Click here to view the original article in Portuguese, published by Brazilian magazine Veja on March 20, 2025.
UN Watchdog Talks to VEJA and Stirs Controversy: ‘The Failures Are Profuse’
Without mincing words, Hillel Neuer criticizes Lula’s remarks on the war in Gaza, expresses suspicion over the closeness between Trump and Putin, and raises alarms about neo-Nazism.
By Paula Freitas
The past few years have been tumultuous—and tense—for the United Nations. Two major wars, in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, have erupted, with devastating humanitarian consequences. Antisemitism is surging worldwide, while neo-Nazism concerns a range of countries, including Brazil. In Venezuela, accusations of electoral fraud against President Nicolás Maduro have led to mass political imprisonments. Freedom of expression has been pushed to its limits, as seen in the protests that spread across U.S. universities last year. And, shaking up the rules of the game, Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.
In such a context of political instability, the responsibility of the United Nations grows. Yet, the organization has often failed to respond adequately to new challenges on the international stage, such as the war in Ukraine, now extending beyond three years. This has led to demands for the organization’s actions to be monitored as it navigates the turbulent paths of history.
This is the role of the non-governmental organization UN Watch, based in Geneva, Switzerland: “to hold the United Nations accountable to its founding principles,” leading the “fight against antisemitism and campaigning in global bodies against all forms of racism and discrimination.”
“UN Watch believes in the United Nations’ mission on behalf of the international community to ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’ and provide a more just world. We believe that, despite its shortcomings, the UN remains an indispensable tool for uniting diverse nations and cultures,” states the human rights organization’s portal, founded in 1993.
In both its successes and failures, the UN is a central pillar of international cooperation—more necessary than ever. Amid this dynamic global landscape, VEJA spoke with UN Watch’s executive director, Hillel Neuer, an international lawyer, diplomat, writer, and Jewish activist.
In the interview, Neuer discusses a diverse set of topics, from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s comments on the war in Gaza to the rapprochement between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, reshaping the political chessboard of the conflict in Ukraine. Above all, he believes the UN has failed as a moral compass. “It has been cowardly,” he states unequivocally.
Neuer will give two unprecedented lectures in Brazil on April 1 and 2, in Rio de Janeiro, at the invitation of Hillel Rio, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary—a non-profit cultural and educational institution dedicated to the youth of the Jewish community—and in São Paulo, where he will participate in the inauguration of Hillel São Paulo.
You say the UN has an anti-Israel bias. Why?
It’s pervasive. It’s not just in one UN body. It’s in many, unfortunately. It’s something we see throughout the United Nations. I’ll give you just three examples. In New York, there’s the UN General Assembly, which brings together all 193 countries and, each year, adopts resolutions. There’s one on Iran, one on Syria, one on North Korea, and 17 on Israel.
No other country in the world comes close. Most countries have none. For example, none on Cuba, which is a police state. None on China, where 1.5 billion people lack human rights. None on Egypt, where there are thousands of political prisoners. None on Pakistan, none on Mr. Maduro in Venezuela, and 17 on Israel.
Then, you cross the ocean and arrive in Geneva, where the UN Human Rights Council is currently in session. There, they have a day dedicated to the world. That is, if your country wants to speak about what’s happening in China or anywhere else, it can do so under what’s called agenda item four. You can talk about any of the 193 countries. Then, there’s a single day to talk about Israel. An agenda item called item seven.
It’s called “Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Arab Territories,” including Palestine. But it’s all about Israel. Countries where not even a word of protest is allowed are all dedicating a special day, a special agenda item, to accuse Israel, a democracy, of being the world’s worst human rights violator.
UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, employs tens of thousands of workers and is the main source of humanitarian aid in Gaza. Why do you say UNRWA is “rotten from within”?
It started with good intentions. It was meant to help Palestinians displaced after the 1948 war. But very quickly, it became something that only perpetuates the war against Israel. Palestinians living in UNRWA areas, which are called camps but aren’t really camps because they’re not in tents—they’re in neighborhoods, in buildings in Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan—are called refugees, and this is for a very sharp and, I would say, pathological policy.
It’s a pathological agenda that tells Palestinians their goal in life is to dismantle Israel. They don’t call it that; they say it’s a right of return. So, in Jordan, look at Jordan—there are 2 million Jordanians with Jordanian citizenship, Jordanian passports for 70 years. Jordanians like I’m Canadian. And yet, according to the UN, they’re refugees because their grandfather or grandmother, or great-grandfather, was displaced from British Mandate Palestine.
