UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer was interviewed on Fox News Radio’s “The Brian Kilmeade Show” to discuss the current U.N. General Assembly, including speeches by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as the international recognition of a Palestinian state, and UN Watch’s new 200-page report detailing how UNRWA schools in Gaza and Lebanon were taken over by Hamas terror chiefs.
Brian Kilmeade, Fox News Radio:
Hillel Neuer joins us now, Executive Director of UN Watch, a group that analyzes what the UN is doing right and wrong. Hillel, how’s this week been for the UN?
Hillel Neuer:
Well, this is their week where it’s a catwalk for dictators, right. And we saw that. You have dictators from some of the worst regimes show up under the giant UN logo, pretending to speak in the name of international law, human rights, and they’re some of the worst dictators, and they are purporting to lecture America, to lecture Israel, especially, pointing the finger at Western countries about human rights. So there’s a lot of hypocrisy. That’s mostly what we saw this week.
Brian Kilmeade:
So good ambassador, Mike Waltz, he said, You know, there’s a whole commission analyzing George Floyd and the George Floyd riots and his impact on America. They’re analyzing our society and they abuse. They have seven different committees on seven different climate change promotions. That seems to be the mandate, yeah. Let’s work on climate change.
Hillel Neuer:
Yeah. Sadly, I have to say the George Floyd thing that was at the time, endorsed by the Biden administration, which is very unfortunate. You know, the UN, the thing that unites them, often, is attacking the West and attacking America. It’s a lot of anti-capitalism. Climate change is not an innocent concern for climate at the UN. It’s a way to target capitalism in America. And let’s not be mistaken about the ideology: the fact that they celebrated a 16-year-old child at the time, Greta, who’s now basically a Hamas propaganda nutcase on sailboats sailing to Gaza - this was the UN’s hero for climate. So there’s a lot of really visceral anti-Western ideology masked in the name of climate.
Brian Kilmeade:
So Donald Trump was extremely critical. Pull some sound of that. Donald Trump being critical of the UN you let him have it on Monday. He would you, what are you guys doing? Why am I negotiation, peace agreement? She didn’t even contact me to maybe background or support or do follow up. He goes, You know what? Why am I handling all this stuff where? Why don’t you assert yourself? He doesn’t bring up he didn’t bring up the fact that UNRWA was involved in the October 7th attacks on Israel and the providing aid in Gaza for Hamas.
Hillel Neuer:
Look, we just published a 200-page report with 598 footnotes, which shows in detail how the heads of UNRWA on the ground of the schools in Gaza and Lebanon were not just supporters of Hamas, but Hamas terror chiefs. Suhail al-Hindi, head of 13,000 UNRWA staff in Gaza, is a key member of the Hamas Politburo in Lebanon. His name was Fatih Sharif, head of 2,000 UNRWA teachers, he was the head of the Hamas terrorist organization in Lebanon. UNRWA knew it. We were paying their salaries. American taxpayers were paying their salaries. It’s disgraceful. Mike Waltz said at his confirmation hearing he’s going to work to get UNRWA dismantled. And if we care about hope for the Middle East, an agency that’s indoctrinating Palestinian children into hatred, should be shut down.
Brian Kilmeade:
So now there’s the Palestinian state’s been recognized by 180 countries, including France, Germany, Australia, Portugal…
Hillel Neuer:
-not Germany, but France, the UK, Australia, Canada, not Germany, not Italy, but yeah, but most of the world’s countries-
Brian Kilmeade:
So what changes now in the UN does they get a they get more of a seat, more power? Internationally, it gets more complicated, if Israel does something that might be in violation of international law from country to country?
Hillel Neuer:
Yeah, look the the truth is they keep playing this card. Ten years ago, they voted to call them a state at the UN so their name plate has been State of Palestine since, I think 2012. The International Criminal Court recognized the State of Palestine just to enable them to do lawfare against Israel. So that was already done on the ground. It’s actually limited what what they can use with this, you know, keep playing the same card. But I would say, you know, the opposite. We should ask questions. If France and the UK and Canada and Australia say that there’s a Palestinian state, then why are there Palestinian refugees in Palestine? Why in Jenin, for example, are there Palestinian refugee camps? If Palestine is a state, there are no more refugees. They’re living in Palestine. You should end UNRWA, for example.
Brian Kilmeade:
Right. So this is Netanyahu. Here’s a little of the speech going on. It’s still being conducted now. It’s been going on for I think, 30 minutes. Listen.
Recording of Benjamin Netanyahu:
“You know what message the leaders who recognize the Palestinian this state this week, sent to the Palestinians. It’s a very clear message, murdering Jews pays off. Well, I have a message for these leaders when the most savage terrorists on Earth are refusively praising your decision. You didn’t do something right. You did something wrong, horribly wrong. Your disgraceful decision will encourage terrorism against Jews and against innocent people everywhere. It will be a mark of shame on all of you.”
Brian Kilmeade:
So, you are rewarding this behavior you. You don’t like the way the President the way Israel is doing operations in Gaza. They look at his operation for survival with Hamas still intact. It’s just a matter of time before we get another attack. Your thoughts about how this speech is going over?
