UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer appeared on Sky News Australia to discuss the impact of misinformation from the UN and the world’s media following the horrific murder of two staff members from the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Chris Kenny, Sky News:
Let’s now go to the Executive Director of United Nations Watch, UN Watch. His name is Hillel Neuer, and he joins me live from Sydney, visiting Australia at the moment. Good to talk to you, Hillel. I know you’ve made a life’s work of calling out some of this misinformation and hypocrisy from the United Nations. But this shocking story about 14,000 babies effectively being put on the brink of death by Israel is a classic of the genre, isn’t it?
Hillel Neuer:
It is, you know, indeed, you showed the other notorious incident from October 2023, when, indeed, around the world headlines in major newspapers, including The New York Times, ‘the newspaper of record’ that I grew up with as a reputable publication that would crosscheck facts and verify. You know, we have social media and the internet for just random lies and fake news, and we trust that the BBC and The New York Times and you had ABC News, that these are verifying and giving us carefully checked facts. And it turns out, in October 2023, about a couple weeks after the massacre, as you showed, this terrible lie went out: ‘Israel bombs hospital in Gaza, kills 500 people’-and everything was a lie. It wasn’t Israel who fired a rocket-it was Islamic Jihad that was trying to attack Israel, and a rocket fell short within Gaza. It didn’t hit the hospital-it hit the parking lot. It wasn’t 500 people killed, maybe it was a dozen, to this day we don’t really know, but it was nothing close to 500. The whole thing was a lie, but sadly, Chris, there seems to be a demand in the world, there seems to be a space reserved on the front page or in the top story on TV news in so many different mainstream publications: ‘Israel kills innocents’ and, you know, here are wounded, bloody people about to die, died, and ‘Israel did it’ and there seems to be a great demand for that story. Knowing that, we would think that reputable news agencies would think for a moment when they’re given these kinds of lies, and we just had this lie, as you said, this UN Relief Chief telling us that 14,000 babies are about to die in the next 48 hours, and the whole thing is a lie, and it’s quite shocking.
Chris Kenny:
Can I just jump in on that? Yeah, it is shocking and it’s so damaging, which is the point I want to come to next, Hillel. Now, to some degree, you can make excuses for the media because it’s a United Nations official saying this in very clear terms, but it’s such an outlandish number, it’s such an outlandish claim, that all journalists sort of thought to check that-how could you suddenly have 14,000 babies that are going to die in the next two days? It’s just implausible. And finally, when someone did check, if they find out that it’s based on nothing, it’s an absolute lie, but the corollary of this is sure that media want to report this story, they’re happy to demonize Israel, but the damage this does, the hatred that this permeates through society from people who hear this news, they never hear the correction, so they really do think Israel is out there killing civilians, killing innocent children.
Hillel Neuer:
Look, today, we had a stark reminder of where this kind of demonization and fanning the flames of hate, where it leads to. In Washington, D.C., as you reported, two innocent people-Israeli staffers, a couple that were about to get married, staffers at the Israeli Embassy-were attending a Jewish diplomacy event organized by the American Jewish Committee, one of the most reputable Jewish human rights agencies in the United States, had an event for young professionals in Washington, D.C., at a Jewish museum, and a murderer came and went up to them in close range and shot them, killed them-a young couple about to get engaged to be married. One of them, the man, actually I saw on Twitter that he follows me on Twitter, very, very sad. And the killer, before he was taken away, according to news reports, I saw a part of the video, he said “Free, Free Palestine” and apparently he also said “Intifada, revolution is the only solution.” These chants are the same chants we’ve heard just days ago when radicals at Columbia University took over the library. We’ve heard it for the past year and a half. So these kind of chants is what the murderer was chanting as he was taken away, and was he seeing the news in the past 24 hours? Probably. As you showed, it was on ABC News in America, it was all over the place. Was this the kind of thing that was the final straw for this person filled with hate?
Chris Kenny:
It’s not implausible.
Hillel Neuer:
The news agencies have to know by now, you’re throwing a match every time you put out that lies because people, rightly or wrongly, identify Jewish people with Israel and many proud Jews identify with Israel, but there are people who are looking for scapegoats, and when you say that ‘Israel is murdering babies’, for hundreds of years they said ‘Jews are murdering babies’-it’s the old blood libel revived in new form, equally as deadly.
Chris Kenny:
Shocking stuff, thanks so much for sharing your insights, Hillel.
