The decision to award this year's Nobel Peace Prize to veteran jurist Navi Pillay has exposed the vast gulf between Israel and global institutions charged with upholding international law, a rift that has widened over the war in Gaza.
Over a decades-long career, Pillay served at the highest levels of international organizations created in the wake of World War II to prevent a recurrence of its horrors. As a young lawyer in her native South Africa she campaigned against apartheid and for the release of Nelson Mandela, and as an international jurist she helped sentence dozens of people convicted of taking part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
But her leadership of a U.N.-backed panel that determined Israel committed genocide in Gaza — allegations it vehemently denies — has led many in Israel to see the Nobel nod as a high-profile rebuke of the country just days after the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that triggered the war.
Allegations of genocide are particularly explosive in Israel, which was founded in part as a refuge for survivors of the Nazi Holocaust.
“Awarding Pillay the Nobel Peace Prize isn’t a recognition of justice. It’s the grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice,” Israel's Foreign Ministry said on X. “Joseph Goebbels is certainly applauding from hell,” it added, referring to the Nazi propagandist.
The vitriol comes from the widespread perception in Israel that the United Nations and other international bodies are biased against it. The United States has echoed that criticism and announced a raft of sanctions aimed at dismantling the International Criminal Court hours after the Nobel Prize announcement.
But Pillay's findings over the years were largely consistent with those of major human rights groups and other international bodies, and the facts she cited in reaching her conclusions had been widely reported.
Pillay led a three-member expert panel commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council that concluded last year that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
Their 22-page report cited the death toll; Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid that led to widespread hunger; a policy of “systematically destroying” the healthcare system; the direct targeting of children and “explicit statements” of intent by Israeli civilian and military authorities.
Human rights groups and many experts on genocide have reached similar conclusions.
The commission has also issued reports accusing Hamas of war crimes during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack, when militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted 251 others. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 74,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, maintains detailed records seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and many independent experts.
Israel has vehemently denied the allegations, casting them as an antisemitic blood libel. The Israeli military says it takes extraordinary measures to prevent harm to civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because it operates in densely populated areas.
The International Court of Justice, the U.N.'s top court, is investigating genocide allegations brought by South Africa, and the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Pillay currently serves as an ad hoc judge in the ICJ's ongoing genocide case against Myanmar and served as an ICC judge from 2003-2008.
The commission was created after the 2021 Israel-Hamas war and is the first to have an open-ended mandate. Critics say such permanent scrutiny shows anti-Israel bias, while supporters say it's needed to keep tabs on injustices faced by Palestinians under decades of Israeli rule.
Israel has refused to cooperate with the commission or other U.N.-endorsed investigations. It has pointed to the presence of notoriously repressive countries on the 47-member Human Rights Council and accused it of relentlessly singling out Israel while ignoring violations elsewhere.
A member of the commission, Indian jurist Miloon Kothari, sparked controversy in 2022 when he referred to a “Jewish lobby” in a media interview and questioned Israel's U.N. membership, citing its alleged violations of member state obligations.
Pillay issued a letter at the time saying Kothari had been misquoted and that the commission does not question Israel's status or U.N. membership.
She addressed the wider criticism in an interview with The Associated Press last year after she and the other commission members resigned, citing personal reasons and the need for change. They have since been replaced.
“We’re an independent panel,” she said. “People who accuse us of being antisemitic ... they twist the facts, they invent facts, falsify facts. I would like to see them challenge the report: Which of the facts that we have set out are incorrect?” she said.
Even before the latest Israel-Hamas war, Pillay had repeatedly taken Israel to task over its open-ended military rule over millions of Palestinians.
In a report released more than a year before the Oct. 7 attack, the commission accused Israel of de facto annexation of the West Bank, which it captured alongside Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want an independent state encompassing all three territories.
The International Court of Justice later issued a landmark ruling that Israel's occupation of the territories was unlawful.
The commission had said Israel's continuous expansion of Jewish settlements, its demolition of Palestinian homes and its fragmentation of Palestinian life were aimed at securing permanent rule over the territory, which is home to some 3 million Palestinians and 500,000 Israeli settlers.
Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority administering population centers. The settlers have Israeli citizenship, including freedom of movement and the right to vote.
Israel's U.N. mission rejected the report at the time of its release, calling it part of an “anti-Israel agenda” at the international body.
But Israel's current government and most of its political class is opposed to Palestinian statehood, and Netanyahu has repeatedly said Israel will maintain permanent control over the territories.
Israel views the West Bank as the biblical and historical cradle of Judaism, and says its withdrawal would pave the way for a Hamas-run state that would threaten its existence. The last substantive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down in 2009, after Netanyahu returned to office.
Pillay's commission had also raised concerns about Israel's potential annexation of Gaza, saying its efforts to carve out buffer zones and military corridors were “vastly disproportionate to any reasonable military objective.”
It said calls by Israeli officials for the “voluntary migration” of much of Gaza's population from the war-ravaged territory, if implemented, would amount to forcible transfer, a crime against humanity.
FILE - Navi Pillay, Chair, Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, speaks during a press conference about the launch of the latest report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, at the European headquarters of the United Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland, June 18, 2025. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP, File)
Vice President JD Vance cast doubt on Friday about whether the Pentagon will livestream the execution of the Fort Hood shooter in December, telling reporters he wouldn’t watch it. “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” Vance told reporters. He and President Donald Trump have both sought to highlight the shooter’s 2009 attack at Fort Hood where he killed 13 people.
Trump opened another chapter in his effort to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook Friday by establishing a “committee of inquiry” to investigate allegations that she made false statements in mortgage applications.
The inquiry will include a hearing at the White House on Nov. 5 and Cook “shall” attend to answer questions from the committee, Trump said in a written memo.
Also, a federal immigration officer shot a Dominican man in the neck as he drove in a car with a 5-year-old boy Thursday afternoon, officials said.
An irate New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the shooting an outrage, and spent two hours Thursday night pressing President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to release the wounded man, and urging them to stop immigration enforcement operations in the city.
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New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will travel to Michigan next week to campaign with Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, further throwing her substantial platform behind a fellow progressive in one of the nation’s most competitive Senate races.
Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most prominent figures in the progressive movement, said at a New York City fundraiser last week that “if Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere.”
The two will campaign Oct. 15 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a heavily Republican region that will test the appeal of their progressive politics. They will then travel to southeast Michigan for campaign events Oct. 16.
“Abdul has built a winning coalition with an agenda to bring down costs for Michigan families and I could not be more excited to join him for the final stretch of this race,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement.
“These are accusations. You don’t take messages that people allegedly had between one person or another — or one person’s story — and say, ‘Oh, because of that, Kimberly Guilfoyle is guilty,’ the vice president told reporters.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece, asked a donor and supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump to pay a $100,000 credit card bill just before her confirmation hearing and that she promising him access to administration officials if he did.
Vance suggested it was too early to reach conclusions about Guilfoyle and the allegations.
“Let’s actually see what the facts are. Let’s see what the truth is,” he said. “And, obviously, if there was something bad that happened, then people have to suffer consequences.”
Vice President JD Vance cast doubt on Friday whether the Pentagon will livestream the execution of of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan in December but told reporters that if it is livestreamed, “I’m not going to be watching it.”
The Republican vice president said, “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” when asked about the plans that the Pentagon confirmed on Thursday. But Vance then tried to set aside the controversy over the shocking plans for a public execution and said Hasan’s crimes should not be forgotten.
“So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don’t forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people,” the Republican said.
“Now, that said, I mean, look, if it’s ultimately livestreamed, I’m not going to be watching it,” he said.
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Trump says his administration “resurrected” Christopher Columbus and other figures from American history whose statues and legacies were being threatened by what he called the “radical left.”
In a meandering address at a Columbus Day celebration at the White House, Trump said: “They want to tear down the history and heritage that makes us who we are, not only Columbus.”
He said George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had been targets too. “We had a time when they wanted to rip down the statue of Abraham Lincoln,” because “they thought he was a racist. He’s the one that freed the country,” Trump said.
