Navi Pillay

Chair, The UN Human Rights Council Anti-Israel “Inquiry” (2021 – 2025)

Pillay's Actions:

Promote Antisemitism

Proof

Pillay is the world’s leading champion of the UN antisemitic hatefest known as the “Durban conference.” Here’s Pillay, Secretary-General of “Durban II” (the 2009 UN “Durban Review Conference”) in one of her attempts to enlist states to support Durban:

“[T]he Review Conference has also been the target of a disparaging media and lobbying campaign on the part of those who fear a repetition of anti-Semitic outbursts. This is unwarranted.”

She lied. Here’s Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who opened Durban II with Holocaust denial and grotesque antisemitism:
“Following the World War II they resorted to military aggressions to make an entire nation homeless on the pretext of Jewish sufferings…The word Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religion and abuses religious sentiments to hide their hatred and ugly faces.”

Pillay sat right behind Ahmadinejad. She had his speech in advance. She stayed seated, while the democratic world walked out in disgust.

More Proof

One member of her Commission of “Inquiry,”  Miloon Kothari, said in an online interview available for all the world to hear: 

“We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by whether it’s the Jewish lobby or it’s the specific NGOs.”

Kothari added that the world’s one Jewish state ought to be kicked out of the UN. He said: “I would go as far as to raise the question as why are they even a member of the United Nations.”

Pillay came to Kothari’s defense by falsely claiming he was “misquoted:”

“Commissioner Kothari’s comments…were again deliberately misquoted to imply that ‘social media’ was controlled by the Jewish lobby.”

Still More Proof

Pillay ridicules the voices of Jewish victims of antisemitism. Here’s Pillay when confronted at a UN news conference by a reporter who pointed to the charges of antisemitism leveled at her inquiry and asked her for a response.

She said: “Of course, it’s not new to us that this is always raised as a diversion.”

And More Proof

Pillay herself raises the specter of shadowy, controlling “lobbies supporting Israel” and “the extremist Israeli lobby.”

Subvert the Rule of Law

Submissions

Pillay’s “Inquiry” issued calls for submissions. The boast of having an open-minded, fair process went like this: “The Commission invites individuals, groups and organizations to submit information and documentation relevant to its mandate.” They explained on their UN website that “relevant” covered everything from “underlying root causes…of conflict,” “systematic discrimination and repression based on…religious identity,” and “identification of those responsible.” And Pillay spelled out to the world’s press that their mandate – “unlike other commissions” – extended “from time immemorial to now.”

Then what happened? Submissions included:

Pillay’s response?  She completely ignored them. At a UN press conference in 2022, she was specifically asked about all these submissions (that had been sent in a volume unheard of in UN history) and said:

“there was an NGO input that they sent us 5 million submissions. So all of them would be pro-Israel.”

Having characterized these submissions as “all pro-Israel” she said: “I’ve not seen them.”

While not one report from Pillay then or since has ever referred to a single one of these “pro-Israel” submissions, her reports have had no difficulty referring to anti-Israel submissions.

Hearings

In June 2022 Pillay said: “We are welcoming submissions from anyone, everyone; ready to talk to anyone.”

Likewise, in November 2022 Pillay said:

“We stand ready to hear submissions or to hear alternate voices. In the absence of alternate voices challenging what we have heard today, we do not have any source that is a genuine challenge to the truth of what we’ve heard from the NGOs.”

FACT CHECK: All the hearings and meetings ever held by the “inquiry” have been by invitation-only, and she is directly responsible for the “absence” of “alternate” “pro-Israel” voices.

Pillay is a master of bias, undue process and injustice. The inverse of the rule of law.

Greenlight Terrorism

Pillay and her reports use the words “terror” and “terrorist” and “terrorism” in quotation marks.

For Navi Pillay, Israeli Jews don’t count as victims of Palestinian terrorism. Their names, identities and narratives were submitted to the inquiry and ignored.

In Pillay’s voluminous reports, she has refused to name a single Palestinian organization as a terrorist organization. According to Pillay, there are only Israelis guilty of wrongly “labelling them as ‘terrorists.’”

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian organizations are internationally recognized terrorist organizations.

In one of her reports, Pillay describes the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) as an organization “which Israel had designated a terrorist organization.” Evidently, her mammoth full-time staff at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights could not find the same terrorist designation by the United States, the European Union, Canada, and others.

