Israel slams Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize: “Goebbels would be cheering in hell”

[Financial News] Israel strongly protested the selection of South African-born Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, 85, an ad hoc judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, invoking even a Nazi war criminal who led the genocide of Jews. In stark contrast, the Palestinian Authority (PA) welcomed the decision as entirely deserved.
On the 9th (local time), Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement fiercely condemning the Nobel Committee’s selection of Judge Pillay, saying, “By awarding a prize for the 21st century’s biggest lie, Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s propaganda minister, must be cheering in hell.”
In September last year, an independent commission of inquiry under the UN Human Rights Council, chaired by Judge Pillay, concluded that Israel had committed four of the five acts specified in the Genocide Convention in the Gaza Strip, including killing residents and causing serious physical and mental harm.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry described this as “relentlessly demonizing Israel for political reasons and spreading ‘genoLIE’ (a portmanteau of ‘genocide’ and ‘lie’)” and bluntly denounced it, saying, “If there were an award for lies, hatred and slander, Pillay would be the leading candidate.” It went on to criticize the decision, saying, “Giving Pillay an award is not the realization of justice, but a grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice.”
Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office also issued a separate statement, saying, “The Nobel Committee has lost its moral compass” and adding that it had “bestowed its highest honor on someone who has built a career by fabricating and spreading blood libels against the only Jewish state.”
The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Foreign Ministry, by contrast, voiced an entirely different view. It welcomed the decision as “entirely deserved,” saying, “Judge Pillay devoted her life to defending the rule of law and justice, cornerstones of the international order, and made important contributions to exposing and documenting allegations of crimes, including genocide and sexual violence perpetrated by Israel.”
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the United States, which announced plans that day to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), and reiterated his hostility toward international judicial institutions, saying, “The ICC is not a court of law but a political body that poses a mortal threat to the sovereignty of democratic nations around the world.”


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