Pillay Peace Prize pick pilloried
The decision to award former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay the 2025 Sydney Peace Prize has drawn fierce criticism from Jewish leaders, human rights monitors and other officials who accuse her of long-standing bias against Israel and of minimising Hamas atrocities.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore, patron of the Sydney Peace Foundation, will present the award at Sydney Town Hall tonight, Wednesday, November 5. On the Foundation’s website, she describes Pillay as “a fearless defender of human rights whose unwavering belief that the law must serve humanity shows us that peace can be built through justice and dignity.”
Pillay will also meet with policymakers, journalists and community leaders in Sydney and Canberra during her visit. The prize is jointly supported by the City of Sydney and the University of Sydney, both publicly funded institutions. The Sydney Peace Prize has a history of selecting people with anti-Israel positions, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky and journalist John Pilger, all of whom have accused Israel of practising apartheid and called for boycotts or sanctions against the Jewish state.
Navanethem Pillay (Photo by Antônio Cruz: Agência Brasil, Licensed under CC BY 3.0)
In 2003, the Prize was awarded to Palestinian academic and politician Dr Hanan Ashrawi, a decision that provoked one of the prize’s most intense controversies. Jewish community leaders and federal MPs at the time criticised the choice, citing Ashrawi’s refusal to condemn Palestinian suicide bombings during the Second Intifada and her repeated accusations that Israel was practising apartheid.
Despite political pressure to withdraw the award, the Sydney Peace Foundation proceeded, describing Ashrawi as “a voice of reason and reconciliation in a time of turmoil.”
The Foundation said Pillay was being honoured “for a lifetime of advocating for accountability and responsibility in the face of crimes against humanity.” Pillay responded that she was “deeply honoured” and accepted the award “on behalf of all those who stand up against injustice.”
Critics say the award undermines the principles it claims to promote. Pillay, a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and current chair of the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, has led reports accusing Israel of genocide and war crimes.
Western governments have widely condemned the commission’s work as one-sided. Reuters reported that Australia’s federal government said the inquiry’s “broad and one-sided recommendations are further evidence of the mandate’s excessive and one-sided scope.” The Biden administration previously called the body “a stain on the council’s credibility.”
Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive officer of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, was sharply critical of the decision. “The Sydney Peace Prize has long been about ideology and not peace. They are happy to honour individuals and groups that divide and alienate rather than unify as long as they conform to a certain worldview.”
“Navi Pillay is a typical United Nations functionary appointed to sit on stacked panels and commissions where the outcome is predetermined. She has contributed to the anti-Israel groupthink that has made the world more hateful and morally confused.
“At a time when Ukrainians are still fighting and dying for the peace of their homeland, when the United States has brokered an end to the Gaza-Israel war, when brave Palestinian dissidents have spoken up about Hamas brutality, there is an abundance of worthy recipients. Pillay is an astonishingly poor choice that will only drive the Prize into greater irrelevance.”
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, condemned the decision on social media, writing, “Shame on the ‘Sydney Peace Prize’ for deciding to give an award to Navi Pillay, who notoriously defended her colleague’s ‘Jewish lobby’ rant, which 18 countries including Australia condemned as antisemitic.”
Neuer said Pillay had “lobbied governments to ‘sanction apartheid Israel’” and called her inquiry “a travesty of justice.”
Oren Marmorstein, spokesperson for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Pillay’s UN commission was “just another forum to demonise Israel and rewrite history,” chaired by someone with “a well-documented record of anti-Israel bias”.
Anne Herzberg, legal advisor at NGO Monitor, accused Pillay of “lies and gaslighting of the highest order” in her UN work, including claims that Israeli media suppresses critical information. “That is an absolute blatant lie aimed at undermining Israel,” Herzberg said.
The Sydney peace prize is an excuse to heap vitriol onto Israel.