It is no coincidence that Pillay’s biggest supporters include an internationally-recognized terrorist organization. In Hamas’ words:

“The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas welcomes the report issued by the international commission of inquiry.”

Post Oct. 7: Invert Right & Wrong

On October 10th, a mere 72 hours after the slaughter of Israelis began, Pillay’s COI put out the following:

“There is already clear evidence that war crimes may have been committed in the latest explosion of violence in Israel and Gaza, and all those who have violated international law and targeted civilians must be held accountable for their crimes…The Commission has been collecting and preserving evidence of war crimes committed by all sides since 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched a complex attack on Israel and Israeli forces responded with airstrikes in Gaza.”

Pillay’s description of what happened was obscenely twisted from the very start. This was an invasion of a UN member state and slaughter of its civilians, not an “explosion of violence in Israel and Gaza.”

At the very moment that Israelis civilians were being targeted, raped, maimed, blown up by grenades, burned alive, and beheaded, and 260 young concertgoers were running for their lives, being gunned down in their cars and slaughtered or dragged off to Gaza when their hiding places were discovered, Navi Pillay was collecting “evidence” of Israeli war crimes.

After just three days, with bodies from the massacre still yet to be identified and Israelis still burying their dead, Pillay had already found Israel guilty – “clear evidence” of war crimes in Gaza.

The adjective best describing Hamas’ attack for Navi Pillay was “complex.” Referring to the variety of Jew-killing methodology employed?

Pillay’s COI statement also included:

“The Commission is gravely concerned with Israel’s latest attack on Gaza… the Commission is committed to investigating current events and identifying those responsible for violations of international law on all sides… It will continue sharing information collected with the relevant judicial authorities, especially with the International Criminal Court… The Commission is deeply distressed by the mounting violence, and spiralling death toll and underscores the urgency for the parties involved to cease all forms of violence…The Commission urges Israeli security forces and Palestinian armed groups to adhere strictly to international humanitarian law and international human rights law…. [T]he only path towards ending violence and achieving sustainable peace is through addressing the root causes of the conflict including through ending the illegal occupation.”

It is early on October 10th.. Israel is under rocket fire. Israel is still fighting off attempts to further infiltrate its borders. Israel is responding to a highly dangerous second front, from which it has already taken casualties, in the north. The full extent of the horror is still being determined, and the country has barely begun to be able to take the existential fight beyond its borders. And Pillay was “gravely concerned with Israel’s latest attack on Gaza.” Telling the world from the COI perch in Geneva or South Africa, or wherever Pillay’s armchair might be, that she was collecting “evidence” to prosecute Israel for crimes.

Pillay played a key leadership role in designing and implementing the UN response to October 7th – doubling-down on the formula of even-handedness between good and evil. The reference to “all sides” and “the parties.” The call to “adhere strictly to international law” made to a democratic state and to a genocidal terror organization whose raison d’etre is to kill Jews. The demand to “cease all forms of violence” – on October 10th, with the kidnapped being led to their torture and death, telling the Jewish state to stop fighting back.

Pillay’s punch line: the slaughter of Jews was the fault of the Jewish state. The victims are to blame. “The root cause of the conflict” is Israel’s “illegal occupation.” There hasn’t been a Jew living in Gaza in almost two decades. On the other hand, there has been an unrepentant unremitting effort by Hamas and other Palestinian terror organizations from Gaza to kill Jews and eradicate their neighbor. But Navi Pillay told the General Assembly in 2024 that antisemitism is “always raised as a diversion.” Now the “diversion” was killing Jews en masse.

Rely on Lies

A Lie

Press Conference at UN Headquarters, NYC, October 27, 2022:

I24News: “A question for Chairwoman Pillay… You’re already on record vocally as declaring Israel as an apartheid state. You’re vocally a proponent of boycotting and sanctioning Israel… you were signatory to a letter to President Biden attempting to implement punishment on Israel. So you have essentially prejudged every matter that is before this Commission in one form or fashion.  This Commission is supposed to be impartial.”

Navi Pillay:  “it’s all news to me that I have done all this. I have signed no petition or made no statement…I’d like to see it. I’ve never seen it. You know, because then maybe somebody has used my name, I want to know.”