UNRWA is not the firefighter. It’s the arsonist, the pyromaniac. They’re the ones lighting the fire, encouraging, teaching Palestinians to wage a war to dismantle Israel. They’re the opposite of the Two-State Solution. The agency teaches Palestinians in Gaza that Gaza is not their home. Their home is in Tel Aviv. Why should they rebuild Gaza? And it’s completely infested by Hamas, from employee unions to teachers. This is funded by the UN, paid for by Western countries, which indeed finance UNRWA.
Regarding the expulsion of students who participated in protests in the U.S. Does this not violate the constitutional amendment governing freedom of speech?
No, I don’t think that’s the case, and I’ll explain why. The first thing is, why was Mahmoud Khalil arrested and detained? Because he violated the conditions of his visa. Everyone who has a visa knows very well that in the United States, you have conditions and risk deportation if you violate them. Defenders say, “but he has First Amendment rights.” First of all, he is not a citizen. So, it’s not as if he has the same rights as a non-citizen. We don’t know how he got his green card in just two years, which usually takes much longer. And suddenly, he started leading a kind of bullying, harassment, and terror against Jewish students.
For a year and a half, Jewish students on campus were confronted by protesters. They blocked students, deliberately trying to resemble Hamas. In English, we call it “cosplay,” a kind of role-playing. They fully supported the October massacre, claiming it was resistance. They set up encampments on campus, against university rules. And the idea that a foreigner would do this, violating the conditions of his visa, and the authorities would do nothing.
This is not just an American problem. It is at least a North American problem, if not also an issue in Australia. I am originally from Canada. And in Canada, similar things were happening at my university, McGill University. Similar incidents were occurring in the streets, and the government was somewhat afraid, signaling that this was acceptable. The result of this is antisemitism at levels never seen before in Canada or the United States.
At some point, the government has to say: “This ends now.” So, if someone in the United States protests and is a citizen who says something very strong, their rights should be protected because the First Amendment guarantees that. But if a foreigner arrives, lies on their visa application, denies students their basic rights to move freely, and openly supports the terrorist group that kidnapped Americans, I think the perfectly normal thing to do is to say: “You know what? You violated your conditions. You were a guest in our country, and now you are no longer welcome here.”
Last year, the National Human Rights Council presented concerns to the UN regarding the rise of neo-Nazi groups in Brazil in recent years. How do you see the increase in neo-Nazism and antisemitism worldwide?
Antisemitism, over the past year and a half, has become a tsunami for Jews around the world. I just met a rabbi from Norway, and he told me how many Jews, who once felt completely integrated, now feel they need to go somewhere else, that they are no longer welcome in Norway. Which is shocking. We are not talking about Iran, Syria, or some other dictatorship. Norway is considered the most progressive liberal democracy.
For many years, Jews in Europe heard, “You killed our God, your ancestors killed Jesus, so you are guilty. ” Jews were persecuted, burned, attacked, and exiled from every city in Europe during the Middle Ages. And this was all in the name of the accusation of deicide. But after the Holocaust, antisemitism became taboo. On October 7, that taboo was broken, and now there is a tsunami of hatred. The truth is that in many countries, the rise in hatred against Jews is not coming from the white right. Yes, it comes from there, but it also comes from the left. The groups that claim Israel is committing genocide. These are not neo-Nazis; they are on the opposite end of the spectrum. It is a narrative coming from the left, echoed by some UN officials and certain human rights groups, such as Amnesty International.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva compared the deaths of Palestinians to the Holocaust. Do you agree?
This kind of statement is a stereotype. It is a common antisemitic stereotype—to accuse the victims of the Holocaust of perpetrating genocide. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Jews in Poland did not attack Berlin, did not attack Hitler, the Nazis, or Germany. The 6 million Jews who were killed did not attack anyone. What happened in the Holocaust was genocide by the Nazis against the Jews, and what is happening in Israel is defense against an attempted genocide. We had a day of genocide on October 7.
Hamas openly states that it seeks to destroy Israel and openly tried to kill every person they could get their hands on. They murdered women and babies with their own hands. They tortured people, did things in front of their family members. No country in the world would allow a terrorist army on its border, just meters away. That is what Israel was living with. Israel thought it could allow this, and it was wrong.
So, Israel is obligated to defeat Hamas and has already killed about 20,000 fighters. Israel is waging a justified defensive war, just as the British did against the Nazis when they were attacked. Falsely accusing it of committing genocide is a truly vile thing to do. What Lula did was a disgusting defamation, a form of slander used to justify antisemitism. He should be ashamed of making such a false analogy.
But nearly 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks.
