Hillel Neuer on Fox News: Hamas-infested UNRWA is ‘tainted with terrorism’

 

Hillel Neuer appeared on Fox News with John Roberts to discuss the growing case against UNRWA and its ties to terrorism.

 

Fox News: Let’s bring in Hillel Neuer, he is the Executive Director of UN Watch, and he testified at yesterday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on UNRWA. So we’ve got at least 12 members of UNRWA, employees in Gaza, who took part in the October 7th massacre, and 1,200 employees who have some ties to either Hamas or Islamic Jihad. It’s shocking, but should we be surprised?

Hillel Neuer: Well, look, I’m not surprised because my organization, UN Watch, for the past nine years has been documenting widespread and systematic incitement to jihadi terrorism, calls to murder Jews, and glorification of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis by UNRWA teachers, school principals, and other employees in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan. We submitted all of this to the United Nations, to UNRWA, they didn’t want to hear about it, they attacked us. So we know very well that they are aware of this and they couldn’t care less. That’s the truth. 

Fox News: The Biden administration didn’t seem to be very aware of this, but the previous administration was. Listen to what Nikki Haley said the other day on Fox and Friends.

Nikki Haley {on video}: I knew all the officials at UNRWA, I saw the schools where they were preaching all this terrorist hate against Israelis, I saw the graffiti on the walls. I was there on the ground and I told President Trump: We had to stop the funding. The State Department fought me on it. At the end of the day, we cut the funding, and Biden went and put that funding back. 

Fox News: You know, that was one of the many things that Biden reversed from the Trump administration and it’s one of the many reversals that has come back to bite him and bite him hard. The last administration seemed to know what UNRWA was all about. Why doesn’t this administration?

Hillel Neuer: I think it’s a good question. You know, we had meetings with senior officials in the administration, the State Department, when they reinstated funding. When we told them about the entanglement of UNRWA employees with terrorism, the encouragement and promotion of terrorism, the senior official of the State Department said he didn’t know what we were talking about. He thought everything was great at UNRWA. So you know, they never contacted us. The State Department, giving hundreds of millions of dollars, never asked us for more information about how to ensure that American taxpayers are not funding terrorism.

Fox News: And to this day, the White House still believes in the broader mission of UNRWA. Listen to what John Kirby said.

John Kirby {on video}: But you got 13,000 UNRWA employees, the UN Relief and Works Agency, and 13,000 of them in Gaza alone. And as they said last week, let’s not impugn the good work of a whole agency, because of the potential bad actions here by a small number.

Fox News: “Bad actions by a small number.” I mean, that would seem to be minimizing, at the very least, the situation there. You said in your testimony, it’s rotten to the core. It would seem as though 10% of the employees at UNRWA had at least some ties to terrorism. Does it go beyond that?

Hillel Neuer: It may well go beyond that. We’re looking at, you know, not just 12 involved in the actual massacre, murder, mutilation, rape, and torture. 1,200 are operatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the political or military organization. As many as 6,000 have a close family member in Hamas or Islamic Jihad. This agency is tainted with terrorism. Hamas controls it. When the UNRWA Gaza director, three years ago, said something on TV that was off script of Hamas, he said “the IDF strikes on Hamas were precise,” they ousted him from Gaza and got a new guy who would stick to the script. So Hamas is controlling UNRWA. We know it. There are alternatives. The State Department needs to recognize the UN refugee agency and other relief organizations around the world can handle the distribution of aid. It doesn’t need to be a Hamas-infested agency. There are many alternatives.

Fox News: Although Biden seems to be wedded to this because, reading the tea leaves, it looks like after this investigation is complete, they’ll restore the funding again.

Hillel Neuer: It looks like it’s going that way, and we’re doing everything on our part to make sure that this terrorist-infested agency does not doom Palestinians and Israelis to continue to war.

Fox News: Hillel, great to see you. Thanks for dropping by, appreciate it. 

UN Watch