U.N. Official Says Suffering of Palestinians ‘So Much Worse’ Than South African Apartheid

The controversial U.N. investigator who runs a sweeping probe into Israeli conduct called the country’s treatment of Palestinians “so much worse” than South African apartheid and backed the U.N. secretary-general’s comment that the Hamas terrorist attack did not take place in a vacuum. The comments came as U.N. officials and the Israeli government trade increasingly fierce rhetorical blows over the Gaza war, with the international organization urging Israel to end its operations against Hamas targets in the Palestinian enclave.

Navi Pillay, the investigator, is a former U.N. human-rights chief and South African judge, and she has long courted controversy for her frequent criticism of Israel. Her panel was established by the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2021, with the directive to investigate “the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel.” Reflecting the council’s disproportionate focus on Israel, the commission has an unusually broad mandate, and Pillay has previously said that its scope is “time immemorial.”

She told reporters during a press conference at the U.N. building in Manhattan today about a report issued this week by her investigative commission, which blames Israel for an uptick of violence by Palestinians, and she addressed the Hamas terrorist attack and Israel’s subsequent military campaign. The commission condemns the Hamas killings, Pillay said. “But we also equally, unequivocally condemn the Israeli military steps that result inevitably in the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians,” she added.

Pillay also cited an estimate saying that 2,300 children have died in Israeli strikes so far; it’s not clear where she obtained that figure, but many U.N. agencies rely on statistics offered by Hamas. Pillay said her panel would question Israel’s right to defend itself: “Because of this mandate of ours, we are in a position to examine issues such as the right of defense—and as we see played out here, it’s much more retaliation and revenge—but what is the end goal?”

Later, she made the comparison to South African apartheid after a reporter asked why the use of violence against Israelis by Palestinians should be considered illegitimate, considering that opponents of South African apartheid used violent means. Pillay responded that Nelson Mandela believed that his movement had no leeway but “didn’t come to” that decision “very easily.”

“Clearly, it was one of the factors, that threat of armed struggle, that led the parties to mediate the end of apartheid. I can’t compare that to Palestine, except the suffering here is so much worse, so much longer, but I think it’s important to remember that Mandela did say it was as a last resort,” she added.

The remarks are likely to add fuel to the already-significant criticism that Pillay and the commission have received from Israel, the U.S., and other countries. When one of its commissioners, Miloon Kothari, told a media outlet last year that the “Jewish lobby” controls social media, Pillay defended him, asserting that the remarks had been taken out of context. Today, she alluded to the backlash to Kothari’s comments, saying that she was pleased this week when member states only critiqued the substance of the commission’s report instead of launching what she characterized as personal attacks against commissioners.

In response to a question from National Review, Pillay also flatly defended U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from Israeli criticism over his remark that the Hamas attacks “did not happen in a vacuum.”

“I think it’s pretty dangerous that that level of freedom of speech is taken as anti-Israel. The secretary-general in my view made a correct statement,” she said, adding that she believes that her commission “lent a factual basis for such a statement.”