UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer appeared on Sky News Australia with Caroline Marcus to discuss Ben Saul and other anti-Western UN ‘experts’ funded by China, the sanctions against antisemitic UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese, and UNRWA’s recent firing of 70 employees with terror ties.
Caroline Marcus: Australian professor Ben Saul, who serves as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism, has been accused of ideological bias and conflicts of interest in a new report from the Geneva-based group UN Watch, which pointed out that the Chinese government is one of his biggest funders.
The report goes on to accuse Professor Saul of repeatedly demonstrating a deep-seated anti-Western and anti-Israel bias. Professor Saul has condemned the killing of the then most senior leader of the terror group Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists, calling his assassination in a U.S. drone strike unlawful. He has also called the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani illegal and criticized President Trump’s designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization, saying it could disrupt peace efforts.
Again, he’s meant to be the Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism. I spoke to UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer a little earlier, and I began by asking him why he thinks the funding from the Chinese government may compromise Professor Saul.
Hillel Neuer: Ben Saul claims to be an independent expert. This is a law professor at the University of Sydney who has a position on human rights and counter-terrorism, and he’s called an independent expert. I want to know: How can you be an independent expert while you’re receiving $150,000 from the Chinese Communist regime?
Now, let me be clear. No one’s claiming that it’s going into his own pocket to buy a Ferrari or what have you, but it’s going to his office. This is the same office that has never condemned China for putting a million Uyghurs into camps under the pretext of counter-terrorism, which is the very issue he’s supposed to be addressing.
When countries abuse human rights in the name of counter-terrorism, Professor Ben Saul is supposed to speak out. Yet when it comes to China—the one giving him $150,000 a year—he is silent.
Caroline Marcus: What about his past statements about the U.S. and Israel in particular? What does this show about his fitness to hold this role as Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism?
Hillel Neuer: Well, Professor Ben Saul has made extremist statements that manifest a distinct anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Israel ideology. Those views often go together among many radical left activists. He’s not supposed to be an activist. He’s supposed to be an academic. We’re supposed to see scholarship from a UN rapporteur. He’s supposed to engage in rigorous corroboration of facts.
Instead, you get these adolescent-style tweets: “We’re going to arrest the U.S. president for murder. We’re going to arrest the U.S. secretary of defense for murder.” He echoes the pro-Hamas narrative when it comes to Israel. That is not what the United Nations Charter was about. The UN Charter was about defeating Hitler. It’s the anti-Hitler alliance. It’s about international peace and security.
UN experts should be the first to oppose Hamas terrorists, the first to oppose the Islamic regime in Iran. Yet Ben Saul seems to echo the narrative of the Islamic regime in Iran and its terrorist proxies.
Caroline Marcus: And those comments about the president and secretary of defense were about the U.S. war on drug trafficking in Venezuela. But you’re right, Hillel. It seems totally in line with what we hear from a lot of academics—which he is as well—at the University of Sydney. What can be done about this?
The UN seems to have stuck by its rapporteurs. The UN human rights chief said—and I presume this was about the UN Watch report—that “efforts to intimidate, discredit, or even sanction UN human rights experts are unacceptable.” How do you respond to that? Do you accept that your report is an effort to intimidate these rapporteurs?
Hillel Neuer: No—unless people believe that scrutiny and issuing a 100-page report with hundreds of footnotes constitutes intimidation, which is absurd. It’s not appropriate language for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. I’m disappointed in Mr. Volker Türk, who gave a speech last week where he called our report disinformation.
What’s notable is that he did not make a single response or rebuttal to any of the points. Those points include Ben Saul receiving $150,000 from China. Alena Douhan, the UN expert on coercive measures—which means sanctions—received $1.3 million for her office from China, Russia, and Qatar. Another gentleman, George Katrougalos, who chairs the Human Rights Council’s expert mechanism and serves as the Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order—which essentially means that the West is unfair to the rest of the world, a mandate created by Cuba and other countries—received $100,000 for his office from China in the same year that he appeared at an event in Athens promoting a book by Xi Jinping.
