Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch
Opening remarks:
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Hillel Neuer. I am the executive director of United Nations Watch. We are marking our 31st year since we were founded here in Geneva to monitor the United Nations and hold it accountable to the principles of its own charter.
I would like to welcome all of you, and people watching around the world online, to the first-ever international summit for a future beyond UNRWA.
We are at a turning point. Just a few weeks ago, most of the donor states of UNRWA led by the US froze their funding for the first time to this agency over evidence that members of the UNRWA staff actually took part in the atrocities of October 7th. Evidence, as reported in the Wall Street Journal that anywhere between 1,200 to 1,500 employees of UNRWA, a so-called humanitarian group, actually belong to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And with us here, we will hear from her later is Ayelet Samareno, she is the mother of 21-year-old Yonatan who tragically was murdered on th October and his lifeless body is seen on a video, and we will see it later when she speaks, was taken away by an UNRWA social worker. It is seen on video of [him] driving a white SUV with UNRWA license plates. That just underscores so much of what we will hear today. The problem with this supposedly humanitarian organization.
So countries have frozen funding, that’s where we are at today. They have created two inquiries, one is by the Internal Oversight Office, known as OIOS. We’ll hear shortly from Ed Flaherty, he is a lawyer here in Geneva and he is an expert on UN investigations. And we are going to understand how this OIOS is indeed perhaps the last kind of entity that can conduct an independent investigation. It’s not independent, we’ll hear from him about that.
There is a second investigation, which is very significant. It’s headed by Catherine Colonna, the former French Foreign Minister, she just stepped down about a month ago. She heads this independent review group set up by the Secretary-General. It’s supposed to look into how UNRWA deals with violations of neutrality and how they respond to it. And there are serious questions about the independence of this group. Catherine Colonna herself as she stepped down, she sent a tweet, message, publicly to the head of UNRWA congratulating him on his wonderful work which is needed now more than ever. This was on January 14th, 4 days after we began to reveal the telegram chat group of 3,000 UNRWA teachers who were celebrating the atrocities of October 7th. So after we initially exposed it, 4 days later, Catherine Colonna, French foreign minister, congratulated UNRWA on their valuable work that is “needed more than ever.” Is she really qualified to conduct a credible, objective, serious independent review? The question answers itself.
The three other institutions joining her all have prior pronouncements and statements and reports on their websites, which are anything but objective when it comes to UNRWA. So the international community is now waiting, this investigation is due to give back an interim report in a month’s time, at the end of March.
Secretary-General Spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said this group is intended to reassure the donor states, in other words “you’re all going to have to give back your funding and we set up this review group to reassure you.”
So in a sense, it’s all predetermined. We know already in advance that the group headed by Catherine Colonna will reassure the donor states and they want to reinstate the funding. But we do have this one month or two months before that happens, so this is a critical moment, and I want to thank everyone who has come here. We have an incredible group that has assembled here in person.
We are going to hear from members of parliament. I’ll just note two of them, one is Congressman Chris Smith. He has been a leader in the US Congress in fighting against terrorism and antisemitism incited by UNRWA staff. He is the author of legislation to stop funding for UNRWA, it has already passed in the foreign affairs committee recently by a majority and we are hoping it will head to a vote in the House itself.
I want to acknowledge David Lega who is a leader in the European parliament on these issues. And hopefully I’ll get to see him in the European Parliament sometime soon.
We have Assita Kanko from the European Parliament and Caroline Yadan from the French National Assembly, and did I miss some other members of parliament who are here in the room? A number of them will be participating by video.
I’ll just say a word or two about where we are. We are meters away from the UN European headquarters. And the Israeli ambassador who I will introduce in a moment just stepped out of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Human Rights Council session, opened by Mr. Secretary General Guterres.
The Human Rights Council was founded in 1946. Its first significant act was to create the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. In that document, in the preamble, it says, - this was 1948- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was created in response to “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind.” That is the essence of what the United Nations was supposed to be about, what the Human Rights Council was supposed to be about.
And we are just across the street from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ICRC, which is the bastion of humanitarian law.
We are at the center point of universal human rights and humanitarianism in this very spot.
And so we ask, are these human rights and humanitarian bodies, are they actually acting against barbarous acts?
On October 7th, and we have Ayelet, whose son was tragically murdered as one of these barbarous acts, his lifeless body was abducted by an UNRWA worker.
