Hillel Neuer was interviewed by Jeremy Stubbs in Causeur. They discussed UNRWA and anti-Israel bias at the UN.
View the full article in English below.
“EVERY EURO DONATED TO UNRWA IS A EURO AGAINST PEACE.”
Israel has banned UNRWA from operating on its territory. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, notoriously corrupted by Hamas, has worked since its creation to delegitimize the Hebrew state, when it doesn’t help to fight it. The director of UN Watch testifies.
Based in Geneva, UN Watch is a special kind of NGO. Founded in 1993 by a former president of the American Jewish Committee (lawyer Morris Abram), it constantly monitors the UN’s actions and assesses its compliance with its own Charter. In other words, there’s no shortage of work to be done! UN Watch experts regularly criticize one of the UN’s main branches, the Human Rights Council, for example when it fails to meet its own admission criteria by accepting countries such as China, Cuba or Venezuela, which are obviously far from respecting the founding principles of “contributing to the promotion and protection of human rights.” Also in the NGO’s crosshairs: the unfair treatment of Israel, to say the least. We interviewed the director of UN Watch, Canadian lawyer Hillel Neuer.
Jeremy Stubbs, Causeur: In UN Watch publications, the UN is portrayed as an organization in the grip of its most despotic member states. Aren’t you exaggerating just a little?
Hillel Neuer: 60% of the Member States of the Human Rights Council are authoritarian regimes. This position of strength gives them wide-ranging powers of appointment to UN bodies, where we find executives and experts who, although often Westerners, share their aversion to democracy and liberal values. A typical case is that of Jean Ziegler, the Swiss sociologist, anti-globalization and anti-capitalist who spent some twenty years occupying prominent positions in UN institutions, thanks in part to Cuban sponsorship. In the end, UN institutions fell under the control of an ill-fated alliance of dictators and militants with a shared hatred of the West.
Jeremy Stubbs, Causeur: Why is this alliance so relentless against Israel in particular?
Hillel Neuer: Of the 193 member states of the UN, 56 are Islamic regimes and they constantly bring resolutions condemning Israel before the General Assembly.
Jeremy Stubbs, Causeur: But they only represent a quarter of the votes. That’s not enough to win a majority at the General Assembly…
Hillel Neuer: The problem is that the UN has a culture of vote trading. Here’s how it works: if you’re a member state and you want the support of the 56 Islamic countries on a matter close to your heart, all you have to do in return is support them in one of the causes closest to their hearts, the fight against the Zionist enemy. Add to this the economic leverage available to the Arab world. Many countries know that they will find it easier to obtain gas and oil from the Gulf monarchies if they take a stand against Israel. Or that they will benefit more from the manna of a sovereign wealth fund like Qatar’s. Another source of motivation: fear of Islamist attacks. This submissive attitude is widespread among chancelleries, with a few exceptions, such as the Czech Republic, Argentina, and the USA. Finally, some of the anti-Israeli positions supported at the UN can be explained by a truly irrational dimension, by which I mean the old background of occidental antisemitism that often rises to the surface.
Jeremy Stubbs, Causeur: Among the Western experts you mention, there is one who is particularly virulent towards Israel. She is the Italian jurist Francesca Albanese, who in 2022 was appointed “UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967”. What is her motivation?
Hillel Neuer: The motivation of all these special rapporteurs is, above all, ideological, as the positions they hold are not remunerated by the UN. Albanese shares her hatred of Israel with her husband, economist Massimiliano Calì, ex-advisor to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of National Economy. Both subscribe to anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Israeli ideology and wield all the classic anti-Semitic tropes of comparing Israelis to Nazis and portraying Jews as responsible for their own misfortunes – the so-called “Holocaust inversion.” In her posts on social networks, Albanese claims that the USA or the BBC are the playthings of the “Jewish lobby.” She also spoke at a conference organized by Hamas in November 2022. She declared, “You have the right to resist.” Worse still, last February, when Emmanuel Macron called 7-October “the greatest antisemitic massacre of our century,” she objected on X (formerly Twitter): “The victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism but in reaction to Israel’s oppression.” Incidentally, she is the only UN rapporteur to have been condemned by member states – once by Germany and twice by France.
