UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer was interviewed on Australian radio station 2GB to discuss the UN’s latest lies about Israel, the rise in global antisemitism, and the scandal of international funding for UNRWA.
Luke Grant, Presenter of the Sunday Showdown:
Now I do have a top-tier guest today in the Sunday Sweep. His name is Hillel Neuer. He’s the Executive Director of the Geneva-based UN Watch. Founded more than 30 years ago, UN Watch is one of the world’s most important geopolitical organizations, because they hold the UN accountable to its charter. And in the context of the misinformation often being peddled around Gaza and antisemitism festering in the community both here and around the world his work, I reckon, is more important than ever. And I’m pleased to say that the Executive Director of UN Watch and international lawyer Hillel Neuer is on the line. Good morning. Thank you so much for your time.
Hillel Neuer, UN Watch Executive Director:
Good morning. Great to be here.
Luke Grant:
Thanks so much. Before taking on the role at UN Watch, you worked at America’s leading commercial and civil rights litigation firm. You’ve done all sorts of work as a human rights lawyer. So that my listeners get a real understanding of your significance, Hillel, without wanting to embarrass you, can you give me a little bit more idea of your background?
Hillel Neuer:
Indeed, I practiced at one of America’s preeminent law firms Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. I had the privilege to have as my neighbor there Ted Sorensen, who’s the storied speech writer for John F. Kennedy and other civil rights giants. And at that law firm I got to bring petitions to help bring human rights to prisoners, to African Americans who are suffering discrimination in the American armed forces. And then at UN Watch in Geneva, where I’ve been Director for over 20 years, one of our most proudest moments is our annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, an event that’s organized with 25 other NGOs that my organization, UN Watch, leads. We bring victims of the world’s worst tyrannies, people who were suffering in prison, political prisoners in Russia, China, Cuba, Syria, Iran, North Korea. We bring them to testify at the United Nations, put them in front of 700 activists, journalists, diplomats, every year. These are the Václav Havels of the world, Vladimir Kara-Murza, who just got out of prison in Russia, where he was-we feared-was left to die in the Gulag because he dared to speak out against Vladimir Putin. He just came to our event. So these are the kinds of heroes that we give a platform to. We are a voice for the voiceless.
Luke Grant:
Thank you for what you do. There’s a couple of really important issues for us here in Australia. I guess I should ask Hillel, first off, are you aware of some of the appalling antisemitism? Not to suggest for a moment that it’s not all appalling, but we’ve had synagogues in Melbourne fire-bombed and the like. Are you aware of how this appalling behavior has ramped up over the last couple of years here in Australia?
Hillel Neuer:
Sadly, I am, you know, I’m based very far away in Geneva, Switzerland, and sadly, it has come to our radar and has made the international radar that antisemitism in Australia has reached an unprecedented low, that there has been violence and incitement that’s never been seen in this country. Sadly, I recognize it because I come from Canada. And in Canada, we’ve seen similar developments. These are two countries that are legendary for being the most open, tolerant and friendly to Jewish people over their histories and this shape-shifting virus has infected society in both countries. And I’m here in Australia now and speaking to Jewish people who are frightened and also speaking to some heroic Australians who are principled and speaking out. And I think that’s important and we need more of those.
Luke Grant:
Yeah, indeed. There was an issue this week that I know you’ve commented on elsewhere. I want to remind my listeners about what happened here. There was a top UN official who claimed that some 14,000 babies in Gaza could die within two days, 48 hours, if they did not reach them in time. This was aired on the BBC, and they had to step back from that. This is a fellow called Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs. Now you can imagine, can’t you, when an issue like this, that there are 14,000 babies that will die within a couple of days, when that gets aired, that rightly stirs up emotions, and people want to see action. But to think this comes, Hillel, from the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, and to say and to know it’s just so wrong. How does that even come out of the mouth of someone who occupies that office?
Hillel Neuer:
Well, look, as you said, this grotesque lie by a senior UN official, he’s the head of their relief department, Tom Fletcher. This grotesque lie that 14,000 babies will die in 48 hours isn’t just misinformation. It is a modern blood libel designed specifically to incite outrage and hatred against Israel, the world’s only Jewish and democratic state. And you know this guy, Fletcher, he offers no source, no verification. It’s just a wild, incendiary claim, and yet it’s repeated around the world, amplified by the BBC and many other outlets, and believed. And look, that’s how modern propaganda works. Emotion over evidence. And statements like this, they don’t stay in headlines. They fuel mobs. They inflame social media. They radicalize individuals, like the extremist last week in Washington, D.C., who murdered two Israeli diplomats who were exiting a Jewish event at the Jewish Museum. These kinds of lies have blood on their hands.
Luke Grant:
Yeah. How does someone like Fletcher hang on to his job? Because we know where these things, as you say, they become weaponized on social media and elsewhere, and we know where they end up. Surely, the UN has to get rid of this fella? Surely.
