The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Judge Navi Pillay earlier today, brought me back to a reflection on the lifelong journey toward peace. Her work—including chairing the UN inquiry into Israel’s conduct in Gaza—embodies a principle shaped by decades of service: those who exercise state power bear a special responsibility to protect human life, and when they fail, accountability must follow.
My understanding of Jerusalem began in a Honiara church in 1962. I imagined a heavenly city of golden streets, where the divine touched earth so completely that no shadow could exist. In 1979, I walked its ancient streets, touched the Western Wall, followed the Via Dolorosa. I bought an “Israel Is Real” T-shirt—not as politics, but as wonder. I was young enough to think touching those stones meant touching something beyond human conflict.
Then came the bombings at Rashidiyah in South Lebanon and the massacres at Sabra and Chatila in Beirut. Those names became wounds. Four years at UN headquarters exposed me to the strategic calculations behind Middle East decisions. I learned the distance between public declarations and private deliberations, between the language of peace and the realities of conflict. Innocence was not lost; it was tested. Holy land remains land, subject to ambition, fear, and failure. Golden streets gave way to checkpoints, walls, occupation.
Across peacekeeping missions in Lebanon and Sinai, and three decades of UN service, I have lived between youthful idealism and difficult experience. I have stood at checkpoints with Israeli soldiers and shared breakfast with Palestinian fathers. One lesson endures: the enemy is not an entire people. It is the refusal to recognize another’s humanity.
Here Judge Pillay’s work matters beyond any single conflict. Accountability is not vengeance; it is a precondition for durable peace. States can protect or persecute, uphold rights or extinguish them, build institutions or destroy lives on a vast scale. That power brings obligation.
International law exists because power cannot judge itself. Its purpose is not to erase political differences or deny history’s complexities, but to establish standards by which conduct can be judged. Without accountability, justice becomes selective, and peace risks becoming merely the absence of resistance rather than the presence of dignity.
As a Christian who has worked extensively in predominantly Muslim environments, I learned that service demands more than taking sides. It requires seeking truth beyond propaganda and listening to those whose suffering challenges our assumptions.
Consider an mother mourning her Israeli son in Ashkelon and another mourning her Palestinian daughter in Khan Younis. Their circumstances differ, but their grief is real. Their humanity is equal. The moment we decide one mother’s suffering matters less, we compromise the principles we claim to defend.
Experience has not weakened my convictions; it has made them more exacting. I can condemn Hamas’s attacks on civilians while questioning the proportionality of Israel’s response. I can honor Jewish historical trauma while rejecting its use to justify Palestinian suffering. I can affirm Israel’s right to exist while scrutinizing its government’s actions. These are not contradictions. They reflect a consistent principle: every human life has equal worth, and no historical grievance grants an unlimited license to destroy another people’s future.
Consistency is not neutrality. Holding all parties to principled standards does not mean pretending they have equal power, bear identical responsibilities, or have committed equivalent acts. It means refusing to let political allegiance determine whose rights matter and whose violations deserve scrutiny. Justice must weigh context, evidence, power, and responsibility without surrendering to the powerful.
The child who imagined Jerusalem as heaven now understands that its holiness cannot rest on geography alone. Its moral meaning must be measured by how people treat one another there. Perhaps the divine is encountered less in ancient stones than in justice, mercy, and humility practiced among those who walk them.
Peace is not a destination. It is a discipline: the daily choice to recognize another’s humanity, even when fear and anger make that difficult. Land is not made holy only by past events, but by choices made upon it today.
My journey continues. I no longer seek a heavenly city so much as a future in which Israeli and Palestinian children see one another as neighbors rather than enemies. That would be a miracle worth pursuing. It begins with moral courage: the courage to hold power accountable, speak uncomfortable truths, and refuse convenient silences.
Judge Pillay’s career reminds us why that courage matters. Justice cannot guarantee peace, but without justice, peace remains fragile and incomplete. May we follow that example—not by abandoning our convictions, but by applying them consistently, especially when difficult.
