Donald Trump has unleashed a furious tirade after missing out on the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming he "settled 8 wars" and is "close to ending or settling two more".
Navi Pillay, a South African-born jurist and former UN human rights chief, secured the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for work the committee said advanced international law during a period when it faces significant threats. Her distinguished career has ranged from championing the rights of an imprisoned Nelson Mandela to chairing a panel that determined Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
Her victory was interpreted as a pointed rejection of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both of whom have dismissed the conclusions of the UN commission she chaired on Gaza. The leaders have also expressed harsh criticism of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, where Pillay has served.
Trump's Truth Social response
Within hours of the announcement in Norway, the Trump administration rolled out comprehensive new sanctions against the International Criminal Court as part of its offensive to undermine the tribunal over inquiries into the United States and its allies, including Israel.
In a fresh post on his Truth Social platform, the 80-year-old US President launched a scathing attack over being overlooked for the Nobel Peace Prize. He stated: "I settled 8 WARS, am close to ending or settling 2 more, got all of the Israeli hostages back, including the final 28, both living and dead, had hundreds of hostages, from countries all over the World, released and sent back home, won a war in Venezuela, and captured the violent dictator who so viciously ran that country, and stopped the number one state sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, from obtaining a Nuclear Weapon - AND MUCH MORE!"
"Yet, with all of that I, or the United States of America, did not get the Noble Peace Prize. WOW!"
Reaction at rally
Trump claimed he deserved the prize and dismissed Pillay as "a liberal person who works at the United Nations who nobody has ever heard of". He later said on social media that "she, very obviously, hates Israel".
"The Nobel Peace Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologues who are anti-democracy and really enemies of civilisation," Trump told a rally for Republican candidates in Syracuse, New York. "And we will not forget, Norway."
On the 125th anniversary of the prize's inception, the Norwegian Nobel Committee sought "to remind the world that the rule of law, national and international, underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace and resolve conflicts nonviolently."
"Peace requires justice," committee Chairman Jørgen Watne Frydnes said. Judges "guard the thin red line between order and chaos," and the world needs jurists "of courage, vision and determination, qualities that Navi Pillay demonstrates in her work on the bench".
In nations such as Israel and apartheid-era South Africa, Pillay and her fellow legal practitioners tackled some of the most delicate judicial matters and championed the most marginalised communities.
Pillay led the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, an independent body established by the UN-backed Human Rights Council. Twelve months ago, the commission concluded that Israel bore responsibility for genocide in Gaza, with a deliberate intention to eliminate the Palestinian population there.
