Nobel Peace Prize: Why are Washington and Israel angry?

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It is as if it is a breath of life, as if it is an attempt to breathe life again into the corpse of international law, and into a global system whose major countries lost the sense of justice a long time ago. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded this year to South African judge Navi Pillay, the lawyer who early in her career defended Nelson Mandela and opponents of the apartheid regime. After he was liberated and became president of the country, he became its inspiration, and he was the one who recommended that it join the International Criminal Court for the Rwandan massacres in 1994. Then she began a long journey that led her to several international human rights positions, including a judge at the International Criminal Court. Two years ago, she chaired an independent UN commission to investigate Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip, concluding in September 2025 that Israel had been committing genocide since the beginning of the war, thus preempting the judges of the International Court of Justice, whose political pressures might prevent them from pronouncing a similar ruling.

The Nobel Prize Committee has previously honored figures and organizations who worked in the field of peace, and they were right and wrong. Last year, for example, Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Corina Machado won the award that Donald Trump had hoped for and expected for himself, so she presented him with her gold Nobel medal, but he let her down the day after the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president and the end of his rule, and did not nominate her for any role, but rather considered her unqualified. After winning the award, she called Benjamin Netanyahu to confirm her support for Israel and her intention to move her country’s embassy to Jerusalem whenever she comes to power. It was not Netanyahu who nominated her for the award, but rather Trump. By selecting Machado, the Nobel Committee wanted to keep up with the US President’s campaign against Venezuela and soften his expected anger, but it did not succeed. This year I went from appeasing him to challenging him.

Moments after Navi Pillay was chosen, Israeli anger exploded, ranging from accusing her of “demonizing Israel” and “demonizing the Jews,” to saying that her role in “promoting accusations of genocide reveals a lot about their reality.” In fact, it revealed the truth about Israel. As for Washington, it did not comment on the award, but rather understood its meaning, and aimed directly at the target: new sanctions on the International Criminal Court. Marco Rubio always acts as a spearhead of hostility toward this court. “Either it ends its threats or we end its existence,” he said. His pretext is that the court is considering prosecuting American soldiers who committed violations in Afghanistan, but what is more dangerous is that it issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu. The latter immediately welcomed the sanctions, and said: “This is not a court, but rather a political body that poses an existential threat to law-abiding democracies around the world.” Suddenly the “existential” threat rises, not to democracies, but to war criminals who know they have been caught red-handed. Otherwise, why this international isolation of Israel?

In his speech before the United Nations General Assembly, Trump described this court as “out of control” and called on all countries to withdraw from it, but the majority of the world believes that its work is not yet sufficient in pursuing “outlaw” countries. Instead of responding to Trump's call, eight Western countries renewed their adherence to the court and supported its "independence, impartiality, and integrity." Thus, the Nobel Committee appeared to be in contrast to the American President, as it said that its award was “a clear message to those who exert pressure on institutions of international law that are under attack,” and attributed its selection to “Pillay’s pivotal role in ensuring the prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.” Pillay dedicated her award to all survivors of these crimes, warning that escalating political attacks on international law and the ICC "harmonize a system in which force, not law, determines suffering worthy of concern."

There is a moral symbolism to the “Nobel Peace Prize” but it has no effectiveness. It has always expressed values ​​that the Western regime continued to claim to have a monopoly until it allowed a genocide to take place in the Gaza Strip under its watch, and did not move to stop it or hold its perpetrators accountable. Now its extreme right is approaching power to threaten those values, inspired by Trump, who began to destroy them in America itself while demanding the award. When he was disappointed in obtaining it, he attacked it and considered that it had “lost credibility forever at the hands of a handful of extremist ideologies.” It is not clear who he means by that, as long as he quarrels with his allies and seeks friendship with the leaders of the world of dictatorships that oppose the West and its American leadership, and operates far from international law and does not claim respect for human rights.

Why are Trump and Netanyahu angry? Because the use of force did not give their wars any international legitimacy, but rather put them in the same category as Vladimir Putin and others like him, and plunged the world into a deep political and economic crisis. They are angry because the blood of Gaza’s children and women haunts them everywhere - except in Israel - without access to any international court. “Justice is slow and it always seems impossible until it is achieved,” as Pillay said, quoting Mandela. Trump and Netanyahu are trying to suppress judges in their countries, and it is no wonder that they are enemies of “so-called international law,” according to Rubio’s phrase (last July).

Published in conjunction with the Al-Nahar Al-Arabi website.