Israel fumes over Pillay's Nobel Peace Prize, calls it award for 'biggest lie of the 21st century'

Israel's Foreign Ministry lashed out at the Nobel Committee on Friday after ICJ ad hoc Judge Navi Pillay, 85, was named the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, saying the committee had "awarded a prize to the biggest lie of the 21st century" and that "Josef Goebbels is surely applauding and cheering from hell."

In a statement and posts on X, the ministry compared Pillay to the Nazi Germany propaganda chief, criticizing her record on Palestinian issues. "If there were a prize for lies, hatred and blood libel, Navi Pillay would be the front-runner," the ministry said. "Her political conduct in demonizing Israel and promoting the false incitement of genocide speaks for itself." It added that awarding Pillay the prize was "not the pursuit of justice but a grotesque weaponization of the award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and bias."

Pillay, a native of Durban, South Africa, previously defended Nelson Mandela and served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which prosecuted perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide. She also served as a founding judge of the International Criminal Court and as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. In 2021, she was appointed chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which investigated human rights violations by both sides.

The commission Pillay led investigated the conflict that erupted after Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attack and released its report in September 2025. The commission concluded that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials had incited it.

The commission found that starvation had been used as a weapon of war and that the healthcare system had been deliberately destroyed. "Children were starved, shot and buried under rubble," Pillay said. "These were not the accidents of war but calculated acts aimed at the annihilation of a people."

Under international law, only the ICJ has the authority to formally declare whether genocide has occurred. Israel has flatly denied the genocide charges and dismissed the commission's report as "false and distorted."

Speaking to an audience that greeted her with cheers and applause at a courtroom in Nuremberg, Germany, shortly after the prize was announced, Pillay said submitting the Gaza report was "the last thing I did" and asked, "Why should telling the truth require courage?"