Brussels, October 12th, 2026 – When the first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901, one of its two recipients was Henry Dunant. Few have deserved the prize more. After witnessing the immense suffering on the battlefield of Solferino in 1859, Dunant devoted the rest of his life to ensuring proper protection and care for wounded combatants in armed conflict, work that led to the founding of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863 and the signing of the first Geneva Convention in 1864. Dunant was a true humanitarian who cared deeply for the wellbeing of persecuted Jews in Europe and around the world. Long before Theodor Herzl’s Zionist awakening in the 1890s, Dunant had written extensively about the need for a homeland for the Jewish people. At the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Herzl personally thanked Dunant for his support, although Dunant, by then in poor health, isolated and forgotten, was unable to attend. Today he is regarded as one of the first Christian Zionists.
“In awarding the 125th Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has made a 180-degree turn away from the ethos and values of the prize’s first recipient, Henry Dunant,” ECI Founding Director Tomas Sandell said on Sunday. “By choosing Navi Pillay, who accuses Israel of genocide while refusing to call out Hamas for the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust, the committee has lost its moral compass. By promoting this modern genocide libel, it is fuelling the very antisemitism that Henry Dunant spent his lifetime opposing.”
Responding separately to the announcement, Elisha Wiesel called the decision “the end of the Nobel Peace Prize”. He was 14 years old when he accompanied his late father, Elie Wiesel, to Oslo in 1986 to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded for ensuring that the Holocaust would not be forgotten. By honouring Navi Pillay, who accuses Israel of genocide, the committee has betrayed his father’s legacy, Elisha Wiesel wrote in The Free Press on Friday. He recalled his father’s reaction to the infamous Soviet-led 1975 UN resolution declaring that “Zionism is racism”, when Elie Wiesel observed: “This is not the first time that the enemy is accusing us of their own crimes. Our possessions were taken from us and we were called misers; our children were massacred, and we were accused of ritual murders.”
By selecting a well-known anti-Israel activist to receive this prestigious prize, the Norwegians have chosen to weaponise the Nobel Peace Prize rather than use it to promote peace.
Recent decisions by the politically appointed Norwegian Nobel Committee call into question Norway’s role as custodian of such a prestigious institution, Sandell noted. While the current socialist government has been at the forefront of the international BDS campaign against Israel, few expected it to go so far as to use the Nobel Peace Prize for its own political campaigning.
Sandell notes that Norway has worked closely with South Africa to challenge Israel at the International Court of Justice, and that awarding the prize to a South African legal activist at the forefront of the legal warfare against Israel was the logical consequence of this campaign. When Pillay was due to receive a similar award in Berlin in 2022, the then Mayor of Berlin, Franziska Giffey, refused to present it, given Pillay’s reputation as an anti-Israel activist. Norwegian animosity towards Israel, however, seems to know few if any limits and has shocked even Norway’s Western allies. When the late King Harald wished to send his condolences to the Israeli President after the terror attack of 7 October 2023, the government prevented him from doing so. The same government that refused to express solidarity with the victims of 7 October has now chosen to stand on the side of the perpetrators by accusing Israel, and not Hamas, of genocide. If this is not the end of the Nobel Peace Prize, as Elisha Wiesel suggests, one wonders what more it will take.
“125 years after the first Nobel Peace Prize, this prestigious institution is too important to be reduced to just another tool in Norway’s political campaigning toolbox. If the prize is to survive for another 125 years, it must immediately be handed over to an independent international committee,” Sandell concluded.
