Hillel Neuer appeared on i24 News to discuss the UN’s knowing about UNRWA ties to Hamas for years, the inquiries organized by the UN, and UN Watch’s upcoming International Summit for a Future Beyond UNRWA.
i24 News: Now the pressure is mounting on UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinians in Gaza. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini says he and his staff had no idea that Hamas had a key operating center right under its headquarters in Gaza. Israel has already provided evidence to show at least 12 UNRWA staff members took part in the October 7th attacks, while at least 1,200 of them are affiliated with either Hamas or Palestinian jihad. Over a dozen countries have cut funding to the organization. With me in the studio, Hillel Neuer is the executive director at United Nations Watch. You’ve been key to this campaign Hillel, great to see you. And you have also provided overwhelming evidence of UNRWA’s activities and its links to terrorism in Gaza and in the territories. So this will come as no surprise to you.
Hillel Neuer: Now, look, we’ve been sending warnings to the United Nations Secretary-General, to UNRWA, since August 2015. And the first time we did this, we were attacked by the spokesman for many years, his name was Chris Gunness. He’s actually been pulled back out of retirement and is acting as a surrogate. And just the other day, he attacked me again. I had posted on Twitter, that I’m going to make an announcement about something to do with UNRWA and he kind of had an online meltdown. And he said “journalists, don’t listen to him, UN Watch as a terrible organization. They’re going to be saying things dictated to them by Israel and the IDF,” which is false, and defamatory. And this was our experience for 10 years. When we tried to warn the UN that in their UNRWA schools, they had thousands, we estimated thousands of supporters of terrorism, they attacked us. That was the UN response.
i24 News: Well, what do you make of the response from Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA pleading ignorance, saying “we had no idea.”
Hillel Neuer: He said they had no idea whatsoever. His tweet said, “UNRWA did not know what was beneath its headquarters in Gaza. So how are we supposed to know what’s right below our nose? You know, I mean, how are we supposed to know what’s right under our nose? We have no clue.” I mean, it’s absurd. We saw a very sophisticated tunnel that was built right under their headquarters with electrical cables, powering the Hamas Intelligence server center that was coming out of the UNRWA electricity grid. So certainly people checking the electrical bill would have known. Everybody knew. In fact, a number of years ago, it was reported in one of the major newspapers, that the UNRWA staff saw that the parking lot- it was this was in the Wall Street Journal last week- an entire parking lot had begun to sink in the UNRWA compound. And no one wanted to ask any questions,
i24 News: Which is quite unusual, when you drive to work and your car park starts to sink into the ground. You think that would ring some alarm bells.
Hillel Neuer: When everyone knows that Hamas was building tunnels everywhere? And so of course, they knew.
i24 News: Well, of course, they might not be taking it seriously. But major donors are taking it seriously. We’ve seen over a dozen countries cut funding to the group. Is that cut in funding hindering its operations?
Hillel Neuer: I don’t think it’s yet hindered the operations. We welcomed the fact that maybe half a billion dollars, in theory, was suspended. But the truth is that all of these donor countries are supporters of UNRWA and are still covering for them. It is said that the US rushed money out the door before they announced the suspension. So I don’t think it’s actually really affected them. But UNRWA loves to say, “We’re dying, we’re starving. We have no money.” I don’t think that’s the case. And sadly, I think that many of the donor countries are keen to restart funding right away. These two inquiries that have been set up are performative, they’re not serious. They’re not really independent. The head of one of the inquiries is the former French Foreign Minister, who on January 14, tweeted a message out to Mr. Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA saying “You’re doing great work, never been needed more than ever.” She’s going to give an independent analysis? Three Scandinavian groups, each of them has anti-Israel material on their website. One of them from Denmark, has said that any criticism of UNRWA is an attack on UNRWA. So this is fixed. It’s a kangaroo court, not real inquiries. And it’s just so that the donor states will say, “ah, the inquiry did their work.” They recommended some changes, instead of Bill being in charge of vetting, now they put in Frank, everything is fixed, we restart the money. That’s where this is going. And we’ve announced an international summit on the future beyond UNRWA.
i24 News: Right. This is on the sidelines of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, which covers all other refugees in the world, except the Palestinians.
Hillel Neuer: Well, it’s going to be near that and it’s also going to take place at the same time that the Human Rights Council opens its annual session, Guterres will be there, the Secretary-General, along with foreign ministers from around the world. And on the sidelines of that opening will be our international summit for a future beyond UNRWA. We’ll have Members of Parliament from around the world, humanitarian aid experts, political leaders, authors, and we’re going to start talking about how to help Palestinians and Israelis without having a terror-infested agency.
