Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion, reacted strongly to the awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to the South African lawyer Navi Pillay, who headed a UNcommission which concluded that Israel had committed ‘genocide’ in Gaza.
– “Perhaps next year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be awarded to a Hamas bomb-maker?” Kasparov commented sarcastically to Pera News:
The award makes Norwegians look bigoted and stupid. Are the Norwegians happy with this?
— Bernard Beatty (@BernardBeatty4) 10 October 2026
Kasparov has attracted considerable attention for this remark. It is interpreted as a clear criticism of a politicised and morally corrupt decision by the Nobel Committee.
Pillay received the prize ‘for her efforts to promote peace and international law’, but the conclusions of her UN commission are highly controversial. According to critics, they lacked the necessary legal authority to determine genocide.
Kasparov, who is known as a fierce critic of authoritarian regimes and a defender of Western values, emphasises through this scathing comment the absurdity of rewarding an anti-Semite with the world’s most prestigious peace prize. He expresses a general Western disappointment at the decline of our institutions and the cultivation of forces that do not have our best interests at heart.
