This year’s award to Navi Pillay brings to five the number of my countrymen on whom the Nobel committee bestowed the coveted Peace Prize. The others, except for the last of the Afrikaner leaders, were black struggle heroes. And he, De Klerk, shared the Prize with Nelson Mandela for their makeover of white minority rule into a constitutional democracy.
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Five Peace Prize awards from a mere 50 million citizens is no mean record.
But then only one country had apartheid. That was three decades ago. What occupied Pillay in the interval?
As badly as you want Gaza and the West Bank to belong to the Palestinians, it cannot be.
The Nobel committee, one of a kind with Venice’s Film committee, both of a kind with Balaam the curser in the Book of Numbers, rewarded her for cursing Israel. It cited Pillay as a peacenik. It gave her the medal and lots of bucks for “efforts to promote peace and international law.”
Decoded, this meant — and what those who haven’t succumbed to TikTok and AI understood it to mean — that Oslo’s worthies rewarded Pillay for declaring Israel guilty of genocide.
Pillay indeed was honored for the perfect double: her dogged quest to tack gone and forgotten apartheid and the in vogue GenoLIE onto the Palestinian Cause, the ultimate in grievance status.
The usual suspects in the Human Rights Commission — Yemen, Sudan, Iran, and North Korea — loved the Nobel choice for the Prize. They loved it that Pillay’s report cited Israel’s guilt 277 times. And Hamas — how many times did the report cite Hamas? Zero. And the word “terrorism” never once cropped up.
The paragons of human rights were so over the moon that they twisted Pillay’s granny-thin arm not to stop. Nor did she. In March 2025, her next report bore the title — brace yourselves: “More than a human can bear: Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive, and other forms of gender-based violence since 7 October 2023.”
This is what a report on sexual violence looks like when written by the defense lawyers of sex offenders.
Even now the cursing powers of reincarnated Balaam weren’t exhausted. Pillay, as the ad hoc judge in a case against Myanmar before the International Court of Justice, is maneuvering to broaden and loosen the definition of “Genocide,” thus making the South African government’s case at the ICJ — her government, a stalwart proxy of Iran — easier to win.
No question, had the antagonist been other than Israel, the Palestinian cause would not have attracted Pillay types.
What type would they be?
Take the academic credentials of her type. Pillay graduated from Harvard with a Doctorate of Jurisprudence. Hold it right there. Does that vouch for Pillay? Or does it require a stern cautionary?
Let’s revert to another who graduated with a Doctorate of Jurisprudence. SS-Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf commanded the Einsatzgruppe D, tasked with carrying out mass murder in Moldova, Crimea, and the Caucasus during WWII. The lawyer directly supervised the execution of 90,000 Jews.
And Ohlendorf thought he had morality on his side. In mitigation of his death sentence, he told a U.S. Army prosecutor that he prohibited the men under his command from using infants for target practice, or smashing their heads against trees.
Ms. Pillay, madam — SS-Gruppenführer Ohlendorf was escorted from the Nuremberg Military Tribunal to prison and from prison to the gallows — he’d been a cog in the wheel of the Holocaust by Bullets. Firing squads would squint along their gun barrels at naked Jews lined up at the lips of mass graves they were made to dig as a farewell to hell.
Tellingly, Pillay was appointed a judge at the ICC, the court that issued warrants to hunt down Israel’s leaders on the loose.
The title of the Pillay report: “UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” reveals her type from a different angle. Professor Anne Bayefsky asserts that Pillay “is a role model for an army of international lawyers who she teaches by example, can pervert the law and decimate human rights standards with impunity and anticipate a glorious career.”
And the most perverted law term is? “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” No such thing exists, unless God willed it into being, as He did Balaam’s chatterbox donkey.
Before we hit upon the fake law, all U.N. bodies and personnel, including Pillay, use the U.N. lingo, “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” by which they mean the whole of Israel, Gaza, and the “West Bank.”
For one example, in 2003 members of the Human Rights Commission stood before a map without Israel on it. In a minute of silence, they remembered “all who gave their lives for the Palestinian people.” Note well, the word “all” counts suicide bombers, Hamas, and other Islamist groups, which make up the vast majority of fatalities.
Indeed, Professor of international law, John Dugard, head of the government of South Africa’s “genocide” team at the ICJ, wrote of “all available means” in the fight against Israel. He also described suicide bombers as “tough” and praised the killing of Jews as acts of “determination, daring, and success.”
Then we come to the creed of the Human Rights Commission — Pillay’s Commission. It held that Jewish kids have no right of protection from being killed. The Commission blocked a resolution to protect Israeli children from terror attacks, while a resolution for the protection of Palestinian children had passed only weeks before.
As to Pillay getting the Peace Prize, let’s take the citation by the Nobel Committee:
The system of international law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack. We see a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice. Navi Pillay is one of the great defenders of international legal principles in our time.
Is that so?
To begin, the facts of history are not in dispute. In the 1948 War, Egypt took the Gaza Strip, and Jordan took Judea and Samaria, the “West Bank.” Egypt did not claim sovereignty in Gaza, but in 1950 Jordan annexed Judea and Samaria. The annexation was not recognized by the international community, other than Pakistan and the U.K. The Arab states threatened to kick Jordan out of the Arab League. After the June 1967 war, the territories, earmarked for the national home of the Jewish people by the (binding) Mandate Charter of San Remo of 1920, came under Israeli control.
Such, madam peacenik, are the foundation facts.
With the Court’s permission, I call my witness, Professor Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, elected to the ICC in January 1981 and re-elected twice, serving as President of the court from 1997 to 2000:
A state [Israel] acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are necessary to its self-defence. Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully [Jordan], the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defence has, against that prior holder, a better title.