There have been laws on the books for years to punish people for defacing monuments and statues. Trump signed executive orders in 2020 that ordered monuments to be rebuilt and pushed for tougher punishments for people who defaced them.
Senate Majority PAC, the outside spending group aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, says it will begin airing television ads in the Kansas Senate race on Saturday. The $5 million television campaign will air on TV stations statewide through Election Day.
The ads are aimed at attacking first-term Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, who is in a competitive reelection race with Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton, the leader of the nation’s largest United Methodist Church.
Schumer’s group is weighing in a week just days after Republicans’ chief Senate super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, announced it was reserving advertising time in the state, where no Democrat has been elected to the Senate since 1932.
As of Friday, Senate Leadership Fund, aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, had reserved $10.3 million through Nov. 3.
The Department of Homeland Security would not give The Associated Press a clear answer Friday on whether non-criminal immigration enforcement would be suspended in states impacted by Isaias during the emergency.
In past administrations, including Trump’s first, the Department of Homeland Security would sometimes issue messaging in the run up to hurricanes clarifying its immigration enforcement policies during extreme weather.
Before Hurricane Irma in 2017, the agency issued a statement that “DHS will not conduct non-criminal immigration enforcement operations in the affected area ... When it comes to rescuing people in the wake of Hurricane Irma, immigration status is not and will not be a factor.”
Asked Friday what the DHS policy is during Isaias, the department instead cited a statement about FEMA’s storm preparations. It included: “Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin’s leadership, the safety of the American people is DHS’s top priority.”
DHS did not immediately respond to follow-up questions.
The president said Nidal Malik Hasan will be getting “the death penalty through firing squad. And he deserves it.”
Trump called Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a shooting at the military base in 2009, “a maniac.”
Trump has long been a vocal supporter of capital punishment. But he didn’t mention plans the Pentagon has announced to livestream the execution so the broader public can see it.
During an event marking Columbus Day, the president talked excitedly about the ballroom he demolished the East Wing to build and even declared, “I’m going to do something that I rarely do.”
He then invited the event’s attendees to tour the ballroom construction site and said he’d lead the impromptu tour of construction “which nobody sees.”
That’s not true. In fact, Trump inviting attendees of unrelated events at the White House to see the ballroom construction site has become something of a Trump fixture lately.
The president led a group after a back-to-school event — including many children — to see the site. He did the same for attendees of a recent state dinner in honor of Chinese President Xi Jinping and those who came to an event marking National Hispanic Heritage Month.
The U.S. president is celebrating Christopher Columbus after erecting a statue to the nautical explorer on the north side of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus.
The statue is a replica of a Columbus statue in Baltimore that was thrown into the Baltimore harbor in 2020.
Columbus heralded the start of European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. In his Oct. 7 proclamation for Columbus Day, Trump said the explorer had started a chain of events that led to the creation of the United States.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is set to campaign with Democratic challengers in two battleground seats in the East.
Jeffries will campaign Friday alongside Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey’s 7th District, where she’s challenging two-term incumbent Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. He’s also attending a rally in suburban Philadelphia on Saturday with Bob Harvie, the Democrat taking on five-term incumbent Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.
The two races are viewed as among the most competitive in this year’s midterm election. Also attending the Harvie event will be Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who’s also seeking reelection this year.
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping new sanctions on the International Criminal Court as part of its campaign to dismantle the tribunal the U.S. believes has become politicized and attempted to unfairly and illegally prosecute Americans and Israelis on war crimes charges.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions Friday after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African prosecutor Navi Pillay, who had led investigations into potential ICC charges against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The move, however, long predated the Nobel Prize announcement.
“We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us,” Rubio said in a video address posted to social media. “The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC.”
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President Trump opened another chapter in his effort to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook on Friday by establishing a “committee of inquiry” to investigate allegations that she made false statements in mortgage applications.
The inquiry will include a hearing at the White House on Nov. 5 that Cook “shall” attend to answer questions from the committee, Trump said in a written memo.