Israel tries more than any other country to avoid harming civilians. And don’t take my word for it—listen to what top Western military generals say. Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded British forces in Afghanistan, has publicly stated that no army in the history of warfare has done more to avoid harming civilians than Israel. The problem is that Hamas are cowards. Only when they are performing on stage—when they bring out the Israeli hostages they release, have them sign a document, and present them before crowds—do they wear uniforms. But throughout the war, there were no uniforms. The Geneva Convention states that soldiers must wear them.
If you dress as a civilian, you are hiding and violating the Geneva Convention. That is exactly what Hamas has done. They built their terror tunnels—hundreds of kilometers of them—under schools, houses, and hospitals. Besides, the numbers all come from Hamas. The figures do not come from the Red Cross. There is no UN expert on the ground; all the data comes from Hamas. But even according to Hamas’s own statistics, when the death toll was between 40,000 and 45,000, around 20,000 were Hamas combatants. So, we are talking about a ratio of approximately 1.2 to 1.5 civilians killed for every terrorist combatant—a proportion well below the numbers seen, for example, in Afghanistan. Yes, civilians have been killed, but no army in history has done better in fighting an urban war, one designed by Hamas.
In December, a report indicated that Venezuela has 2,000 political prisoners—a situation worsened by accusations of electoral fraud after Nicolás Maduro’s victory. You have said that the UN is “rolling out the red carpet” for dictatorships. How do you view the situation in Venezuela?
My organization, UN Watch, recently hosted the true president of Venezuela, Edmundo González, at the 17th Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy in late February. He is the real winner of the elections held last July. Everyone knows it. The opposition had observers at every polling station. Unfortunately, we have a dictatorship that has caused more than 7 million people to flee the country—one of the world’s richest nations in natural resources.
They persecute judges who act independently and imprison human rights defenders. This week, we also spoke with María Corina Machado, the opposition leader. She gave a speech via video because she is not allowed to leave the country. These are the heroes, risking their lives for freedom, democracy, and the rule of law in Venezuela, and the world needs to support them.
Unfortunately, the United Nations often rolls out the red carpet for dictators. Maduro and Chávez were repeatedly members of the Human Rights Council. Now they are out, but they were members for most of the past years. So, it is very sad. The UN needs to stand with the victims, not the oppressors. And today, Maduro is part of the gang of oppressors. He was a friend of Assad, Putin, Khamenei, and the Castro regime in Cuba. That is what he is. And he is a narco-terrorist, and the United Nations should say so.
You argue that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “a complete act of aggression and a violation of international law” and that “the free world must stand with Zelensky.” Is the rapprochement between Trump and Putin a bad sign?
I am deeply concerned. I don’t understand it. It looks terrible. My good friend Vladimir Kara-Murza is the leading Russian opposition politician alive today. Alexei Navalny was the most famous. He was left to die in prison. Vladimir Kara-Murza is now the most well-known opposition leader. He was poisoned twice, in 2015 and 2017. He fell into a coma. He nearly died. We brought him to the United Nations to speak. You could hear it in his breathing. You could hear that he couldn’t breathe normally. He was poisoned.
We hope that the United States will acknowledge this and hold Putin accountable for his repression of political prisoners and his war crimes in Ukraine. And President Trump says he is doing this to bring peace. Well, sometimes you have to make concessions to bring peace. We understand that. Sometimes it is necessary to negotiate with terrible regimes, and maybe we have to give President Trump some benefit of the doubt. But he should not call Zelensky a dictator—that is unacceptable; he should not say that Putin is his friend—that is unacceptable.
The rules of the game are changing. What should the UN’s role be in the war in Ukraine?
The first thing is that the United Nations must speak with moral clarity. It was founded on moral clarity. It was established by the countries that defeated Hitler. But unfortunately, today, we rarely see that. Vladimir Putin was sitting on the Human Rights Council when he invaded Ukraine. UN Watch led the campaign to expel him, and we succeeded. Normally, our campaigns fail because countries do not care, they are cynical, they want to make political deals. Mr. António Guterres (the UN Secretary-General) says nothing when dictatorships are elected, and he has been very quiet about Putin, very rarely condemning him. He shook Putin’s hand about six months ago.
So, I believe the United Nations is failing to show moral leadership. This requires external groups or some countries to step up. The UN should not be an agency that legitimizes dictators and supporters of terrorists. It was created to tell the truth, to defend fundamental freedoms, to uphold the founding Charter, and to condemn evil and murderous dictators like Vladimir Putin. Too often today, the UN displays cowardice—the opposite of courage and moral clarity.
