Hillel Neuer appeared on Sky News Australia to discuss the recent disparaging remarks made against UN Watch by a senior Australian foreign ministry official, and the Australian government’s response to the serious accusations brought forth against UNRWA regarding their deep ties to Hamas terrorism and the October 7th massacre.
Sky News: Well now to more shocking developments in the UNRWA scandal that we’ve been talking about on the show. In Senate Estimates, a DFAT official has made a series of false assertions about the UN organization and its links to Hamas. Marc Innes-Brown, he is the first Assistant Secretary at DFAT, said that members of the Gaza telegram group were not UNRWA staff. Have a look.
Marc Innes-Brown (on video): Some of these reports, some at some of the people that are involved in some of the alleged acts are UNRWA employees, but often significant numbers of people are not. And so it sort of gets all a bit blurred.
Sky News: Not really that blurred at all. As we’ve reported before, the human rights group United Nations Watch has exposed a telegram group of 3,000 UNRWA teachers in Gaza, where there’s praise for the Hamas massacre of October 7th. Now Marc Innes-Brown, that foreign affairs official, also made a series of disparaging remarks about UN Watch itself.
Senator Nita Green (on video): How long have these types of allegations been raised by advocacy groups about UNRWA?
Marc Innes-Brown (on video): Off and on for years, Senator. I think it’s generally known that there are at least several organizations that their agenda is to focus on misconduct by UNRWA.
Sky News: He admits they’ve known about the allegations of misconduct for years, and yet Australia kept pouring millions and millions of dollars into the organization. He saw that as evidence that there was something wrong with UN Watch instead of something wrong with his own department. Yet here was Foreign Minister Penny Wong defending her decision to send Australian taxpayer funds to UNRWA, after numerous warnings of their links to Hamas over the years.
Penny Wong (on video): There is not another organization, which can provide humanitarian assistance on the ground in the way UNRWA does. So truth number one. We have spoken to the Israelis, and we have asked for further evidence, but I think it is clear from UNRWA’s own actions that they regard these allegations as serious.
Sky News: So she says the allegations are serious, but apparently not serious enough to actually ask the head of UNRWA about them when she spoke to him directly.
Penny Wong (on video): We have the Israelis for it.
Interviewer (on video): But you spoke to the head of UNRWA.
Penny Wong (on video): He may, I don’t know what he has, what he and I have discussed was the two processes that he’s undertaken. And we will stay in close contact with UNWRA about those processes.
Sky News: She admitted there that she hadn’t raised it with him. Let’s bring in now Hillel Neuer, the executive director of United Nations Watch. The organization is based in Geneva, but Hillel comes to us this evening from Tel Aviv. Well, it’s morning where you are Hillel, thank you so much for joining me once again. Look, I want to talk to you about what happened in our Australian Senate. Instead of wanting to deal with information of the terror links that UNRWA, that DFAT official that you would have just heard, chose to attack you and your organization. What’s your response to this?
Hillel Neuer: We’re a human rights organization that has worked closely with Australia’s representatives. I worked with Mike Smith 20 years ago when he was Australian Ambassador, chair of the Human Rights Commission, and since then, for many years at our human rights conferences that we hold with dissidents. So we’re known to the Australian Foreign Ministry for the work we do promoting human rights. One of the things we do is exposing genocidal antisemitism incited by UNRWA staff systematically. Not a few bad apples, hundreds that we saw on Facebook, we’ve reported it.
This gentleman, Marc Innes-Brown, by the way is the former Australian Ambassador in Tehran. He accused our organization of “having an agenda.” He said, “there are significant exaggerations, that’s the character of these reports.” He told lies about our report and holding it in my hand. It’s the report that I presented on January 30th, in a major joint hearing of the US Congress, where we exposed a telegram group of 3000 UNRWA teachers. He said they’re not teachers. If you look at the admins on page 20 of this report, you will see eight names of UNRWA teachers and other employees with their contract numbers. They are the admins of this group in this report that’s on our website, unwatch.org. It is replete with UNWRA internal staff memos, UNRWA names of teachers, their details, their salaries.