The extraordinary move follows a Supreme Court ruling in June that Cook could keep her job after Trump sought to fire her last year. That ruling found Cook should have had notice and an opportunity to respond to the charges.
Cook has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime.
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The lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, say Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s intent to livestream the execution must be halted.
“Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican.
Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan should face the death penalty, he said, “but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting.”
Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat, said: “We can seek justice in this country without glorifying violence and turning an execution into a grotesque public spectacle.”
“Kids watch what our leaders do and say, is this kind of bloodshed really what we want them seeing?” she asked in a statement. “The Pentagon must revoke this decision immediately.”
Mullin said ICE agents weren’t aware the child was in the car at the time. But he said Belgal “was aware” and chose to evade officers.
He didn’t answer a question about how officers wouldn’t know that, saying only that it’s an investigation.
Mullin also revealed that the officers involved in the incident were wearing body cameras “and they were on.”
Mullin spent much of the news conference criticizing New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for resisting and denouncing ICE. An irate Mamdani on Thursday night called ICE “rotten to its core” and said he saw no justification for the shooting.
“Well, mayor, if you abolish ICE, who’s going to take criminals off the streets of your own town?” Mullin said Friday. “The mayor speaks with political tone. His words are dangerous and incite hostility. It doesn’t help.”
Marcos Charles, who heads Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s enforcement removal and operations division, said ICE officials attempted to arrest the Dominican man, whom officials have identified as Oscar Belgal, and attempted to use their vehicles to block him in.
Speaking to reporters, Charles said Belgal “refused to exit his vehicle” and accelerated, smashing into two government vehicles and moving toward officers, which prompted officers to fire weapons.
Facing backlash after a federal immigration officer shot a Dominican man in the neck as he drove in a car with a 5-year-old boy in New York on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin doubled down on the Trump administration’s criticism of so-called sanctuary cities.
There’s no clear definition of sanctuary jurisdictions, but the term is generally applied to state and local governments that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Sanctuary politicians and cities “create an environment for criminal activity to thrive, not for the American citizens to be safe,” Mullin said in a news conference Friday.
For about nine decades, executions in the U.S. have been private affairs, often shrouded in secrecy. The stunning Pentagon announcement Thursday that the first military execution in more than 65 years will be livestreamed could change that.
Allowing the world to watch Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan face the firing squad in December would make it the first public execution since two hangings in the 1930s in Kentucky and Missouri drew crowds.
In 1936, a man who reportedly confessed to the rape and murder of a woman was hanged in front of thousands in Owensboro, Kentucky, while the following year, hundreds watched a man in Missouri be hanged.
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Trump said Thursday that he will not order a resumption of military strikes on Iran before the Nov. 3 midterm elections in the United States.
Trump, while stumping for Republicans this week, has hinted that he was confident that an endgame to the war could come in the days before or after the election, while also hinting that he remained open to resuming full-scale military operations against Iran.
For weeks, Trump has been threatening that a post-midterm election escalation in the seven-month-old war remains a viable option, despite his initial promises to Americans of a military campaign that would last a matter of weeks.
But Trump in a social media post on Thursday said the U.S. “will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd.”
Trump added that his team has been “having productive discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
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A federal immigration officer shot a Dominican man in the neck as he drove in a car with a 5-year-old boy Thursday afternoon, officials said. The Department of Homeland Security said it was seeking to arrest the man in a “targeted enforcement operation,” but protesters and local officials decried it as an example of the dangers of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
DHS said in a statement that it was seeking to arrest a “criminal illegal alien” with a grand larceny conviction and a history of other arrests. But an irate New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the shooting an outrage.
The mayor said he had spent two hours Thursday night pressing President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to release the wounded man, to no avail, and urging them to stop immigration enforcement operations in the city. He said that late Thursday night, federal authorities removed the man from the hospital and took him away.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, said in a statement that she had delivered a similar message to Trump and Mullin by phone.
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FILE - Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook leaves the Supreme Court in Washington, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
President Donald Trump arrives to speak at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani talks during a news conference near the scene of a shooting on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