And we will hear from Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz that barbarism and terrorism among UNRWA staff, sadly, is not a bug, but a feature.
And I want to ask Mr. Guterres, Mr. Guterres has said repeatedly, and he’s right next door, so I ask you, you have said repeatedly, UNRWA is irreplaceable. Well, we are going to hear from humanitarian experts, we are going to hear from Zlatko Zigic, who served at the UN migration agency. We are going to hear from Bonnie Glick who was the deputy administrator of USAID, from Jose Garson, an expert at the UN capital development fund, that, guess what, UNRWA is not irreplaceable. There are millions of refugees and other individuals who have humanitarian needs who are addressed by an array UN bodies that are not riddled and infested with terrorism.
There are other alternatives, but sadly Mr. Secretary General you gave orders, we know that because it was reported by veteran UN reporter Colum Lynch in Devex last week that the Secreary General Guterres has urged the heads of UN principle relief agencies, including World Food Program and UNICEF to rebuff appeals by Israel and the US to undertake work currently carried by the world body’s beleaguered Palestinain refugee agency.
In other words Secretary General Guterres, notwithstanding efforts by ambassador David Satterfield, the US humanitarian envoy and the USAID and the State Department to find other agencies that can do the work. Guterres has given them orders: “you are prohibited from picking up any of the services that Palestinians need, you are not allowed to do it.” So this is what we are facing.
Mr. Guterres, you say repeatedly the talking points that are parroted by the apologists for UNRWA around the world. You say repeatedly that UNRWA does lifesaving work, it’s a lifeline. We have a video that my colleague Luis prepared, you’ll see dozens of individuals around the world parroting the talking point, UNRWA does lifesaving work, UNRWA is a lifeline, it’s irreplaceable.
Really Mr. Guterres? 100,000 people in the last 24 hours, more than 100,000 people, when I asked them to support this conference, they rallied around the world and I have 100,000 names printed up here. 100,00 people have signed the petition. And I’m just going to read a few words here.
Enough is enough, UNRWA must be dissolved and replaced. In the last few weeks it’s been revealed, again Mr. Guterres, you say that UNRWA does lifesaving work, it has been revealed that 12 UNRWA staff took part in the massacre of October 7th, and actually it’s another 30 at least that we have evidence were related, so about 42 at least. 1,200 staff, at least ,are part of terrorist groups. 3,000 belonged to this telegram chat group that celebrated the massacre of October 7th.
We have an UNRWA headquarters in Gaza, underneath was a tunnel built by Hamas for another key asset, a computer server with espionage intelligence center built under UNRWA headquarters in Gaza with electric cables coming directly from the UNRWA headquarters.
Philippe Lazzarini, Mr. Guterres, your head of UNRWA, he was asked about it. His response was, literally “UNRWA does not know what is under its headquarters in Gaza.” So even though 10 years ago, we know from reports that the parking lot was sinking, and everyone looked away, see no evil hear no evil. Nobody knew anything. Really? Not very credible.
And we will hear from Ambassador Dennis Ross, the former US Peace Process Envoy and he’ll have a few words to say about that.
Mr. Guterres, you said you were horrified about the terrorist attacks. In our petition, 100,000 people said you could not pretend to be horrified by this news because for the last decade, UN Watch sent countries and yourself warnings about UNRWA staff support for terrorism. The UN did nothing but to attack the messenger. The United Nations repeatedly and, UNRWA especially, attacked us, saying we are against refugees when we are doing the work that the UN failed to do, exposing their own teachers and schools principals who were regularly encouraging and promoting terrorism. You cannot pretend to be horrified, because for 10 years UN Watch has warned you.
A few bad apples? Really it’s not a few bad apples. We documented hundreds and in every case when an UNRWA teacher glorified Hitler, glorified Hamas terrorist attacks in not once instance was there not one peer who said I’m shocked, you are such a bad apple, this is not what we do. On the contrary, all of them liked it. And when you go on the likes, other UNRWA teachers liked these messages. It’s not rotten apples, it’s rotten to the core.
This is the moment that the international community has to decide if an agency that is supposed to be humanitarian is actually complicit in barbarism, it’s a moment where the funds are frozen and we can take action. That’s what this conference is about. Everyone will have their own views of what they want to say, I’m speaking for myself but I know I’m speaking for many. We are at this turning point and the next few weeks will be crucial. We are going to hear from our experts and victims today, and at the end of the conference, I will share where we will go forward and take action.
Thank you all for coming.