It’s absurd for him to contest the facts. He’s trying to disparage us. He told the Australian Senate that they’re taking the allegation seriously, it’s a total lie. All they’re seeking to do is to disparage us and avoid accountability for the fact that they gave tens of millions of dollars of Australian taxpayer money to fund a group that is complicit with Hamas.
Sky News: In fact, $200 million from the Australian government has gone to UNRWA since 2010, that report coming from the advertiser, but Hillel, you know, this seems to be a common theme. I’ve seen other UN officials attack you and your organization for tarnishing the reputation of UNRWA instead of actually examining the employees that took part on October 7, I mean, it’s absurd. And then you’ve got our foreign minister, Penny Wong, who spoke to the head of UNRWA, but didn’t ask questions about these allegations, or where Australian taxpayer dollars, hardworking taxpayer dollars are actually going. I mean, this is farcical.
Hillel Neuer: Look, Sharri, what we’re seeing with UNRWA. The revelations, just a week or two ago that a terror tunnel of Hamas with a key asset, computer servers, was located directly beneath UNRWA headquarters in Gaza. And their chief Philippe Lazzarini said, literally, on Twitter, “UNRWA has no way of knowing what’s beneath its headquarters.” Really, they don’t know what’s below their nose? They had no idea, even as the parking lot 10 years ago was sinking? They knew it. This ‘see no evil, hear no evil,’ that’s the approach of UNRWA with Hamas.
Sadly, Sharri, it seems like your foreign minister Penny Wong has the same approach with UNRWA. Her official, Marc Innes-Brown said, “well, we take these up with UNRWA.” Well UNRWA is riddled with Hamas members. So when they say, “this teacher doesn’t work for us anymore,” or “he didn’t work with us when he encouraged terrorism, when he praised Adolf Hitler.” That is not serious.
The Australian Foreign Ministry DFAT never contacted us once. For 10 years, we’ve been submitting warnings about thousands of UNRWA staff who encourage and promote terrorism. The Australian foreign ministry says they take it very seriously. They didn’t contact us once. They contact UNRWA, UNRWA gives them a bogus reply, and they say, you know, check, their investigation is done. It’s not serious. And in my opinion, Marc Innes-Brown is in contempt of the Australian Senate. And I’ll be submitting a letter to the Australian Senate today to commend the misrepresentations that he made to the Senate.
Sky News: Asking for a correction there, that’s big news Hillel Neuer. I mean, he says you have an agenda? Yeah, you’ve got an agenda, to stop taxpayer funds being used or being exploited for terrorism and what a shocking agenda that is. Now just before you go Hillel, I want to ask you about this UN Security Council resolution that the US eventually vetoed just today. That resolution was going to demand a ceasefire of Israel. Look, are you concerned, the US left it quite late before they actually decided to veto this. So are you concerned that under Joe Biden, there may not be a strong defense of Israel in the future? Are you concerned that under Biden, the US may be wavering in its commitment to Israel?
Hillel Neuer: There’s no question that right after the October 7th massacre, President Biden couldn’t have been more clear. He spoke about pure, unadulterated evil that Hamas perpetrated on innocent women children, babies, elderly. Abductions, massacre, mutilation, torture, and rape. But since then, Sharri, and in recent days, I’m sorry to see the United States appears to be wavering, and not letting Israel remove this threat. Hamas has said clearly, they want to repeat the massacres. Would America cease-fire out when they’re marching on Berlin and about to destroy Hitler, when they were about to destroy Japan after they attacked Pearl Harbor, or Al-Qaeda after they attack 9/11? The terrorist infrastructure is still in place. Israel should be allowed to defeat the terrorists and the western world, the free world, should not stand in the way and keep Hamas in power. That would be a grave mistake and damaging, not only for Israel, but for all of us worldwide who are threatened by radical Islamic terrorism.
