Trump Slams Nobel Committee After Peace Prize Awarded to Critic of Israel

Former U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his frustration on Saturday, again lamenting that he has not received a Nobel Peace Prize. Writing on his social media platform, Truth, Trump claimed he had "settled eight wars and am close to finishing two more," and had "returned all Israeli hostages, including the last 28, alive and dead, along with the release of hundreds of hostages from around the world." He further asserted, "I won the war in Venezuela, captured the violent dictator who ran it, and completely stopped Iran, the sponsor of terror, from obtaining nuclear weapons." Trump concluded, "Despite all this, I, or the U.S., did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Wow."

This comes after the Nobel Committee announced on Friday that the Peace Prize would be awarded to South African jurist Navi Pillay, a former judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, for her "efforts to promote peace and international law." Shortly after the announcement, the U.S. declared it would impose sanctions on the court.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the U.S. move, while the prosecutor general in The Hague condemned it, stating, "The work will continue." Netanyahu praised Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, writing on X that the court is "not a real court" but a "political body posing an existential threat to law-abiding democracies worldwide and to the very idea of national sovereignty." He also attacked the decision to award Pillay the prize, stating, "The Nobel Peace Prize committee has lost its moral compass, giving the most prestigious award to a zealot who built her career on fabricating blood libels against the only Jewish state."

Rubio commented on the sanctions, saying, "Democrats and Republicans have rejected for decades the idea that the court has power over American citizens, as the United States has never been a member of the court. They want more power, and they want it at the expense of our sovereignty." He added that the sanctions "should encourage our allies in the court to work towards solutions to end the threat to American sovereignty forever."

Israel's Foreign Ministry also released a statement on X, asserting that if there were a prize for lies, hate, and blood libels, Pillay "would not only be a candidate, she would be leading the race." The ministry accused her of "relentless demonization driven by political motives and her attempt to turn Israel into a monster and promote false claims of genocide." The ministry further stated that awarding the prize to Pillay was not a recognition of justice but an "arming of the prize" to legitimize hatred and anti-Israeli prejudice, adding that Joseph Goebbels would be applauding from hell.

Pillay, born in Durban, South Africa in 1941, studied law at the University of Natal and Harvard Law School. She was the first non-white woman to serve on South Africa's Supreme Court. From 1995, she served as a judge and president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and later on the appeals chamber in The Hague. Between 2008 and 2014, she was the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In that capacity, she authored reports alleging a basis for determining that Israel commits acts of genocide in Gaza, claims rejected by Israel as "distorted claims based on Hamas lies." In July 2025, Pillay and other commission members announced their resignation, citing age, medical condition, and international political pressures.