Donald Trump has launched a furious attack after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to UN human rights chief Navi Pillay, 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, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. Her career includes defending an imprisoned Nelson Mandela and chairing a panel that determined Israel committed genocide in Gaza. The committee said her work championed international law at a time when it faces serious challenges.
Her victory was widely interpreted as a pointed rebuke to US President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both of whom have dismissed the conclusions of the UN commission she chaired on Gaza. The two leaders have also been sharply critical of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, where Pillay has served.
Trump's Response on Truth Social
Within hours of the announcement in Norway, the Trump administration rolled out extensive new sanctions against the International Criminal Court as part of its broader effort to undermine the tribunal over probes into the United States and its allies, including Israel. Subsequently, in a fresh post on his Truth Social platform, the 80-year-old US President delivered a scathing response to being overlooked for the Nobel Peace Prize.
He wrote: "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!"
Dismissal of Pillay and the Prize
Mr 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."
Committee's Justification
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, she 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.