Jeremy Stubbs, Causeur: In any case, while there are more than 70 unknown experts appointed by the UN, Albanese enjoys a high profile…
Hillel Neuer: One thing’s for sure: this notoriety isn’t the fruit of competence. Albanese is not a reliable interlocutor. She does not respect the obligation of her position to verify the information she relays. Take the bombing of the Al-Ahli Arabi hospital in Gaza on October 17, 2023: she didn’t hesitate to claim that the perpetrator was the Israeli army when, in fact, it was the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Albanese’s fame is due to the platforms provided by the Western media and campuses. She is regularly published in The Guardian and interviewed by France24. At the end of October, she embarked on a tour of the United States. On the agenda: a speech to the UN Human Rights Committee, followed by appearances at prestigious universities such as Georgetown and Princeton. UN Watch is calling on Washington to ban her from American soil. On October 23, we devoted a 60-page report to her, eloquently entitled “A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing.”
Jeremy Stubbs, Causeur: Why does UN Watch criticize UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees? Isn’t it fulfilling an essential and beneficial mission?
Hillel Neuer: UNRWA was created in 1949 to help Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war to resettle in new places where they could enjoy all their rights. But it soon became a pathological version of their cause. Even today, videos show Gazan schoolchildren enrolled in UNRWA-run schools claiming that their real home is not in Gaza but in Haifa or Tel Aviv. It has to be said that UNRWA reinforces this idea in their parents’ minds and, for seventy-five years, has trampled on its mission to help resettle them, unlike the UNHCR, the UN agency that looks after all the other displaced people in the world, and which successfully resettles Syrian, Sudanese or Ukrainian refugees in Canada, France or elsewhere, where they become full-fledged citizens. UNWRA is, therefore, the enemy of the two-state solution, the enemy of peace. Its collusion with Hamas is obvious. For example, until recently, the leader of Hamas in Lebanon, Fathi al-Sharif, was none other than the president of the local UNRWA teachers’ union. When he died, killed by an Israeli air strike on September 29, Hamas recognized him. Similarly, UNRWA denies having been aware of the existence of a tunnel dug by Hamas under its own headquarters in Gaza while the parking lot was notoriously sinking into the ground…
Jeremy Stubbs, Causeur: How could UNRWA’s leaders ignore or hide these facts?
Hillel Neuer: By a form of complicity which they enjoy in high places. This year, UNRWA invited former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna to audit its neutrality. However, this supposedly independent assessment was carried out by members of three Scandinavian institutes (the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights), whose staff have in the past taken well-known anti-Israel and pro-UNRWA positions. For our part, we did try to enlighten Ms. Colonna by sending her a 25-page document, but it went unheeded. Her final report was submitted to the UN on April 22, and despite some criticism, its general tone is to declare UNRWA “irreplaceable and indispensable.” The aim of this audit is to change the minds of Western countries that have suspended their funding of UNWRA. We regularly alert the foreign ministries of countries like France and the UK to UNRWA’s true activities, but they ignore us, which, to me, is very significant.
Jeremy Stubbs, Causeur: The UN is present in Lebanon through the troops of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Is UNIFIL fulfilling its mission properly?
Hillel Neuer: Just as Hamas has corrupted UNRWA, so Hezbollah has at least partially corrupted UNIFIL. Under UN Resolution 1701 of 2006, UNIFIL was to ensure the disarmament of Hezbollah. However, not only has Hezbollah not been disarmed, but at the start of the current conflict, it had more weapons – including missiles – than ever before. We have heard testimony from a Danish soldier who claims that all UNIFIL movements are controlled and supervised by Hezbollah and that any complaints about Hezbollah’s weapons are ignored by UNIFIL.
Jeremy Stubbs, Causeur: What do you think are the solutions?
Hillel Neuer: Radical changes are needed. Firstly, Francesca Albanese should be removed from her position at the UN and prosecuted for anti-Semitism and incitement to racial hatred. Secondly, UNRWA, whose real aim is to dismantle the State of Israel, should be dissolved. Every euro donated to it is a euro against peace. Humanitarian activities on behalf of the Palestinians can be managed by other UN agencies. Gazans should no longer be treated as refugees but as citizens of the countries where they live. Thirdly and finally, it is difficult to see how the UNIFIL mission can be saved. The latter no longer inspires any confidence in the Hebrew state authorities, who cannot allow the 80,000 Israeli refugees in the north of the country to return home as long as they are threatened by Hezbollah.
