Navi Pillay
Chair, The UN Human Rights Council Anti-Israel “Inquiry” (2021 – current)
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:
She lied. Here’s Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who opened Durban II with Holocaust denial and grotesque antisemitism:
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:
- 4,890,902 submissions by the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and Human Rights Voices in advance of the “inquiry’s” June 2022 report to the Human Rights Council, and another 180,316 unique submissions in advance of their October 2022 report to the General Assembly.
- 11,699 submissions from Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)
- 11,132 submissions from AICE and its Jewish Virtual Library
- 12,642 submissions from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
- 2,872 submissions from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center
- 7,807 submissions from the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA)
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.”
Are Based 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
(months later & she is fully aware)
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.
“…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.”
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