Hillel Neuer:
Absolutely. UN Watch, our organization which has as its mission to monitor the United Nations to live up to the noble principles of the UN Charter, we’re calling for him to be removed. It’s scandalous what happened. Sadly, to date, we have seen zero accountability from UN officials. And you know, one of the other scandals that our organization has exposed, it’s one of the reasons I’m here in Australia right now, is that another top UN official named Francesca Albanese-no relation to your Prime Minister-she is the UN rapporteur on Palestine. She regularly incites antisemitism. She said “America is subjugated by the Jewish Lobby.” She said “Hamas has the right to resist.” She’s justified the massacre of October 7th. And this person came to Australia a year and a half ago and went all around the country. She went to New Zealand and lobbied for that country’s sovereign wealth fund to divest from Israel. She was funded-that’s revealed in our report-she was funded by groups that support Hamas, by pro-Hamas lobby groups here in Australia, like the AFOPA, the Australian Friends of Palestine. They praised Yahya Sinwar’s last will and testament as “moving and inspiring.” And we reveal that she took funding from those groups in order to travel within Australia, which is completely unethical and against the UN’s own guidelines. We expose that and the UN is doing nothing. So sadly, how does Tom Fletcher keep his job? Well, you know, the UN has seen they can get away “with murder.” They have other top officials who openly support Hamas, and no one says anything. You know, on Francesca Albanese-Australia hasn’t said anything. We’ve had five countries condemn her for antisemitism: France and Germany, which have never condemned a UN official, they condemned her for antisemitism. Canada, under Justin Trudeau, a very pro-UN government. The Biden Administration, also a pro-UN government. The Netherlands, they all called her out. Australia so far has been silent. So if we have leading democracies, the leading democracy in the Australian Pacific is Australia, if they go along to get along at the UN, if they stay silent, that only encourages more of this kind of legitimization, normalization of Hamas and antisemitism.
Luke Grant:
Brilliant, if you don’t mind, Hillel, just waiting a moment or two. I just need to clear a commercial break. I want to ask you about a group, sadly, Australia has supported for too long financially, and we’ll do that after this. Hillel, again, thank you for waiting on. I’ve formed a friendship with an Australian lawyer living in Israel since the atrocities of October 7, a couple of years back now nearly, Lisa Segelov, and she said this to me, this is just bit of a phone call, I want to put this to you in a minute: “United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, is an organization that was set up by the United Nations, and it has become a mouthpiece and a training ground for Hamas. We know that 100 Hamas terrorists from the attack on October 7 were graduates of UNRWA schools. We know that UNRWA schools teach about 150 to 200,000 children in Gaza. In their curriculum, they teach primarily to kill Israelis.” So on the back of this, and I mean, Lisa is a very passionate woman, she’s got three young adult children, adult children, 19 to early 20s, who have completed their compulsory military service, and she goes to bed knowing that the next morning she might get a phone call, which could be awful, awful news, and she’s in the middle of this, and I am horrified, embarrassed isn’t strong enough, however, that the Australian government has for some time offered money to this United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Is Lisa right? Am I right? Have I missed something? What’s your take on it?
Hillel Neuer:
Sadly, neither you nor Lisa has missed anything. This is a UN organization that claims to be supporting humanitarianism and promoting the UN values of human rights, peace and tolerance. And sadly, the opposite is true. And I can tell you because my organization, sitting in Geneva, Switzerland, has been sending reports every year since August 2015 to UNRWA, showing how their teachers, their school principals, are regularly on their Facebook pages, inciting to the hatred of Jews, putting up the picture of Adolf Hitler saying he should have finished the job, and posting pictures of the latest Hamas terrorist attacks and praising them. I’ll just give you one example-this is for 10 years-and you know two things are important: Number one, UNRWA itself never was interested in receiving the information. Their immediate response-this is every year for 10 years-was to immediately attack us and defame us. You know, if I delivered a report saying that the schools where I live in Switzerland or here in this country, in Australia, had teachers who are glorifying Adolf Hitler and terrorist attacks, you can be sure that the head of that school board would be calling me, and within a matter of days, that teacher would no longer be standing in front of students. That’s the same in any regular democracy. But sadly, your country and the other Western democracies have subcontracted to UNRWA the education of Palestinians, as you said, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children educated, educated by an agency that doesn’t care a wit-and in fact, it might be worse than that-that they have teachers who are inciting hatred and the slaughter of Jews. Two examples: one is in Gaza, a teacher, the head of the teachers’ union and school principal named Suhail al-Hindi, for decades in Gaza is an elected member of the Hamas Politburo. I’ll say that again: of the Hamas leadership. Yes, with Yahya Sinwar is a guy who is one of the top figures on the ground in UNRWA. There’s a Swiss guy who’s the Chair of UNRWA, he’s the commissioner, named Philippe Lazzarini, but he’s flying around the world. The guy on the ground in charge of 13,000 staff is Suhail al-Hindi of UNRWA. And he had to leave a few years ago, but he was on the Hamas Politburo, overseeing the Hamas massacre. That’s in Gaza. In Lebanon, the head of the teachers’ union, same thing. School principal, teacher, head of 2,000 teachers. His name is Fathi al-Sharif. He was eliminated by an IDF missile in September. And the day he was eliminated in Lebanon, Hamas revealed “he was our leader of Hamas in Lebanon.”
Luke Grant:
Wow, that’s extraordinary. Hillel, I’m sorry I’ve hit the spot on the clock where I have to say goodbye to you. Can I thank you for everything you do. Thank you for spending time in Australia and thank you for speaking so frankly to my listeners. I really appreciate it. Hillel Neuer.