You couldn’t make this up if you wanted to. There’s not a single word of rebuttal from the UN other than to say—when they have no answer, which is their modus operandi—that it’s disinformation.
Caroline Marcus: But what can people do to voice their concerns about how the rapporteurs are conducting themselves?
Hillel Neuer: Sadly, we have been calling for the UN to hold these rogue rapporteurs accountable, and they have failed to do so. There’s the famous case, of course, of Francesca Albanese, who routinely spouts the latest Hamas lies, saying that hundreds of thousands of children have been killed. The numbers she cites are larger than the total number of children in Gaza.
She makes many wild accusations. She has been condemned for antisemitism by France, Germany, Canada, the United States, and many other countries. She is the first UN rapporteur ever to receive such condemnations, and yet the UN wouldn’t do a thing. Secretary-General Guterres refused to act. The United States sent letters, and they didn’t do anything.
So it is incumbent upon our democracies to act. And if our governments fail to act, then we as citizens need to speak out. We need to demand that our universities stop legitimizing these people. Albanese, for example, has received honorary doctorates from three different universities from Belgium. That’s shameful. I think civil society should speak out and hold them to account.
Caroline Marcus: Speaking of Francesca Albanese, the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals has temporarily reinstated sanctions against her following allegations that she was running an illegitimate campaign of economic and political warfare against the U.S. and Israel. Tell us more about this case and why you think the sanctions should remain in place.
Hillel Neuer: Well, look, she is the first UN rapporteur in history—we’re talking about more than 80 years of UN history—to have been condemned by countries such as France, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands for violating the UN Code of Conduct, spreading antisemitism, and engaging in Holocaust inversion.
She says America is controlled by the Jewish lobby. She compares Israeli leaders to Nazi Germany. This is routine behavior, and it brings the United Nations into disrepute. She must be held accountable. The UN has failed to do so.
The only government that has taken concrete action is the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions against Albanese on July 9, 2025. She herself describes them as devastating. She says she can no longer use a bank card, make payments, receive payments, or enter the United States.
The sanctions are very significant, and they send a message to the UN that if you support terrorists, spread racism, hate, and antisemitism, you will pay a price. She tried to fight the sanctions. She had her husband and minor daughter file a lawsuit in the United States. As you indicated, the U.S. Court of Appeals has, for now, left the sanctions in place.
Caroline Marcus: And finally, staying on the topic of Palestinians, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, has fired 70 Gaza staff members following long-standing claims from Israel that they had ties to Hamas. UNRWA insists the decision is not an admission of guilt, but rather one taken, quote, “to mitigate safety and security risks for the refugees the agency serves.”
Hillel, UNRWA has had to let staff go before after evidence emerged that some had actually participated in the October 7 attacks. What do you make of how the agency has framed this latest round of dismissals?
Hillel Neuer: Well, look, we welcome the firing of 70 UNRWA staff members over terror ties, although the agency won’t exactly acknowledge that, as you indicated. Obviously, that’s what’s going on here. But it’s a drop in the bucket. It’s too little and too late.
This is an agency that began with altruistic motives to help Arabs who were displaced in the conflict of 1948 and 1949. Yet very quickly it became a pathological agency. It hasn’t resettled a single Palestinian in more than 75 years. It has received billions of dollars from taxpayers in Australia, Canada, the United States, and Europe—billions of dollars—and has not resettled a single refugee.
That is absurd. Instead, the agency perpetuates dependency. It continues to classify Palestinians as refugees even when they have lived for decades in Arab countries and, in many cases, have citizenship. In Jordan, many Palestinians have citizenship and are still considered refugees. The notion of a “citizen refugee” is absurd.
.@SkyNewsAust: “Ben Saul has been singled out by Geneva-based UN Watch in a damning new report, accusing him of demonstrating a deep-seated anti-Western and anti-Israel bias. The report alleges that Saul's one-sided pattern is underscored by the $150,000 he received from China.” pic.twitter.com/HKdbtwOrlp
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) June 23, 2026
