The Nobel Peace Prize has become a fig leaf for left-wing activism

Alfred Nobel created a prize for global peace, but the selection of Narges Mohammadi shows how the committee rewards progressive goals over diplomacy.

Trump joked about the Nobel Prize at the Peace Council meeting

US President Donald Trump joked that he thought he was going to win the Nobel Peace Prize as he announced that Norway would host a summit on aid to Gaza.

Alfred Nobel had reserved the Peace Prize for those who have done the most to promote peace among countries. Instead, it is increasingly given to the international activist class: people who say the right things, support the right causes, and appeal to the political instincts of a handful of MPs in a rarefied progressive bubble.

This year's award to Navi Pillay is a case in point.

Pillai is best known for chairing the UN commission of inquiry that accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. His election will inevitably be seen as an endorsement of a UN culture in which hostility to Israel is not a liability, but a sign of moral seriousness.

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the UN lawyer who accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

But there is more to Pillai's record than the commission's fixation on Israel.

When the Danish embassy in Pakistan was bombed after Danish newspapers republished cartoons of Muhammad, former foreign minister Per Stig Muller reported that Pillay's response was not to defend freedom of speech, but to propose censorship and restrictions.

His reaction to Charlie Hebdo was almost the same. According to reports, Pillai called the magazine "doubly irresponsible" for publishing Muhammad's cartoons. He is said to have described them as "malicious and deliberately provocative" and said he "completely understands why people want to protest so strongly." When Islamists respond to speech with threats, violence, and murder, Pillai's first instinct seems to be to blame those exercising their right to speak.

In 2022, he defended fellow UN Commissioner Milon Kothari after he referred to a "Jewish lobby" that controlled social media and whether Israel should be a member of the United Nations. Kothari later apologized. An event honoring Pillai at Berlin City Hall was canceled after the mayor withdrew his support.

The weaponization of the charge of genocide fuels an increasingly dangerous anti-Semitism

There are more reports of distressing episodes. Pillai reportedly refused to attend the 2010 Nobel ceremony for imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, citing a scheduling conflict in Geneva as Beijing pressured foreign governments to abstain. At Durban II the year before, he sat while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered an anti-Semitic tirade against Israel and Western delegations left. He later condemned his speech, but admitted he had been "naive" about Iran's president.

A review of Pillai's first two years as UN human rights chief found no public comments from him about abuses in dictatorships such as Cuba, North Korea, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan or Belarus.

This is the person that the Nobel Committee now presents as a model of human rights, freedom and peace.

The long-term reward of such decisions

Ambassador Jeff Bartos: The United Nations must put aside the anti-American and anti-Western legacy of the Durban Conference

Exterior views of the International Criminal Court on October 9, 2026 in The Hague, Netherlands. Earlier today, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that his country would impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court, "banning transactions with this rogue court, cutting off its resources and crippling its capacity." The sanctions build on President Trump's previous executive order, signed last year, which challenged the court for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli leaders in connection with the Gaza war. Today's announcement comes shortly after former International Criminal Court judge Navi Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. (Old Chrome)

In 1994, Yasser Arafat was awarded the Peace Prize despite a political career built around hijackings, assassinations and glorification of violence against civilians. In 1973, Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam received it for negotiating a Vietnam ceasefire that quickly fell apart. Tu rejected the award because peace had clearly not been achieved.

In 2007, the award went to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate change may be an important issue. However, that is not what Nobel wrote about peace between nations.

In 2009, less than nine months into his presidency, Barack Obama received the award as a major diplomatic achievement, even Obama was embarrassed by how early it was.

The EU won in 2012, not because of a particular peace agreement or diplomatic breakthrough, but because of a grand vision of Europe that appealed to the Oslo establishment.

None of this is an argument against human rights, international law or humanitarian work. This is an argument against pretending that any fashionable goal is the promotion of world peace.

There is a difference between speaking the language of peace and doing the hard work of creating it. The latter involves deterrence, diplomacy, compromise, alliances, and often, dealing with people they don't like. It is not always glamorous and is rarely applauded in international conference halls.

Consider Abraham's covenant. They normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries, establishing embassies, direct flights, trade, investment and security cooperation. They replaced formal hostility with working relationships between governments that had long treated each other as enemies.

(L-R) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump, Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdul Latif bin Rashid Al Zayani and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan wave from the Truman Balcony of the White House after the signing of the Ibrahim Agreement on the Rule of Law on September 12, 5, 20. Washington, DC (Alex Wang)

Some may not like Jared Kushner or the Trump administration. This is beside the point. Kushner did more to advance peace between nations than many of the activists and organizations the Nobel Committee has celebrated in recent years.

However, it is almost impossible to imagine that the committee would reward such an achievement. The association with Trump alone makes Kushner unacceptable to the small political circle that controls the prize.

That's the problem. The Nobel Peace Prize is decided by five people appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. They have the power to say who represents the world's highest moral ideals. Often, they use it to reward people who share their progressive assumptions.

The Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation cannot simply withdraw the award. Nobel's will assigns responsibility to a committee appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. But this committee is open to criticism and should no longer be treated with the automatic respect it enjoys.

Alfred Nobel created a prize for exceptional achievements that fostered world peace. The Norwegian Committee has made it an annual stamp of approval for causes that happen to be in its favor.

A peace prize that can't tell the difference no longer deserves the name—much less the respect it still receives.

Daniel Schatz is a political scientist, author and international affairs expert. He has a Ph.D. in political science and a former visiting scholar at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and Georgetown universities

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