The Truth

PETITION, ENDORSEMENTS

(months later & she is fully aware)

LETTER TO PRESIDENT BIDEN

Undermine A Jewish State

The BDS (Boycotts, Divestment, Sanctions) Lie

Navi Pillay, UN press conference, New York, October 27, 2022: 

Referring to the charge that she’s been pushing BDS, she claimed: “So all that’s been twisted into that I’m a campaigner for BDS. You know, I truly am not.”

Fact Check

Navi Pillay, “United Nations International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” Pretoria, South Africa, November 29, 2017, in her own words after speaking about the world-wide boycott and sanctions campaign against apartheid South Africa:

“I hope that the Palestinian struggle to end colonization gains this kind of momentum, especially in the civilian campaign of BDS, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions…On the BDS campaign. I’m very pleased to hear that there’s so much activity and support from South African civil society activists as well.”

See also HERE.

PETITION

“…We endorse the Palestinian call for banning arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel; suspending free trade agreements with Israel; prohibiting trade with illegal Israeli settlements and accountability from individuals and corporate actors complicit in Israel’s occupation and apartheid regime…”

Pillay’s COI reports support BDS and condemn Americans for adopting anti-BDS laws and refusing, in effect, to finance modern antisemitism. Her June 2023 report says:

“Policies and legislation enacted by foreign governments target…those advocating boycotts. In the United States, thirty-five States have adopted anti-BDS legislation…State legislators in the United States have also placed financial burdens on companies accused of boycotting Israel through blacklists and pension fund divestments.”

The “Apartheid” Lie

Navi Pillay, speaking at UN press conference, New York, October 27, 2022:

“We here in this report are focusing on the root cause as we see it, which is occupation. And of course, part of it lies in the apartheid and discrimination. We will be coming to that. That’s the beauty of this open-ended mandate. It gives us a scope to go in depth onto many issues, and apartheid would be one of them.”

 

Pillay repeated the same slander four years before her appointment as Chair of the UN inquisition. Not independent. Not impartial. Not objective. Just a prejudiced, political partisan – contrary to the basics of both international law and UN rules.

Fact Check

Arabs have more democratic rights and freedoms in the Jewish state than in any Arab state.

Current Muslim Arab Israeli Supreme Court Justice Chaled Kabub

Knesset Member and former Knesset Deputy Speaker Mansour Abbas, United Arab List (Ra’am)

Arab Israelis voluntarily serve in the IDF, meet Yoseph Haddad

Actual apartheid in “Palestine.”

Land sales to Jews are banned on pain of “life imprisonment with hard labor.”

(Decision Number 20 of 2014 Regarding an Amendment of Penal Code Number 16 of 1960 and its Amendments, signed “Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee,” Ramallah, October 20, 2014)

Jews are forbidden from cohabitating in “Palestine’s” would-be state.

(“We will not allow a single Israeli settler to remain in a Palestinian state.” Saeb Erekat, Jan. 27, 2014.)

Jews are referred to as filthy, unclean, and undeserving to comingle with the rest of humanity.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas: We won’t allow Jews with their “filthy feet” to “defile our al-Aqsa Mosque.” Official PA TV, Sept.16, 2015.

For further information see:

Amnesty International’s Big Lie About Israel

Deconstructing “Israeli Apartheid”

Apartheid Slander

Apartheid Report

The “Genocide” Lie

Navi Pillay, the lawyer and judge, led the charge in spreading the blood libel that Israel is guilty of genocide by lying about the law and what judges – including on her very Court – had said.  

Less than three weeks after October 7th, Pillay started using the word genocide in references to Israel.

COI press release, October 27, 2023: “the Commission calls on all parties to the conflict…to act to prevent the commission of and incitement to any crimes under international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.”

In February 2024, Pillay specifically said: “It’s the unfortunate reality that the highest judicial organ of the United Nations has ruled decisively on the matter, finding genocidal intent.”

The lie was so blatant and inflammatory that the President of the ICJ, Joan Donaghue, subsequently made a statement to the BBC: “the Court…did not decide, and this is something where I’m correcting what’s often said in the media, it didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”

For further information see:

Debunking the Genocide Allegations

Scholars for Truth About Genocide

Military Professionals Reject Genocide Allegations

For further Information on Navi Pillay: