Professor Anne Bayefsky, President of Human Rights Voices and Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, sharply criticized the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, accusing the former United Nations human rights official of exploiting hostility toward Israel to advance her career.
In a statement to Arutz Sheva-Israel National News, Bayefsky condemned both Pillay's record and the message she believes the Nobel Committee has sent by honoring her.
"With this prize, Navi Pillay has parlayed her antipathy towards Jews and the Jewish state into a golden ticket for fame and fortune," Bayefsky said.
She argued that the award sets a troubling precedent for international legal professionals, suggesting that hostility toward Israel can be rewarded rather than challenged.
"She 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," Bayefsky charged.
Bayefsky went on to accuse Pillay of a longstanding pattern of anti-Israel bias and misrepresentation of international law.
"Her record was very public: antisemitism-pusher, terrorism-apologist, and a propensity to fabricate the facts and the law whenever confronted with the truth," she said.
The professor also pointed to what she described as Hamas's favorable response to the Nobel Committee's decision.
"Hamas said it best when it warmly congratulated the Nobel Committee for awarding a 'peace' prize aligned with its values, namely, genocide, hatred and violent extremism."
The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced on Friday, October 9, that Pillay would receive the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for her work promoting peace and international law. The committee cited her career in international courts, her service as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and her role in developing mechanisms for prosecuting international crimes.
Pillay previously chaired the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Palestinian territories and Israel. The commission's findings accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza have been widely criticized, and its methodology has been called into question.
In 2025, Pillay and two other commissioners on the commission suddenly resigned amid criticism of their conduct.
Pillay has also been criticized for her response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in France, in which she called for greater media censorship, and for allegedly sharing the identities of Uyghurs and human rights figures in China with the Chinese government, putting their lives at risk.