Alfred Nobel intended the peace prize for those who had done the most to advance peace among nations. Instead, it is increasingly handed out to the international activist class: people who say the right things, back the right causes and appeal to the political instincts of a handful of parliamentarians in a rarefied progressive bubble.
This years award to Navi Pillay is a case in point.
Pillay is best known for chairing the U.N. commission of inquiry that accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. Her selection will inevitably be read as an endorsement of a U.N. culture in which hostility to Israel is not a liability but a badge of moral seriousness.
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE AWARDED TO UN JURIST WHO ACCUSED ISRAEL OF COMMITTING GENOCIDE IN GAZA
But there is more to Pillays record than the commissions fixation on Israel.
When Denmarks embassy in Pakistan was bombed after Danish newspapers republished the Muhammad cartoons, former Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller reportedly said Pillays response was not to defend free speech, but to suggest censorship and restrictions on it.
Her reaction to was much the same. Pillay reportedly called the magazine “doubly irresponsible” for publishing Muhammad cartoons. She is said to have described them as “malicious and deliberately provocative” and said she “fully understands why people wish to protest strongly.” When Islamists answer speech with threats, violence and murder, Pillays first instinct seems to be to scold those who exercised their right to speak.
In 2022, she defended fellow U.N. commissioner Miloon Kothari after he referred to a “Jewish lobby” controlling social media and questioned whether Israel should even be a member of the United Nations. Kothari later apologized. An event in Pillays honor at Berlin City Hall was canceled after the mayor withdrew her support.
WEAPONIZING THE CHARGE OF GENOCIDE FUELS AN INCREASINGLY DANGEROUS ANTISEMITISM
There are more reports of uncomfortable episodes. Pillay is said to have declined to attend the 2010 Nobel ceremony for the imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, citing a scheduling conflict in Geneva as Beijing pressured foreign governments to stay away. At Durban II the previous year, she remained seated while delivered an tirade against Israel and Western delegations walked out. She condemned his speech later, but admitted that she had been “naive” about the Iranian president.
A review of Pillays first two years as U.N. human-rights chief found no public statements from her on abuses in dictatorships such as Cuba, North Korea, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan or Belarus.
This is the person the Nobel Committee now presents as a model of human rights, freedom and peace.
The prize has a long history of such decisions.
In 1994, Yasser Arafat was awarded the Peace Prize despite a political career built around hijackings, murder and the glorification of violence against civilians. In 1973, Henry Kissinger and North Vietnams Le Duc Tho received it for negotiating a Vietnam ceasefire that quickly fell apart. Tho refused the award because peace had plainly not been achieved.
In 2007, the prize went to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate change may be an important issue; it is not, however, what Nobel had in mind when
