Nobel must be spinning in his grave.
This column was first published on https://jakewallissimons.substack.com/
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