Hillel Neuer:
Well, it’s a very powerful speech. You know, certainly performatively at the UN. Islamic States did a walk out before, but this, it’s a very powerful speech. Prime Minister now is mentioning key facts, and he talked about the curse of Iran. The Iranian regime is arming, sponsoring terror proxies throughout the region. They have destroyed societies from Yemen to Lebanon to Gaza, and it’s been miraculous and extraordinary what the Israel Defense Forces were able to do. They crippled Hezbollah with the pagers, which was a miraculous operation. They crushed most of Hamas’s military capacity, but it’s not finished. Iran, together, with the help of President Trump, they devastated their nuclear and ballistic missile program. Assad regime, one of the most horrific regimes in the 21st century, killed half a million people, is gone. That is extraordinary. Prime Minister Netanyahu, I think, helped frame what’s truly going on in the Middle East, and instead of making this issue about, you know, people in Gaza being the victims, let’s remember that Iran armed Hamas to start the war on October 7th, and largely their unit of terror proxies, their system of terror proxies, has been decimated.
Brian Kilmeade:
And they say, well, we didn’t know about it.
Hillel Neuer:
It’s hard to believe maybe they didn’t know some details. That’s possible, but certainly they were arming them for this.
Brian Kilmeade:
Absolutely. I want you to hear some of the criticism that Donald Trump leveled on Tuesday, and I want to get your reaction to it.
Recording of President Trump:
“I didn’t think of it at the time because I was too busy working to save millions of lives. That is the saving and stopping of these wars. But later, I realized that the United Nations wasn’t there for us. They weren’t there. I thought of it really after the fact, not during, not during these negotiations, which were not easy. That being the case, what is the purpose of the United Nations? The UN has such tremendous potential. I’ve always said it, it has such tremendous, tremendous potential, but it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential for the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It’s empty words, and empty words don’t solve war. The only thing that solves war and wars is action.”
Brian Kilmeade:
Is he right?
Hillel Neuer:
Absolutely. I mean, I would say it’s even worse. It’s at best, it’s empty words coming from the UN. At worst, it’s words that legitimize the world’s worst regimes. Let’s remember the UN, and we just published the data today of the past ten years of the UN General Assembly, which is meeting now in New York, and in 10 years, there have been zero resolutions adopted by the UN on China - 1.5 billion people oppressed, completely, zero resolutions. 1 million Muslim Uighurs in camps. Hong Kong democracy extinguished. Thousandss of Tibetan temples destroyed. Human rights lawyers thrown into prison. Someone lifts up a white piece of paper in Shanghai, a young woman - throw her into prison. Zero resolutions. Cuba - police state. Teenagers in prison because they called for democracy. Zero resolutions. Venezuela, a corrupt narco, criminal regime. Zero resolutions. 173 on Israel. Okay, so that’s, and these resolutions legitimize Hamas terrorists. It’s at best, empty words, but in reality, often it’s words that are legitimizing attacks on Israel, America and the West, right?
Brian Kilmeade:
So does it? Is it fixable? Is the UN fixable?
Hillel Neuer:
It’s fixable if we fix our own societies. You know, it starts with, you know, reform is very hard to do institutionally, very hard to change institutions, but at a minimum, get our democracies to do the right thing. Nothing stops Britain, France, Canada, from introducing a resolution of 1.5 billion people suffering in China or migrant workers being enslaved in Qatar. No one ever even tries. They their mentality is to go along to get along. Look, on October 8. So we’re talking in barely two weeks, in about 10 days, the UN so called Human Rights Council is going to elect the Iranian regimes official, a long time Iranian diplomat, to their human rights council as an expert. What a joke. And no one’s saying anything. We’re the first ones to expose it. We’re urging Western diplomats to try to stop it. So far, they’re saying nothing.
Brian Kilmeade:
Here’s more from Netanyahu speech. Again, he’s still talking. And they’re not hearing it because they left the building, maybe they’ll never understand it. And whenever you think about what’s going on in Gaza, they’re dropping flyers. They’re directing people through text messages to get out of buildings. And it’s the Hamas that goes into hospitals. It’s Hamas that makes headquarters in schools and mosques, and they that opens himself up to a target, and they got to be very discerning to the Israelis. But they also have to make sure we’re not dealing with this for the next generation. They want to finish it off for good.
Hillel Neuer:
Look, Prime Minister Netanyahu quoted one of the experts at West Point, Colonel John Spencer, considered one of the world’s experts on urban warfare, teaches War College, and he knows better than others, that urban warfare is extremely difficult, especially as you indicated. Hamas built hundreds of miles of terror tunnels under all of Gaza. All of Gaza is built over. They dug under and built terror tunnels under homes, hospitals and schools that cement that we gave them with our tax money that was supposed to build homes, hospitals and schools, they use them to build miles and miles of terror tunnels, and Israel has to destroy Hamas, where October 7th is going to happen again. Hamas is threatening. It’s a nihilistic death cult. As Prime Minister Netanyahu said, Israel suffered the equivalent of 10 times 9/11 and it’s a regime that’s not thousands of miles away in Afghanistan or Iraq. It’s literally, you know, meters away, okay, it’s, it’s a it’s 100 yards away from from Israel.
Brian Kilmeade:
So Hillel, you look forward to working with Ambassador Waltz on time, maybe making even incremental changes?
Hillel Neuer:
Absolutely. Look, at a minimum, we have to hold the UN to account. And America has power, has leverage. He’s just been confirmed. He has a certain influence at the UN, he needs to use it, and I’m looking forward to working with him to hold abusers to account and make sure that US taxpayers and other countries taxpayers get some value for the dollar, and we’re not wasting it on legitimizing anti-Western narratives that are propaganda for terrorists.
Brian Kilmeade:
I think it would be a huge resource for him, because you got to get him up to speed quick, and he’s a quick learner, as you know. Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of the UN Watch. Appreciate it.