As between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand, and her Arab neighbours, acting aggressively, in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel has the better title in the territory … including the whole of Jerusalem, than do Jordan and Egypt.
Do you hear that, madam, the “great defender of international legal principles”?
Israel has more right than Jordan to be occupying the West Bank and more right than Egypt to be occupying Gaza. Or had more right: Israel long ago gifted Gaza to the Pals, lock, stock, and barrel. So where do the Pals fit in?
No “Palestinian Territory” at this point. But don’t lose hope, madam laureate. We have a longer story to get through.
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For a long 19 years, Jordan ruled the West Bank. The King had the opportunity, from 1948 to 1967, to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Did he or did he not?
Of course not — which makes it a crying shame, Madam Pillay.
Had the King of Jordan declared the plaintiffs (your clients) to be Palestinian, instead of Jordanian (which he did), you’d have a watertight call to arms: “Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
But as things stand, Madam Laureate, this fake real estate insults the intelligence of Nobel’s award givers, who cited you as “one of the great defenders of international legal principles in our time.”
Madam Pillay, for your sake, let’s persist. Explain to this court how and when the territories became Palestinian and occupied by Israel. No. Wait.
That would be putting the cart before the horse. You’d best tell us at what point the Palestinians emerged as a people. After all, there must be Palestinians to claim their sacred territory. I want you to refer to even one international instrument that refers to the “Palestinian people.” No?
Then how about starting in 1922 with the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine? This imposed on Britain a clear obligation:
The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency … close settlement by Jews, on the land.
Dear, oh dear. “Other sections of the population” could be any people. Naughty League of Nations for not inscribing the Palestinians in its 1922 Mandate.
But to move on, we have the next chance of locating your people. In November 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 181. This provided for “Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem.” Madam laureate: ARAB STATE and JEWISH STATE. Not a sniff of your Pals.
The year 1967 offers the next opportunity to locate them. Let’s look. By now Israel has taken Judea and Samaria off Jordan’s hands, and become the occupying power. Hopefully your pals are going to make their grand entrance.
The only location would be in U.N. Security Council Resolution 242: this contained proposals for resolving the “Arab-Israeli conflict.” Another lost chance. That word again — “Arab” is proving a bugbear second to none.
We must admit, nowhere in Resolution 242 can be found a Palestinian party to the conflict. And that is only logical. Because, madam laureate, Resolution 242 was adopted to end the state of belligerence existing between the “States concerned.” Which were: Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
Dear, oh, dear. No Palestinian people before 1967!
To explain why not, I call a leading Palestinian figure, Zahir Muhsein to the witness box.
This fellow headed the PLO’s Military Department and was a member of its Executive Committee.
The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today, there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese…. The moment we reclaim our right to … Palestine, we will not wait … to unite Palestine and Jordan. (See, Hadrian’s Echo: The Whys and Wherefores of Israel’s Critics.)
Of course they’ll not wait. Under Jordanian control for 19 years, Arab leaders in the territories disavowed any claim to them. They were happy to be under Jordanian rule. Look it up: Article 24 of the National Covenant of the PLO, May 28, 1964.
Madam Pillay, let’s go forward and see if we cannot give your pals a right to have a state in the “Occupied Territories.” You shall not be felled by the facts of history however concrete, or the opinion of a jurist, however exalted.
Professor Talia Einhorn from the T.M.C. Asser Institute for International Law in The Hague takes the witness box:
There is nothing in international law that requires a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. The UN Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947 is merely a recommendation and nothing more. The fact that the Arab states did not accept the Partition Plan voids the recommendation of any legal basis.
But there’s still the OSLO Accords, madam. Alan Baker is best qualified to help us locate your Pals from the very city that bestowed the Nobel honor on you. Baker, you see, helped to draft the Accords. Surely OSLO gave the occupied territories to the Pals?
Mr. Baker will oblige us by going back to the 1947 Partition Plan to explain why to this day the Palestinians have no land to call their own.
Had the Arabs accepted the Plan of Partition, passed by the UN in 1947, they too would have had a state, and that would have been the end to Jewish rights of settlement in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). But the Arabs did not accept the Plan. Hence those Jewish rights to settle the “West Bank” did not end. Jewish settlements are not illegal.
But in 1993, surely Rabin and Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn. This aimed to: “Establish a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority, the elected Council for the Palestinian people … for a transitional period not exceeding five years, leading to a permanent settlement.”
Yet again! No mention of a Palestinian state being the goal; nor did it call for a cessation of Jewish settlement activity. Then in 1995, Israel and the Palestinian Authority entered into an interim agreement. Not a word about a Palestinian state as the final goal. This provided for an unspecified “outcome.” Neither party shall be deemed to have renounced or waived any of its existing rights, claims, or positions.”
So, dear Ms Pillay, when Israel signed the 1995 interim agreement, it did not renounce any of its rights or claims to the territories.
To sum up for the benefit of EU presidents and that of South Africa.
As badly as you want Gaza and the West Bank to belong to the Palestinians, it cannot be. There simply is no legal instrument that established a Palestinian territory that would be in the hands of occupying Jews.
Madam Laureate, your “Occupied Palestinian Territories” are no more than an anti-Zionist policy, a devil of an aspiration, a trick involving the denial of both law and events.
You were made a Nobel Laureate under false pretences. Dirty Jew-haters, Navi Pillay, bestowed the Peace Prize on you.
READ MORE from Steve Apfel:
The Green Party’s Anti-Zionism and the Politics of Antisemitism
NAZA: When an Anti-Israel Gaza Documentary Wins at Venice
The Two-State Solution Is Dead — Long Live the Two-State Solution
Steve Apfel is a veteran authority on anti-Zionism. His 2012 book Hadrian’s Echo: The Whys and Wherefores of Israel’s Critics received expert acclaim.
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