Hillel Neuer’s September 11th keynote address at the conference, “Never again? Democracy cannot tolerate antisemitism,” at the Austrian parliament.
Read the full transcript of Hillel Neuer’s speech:
Mr. President, honorable speakers of parliament from Belgium, Canada, and Israel, members of parliament from many different countries, distinguished rabbis, delegates, today is the darkest hour for Jews since the Holocaust. In Europe, where I live, Jews are afraid to show their names. If they’re taking a taxi and they’re going to a synagogue or a Jewish center, they give a different address, so the driver won’t know that they’re going to a Jewish institution. They consider removing the mezuzah from their doorposts. Terrorist attacks have been attempted against synagogues and other institutions in France, Germany, and other countries in Europe, and in the country where I grew up in, Canada, considered by many to be perhaps the most peaceful country in the world, including for Jews. The synagogue where I grew up in Montreal, was shot at. The Jewish school where my brothers attended, a few blocks from my home was shot at in the middle of the night. I’m talking about just in the past several months. A week later, the shooters came back and shot again at the same Jewish school. Numerous, dozens of other attacks against synagogues and Jewish community centers across Canada. This is the reality that we’re facing.
The leading world institution that we should be looking to when it comes to confronting racism and violations of human rights is the United Nations, which was founded in the wake of the nazi atrocities. We just marked the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations as listed in the preamble, in response to barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind. On October 7, Hamas sent an army of thousands of terrorists to invade Israel to massacre Jews. They broke into more than a dozen residential communities, slaughtering entire families, committing horrific and sadistic acts. They slaughtered hundreds of young people at a music festival. In total, Hamas on that day murdered well over a thousand Jews.
As President Biden said immediately, there are moments in life when pure unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world. The people of Israel lived through one such moment this weekend, he said. This was an act of sheer evil.
Indeed, Mr. President, as in 1948, today, too, one would expect the United Nations to denounce barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind. Yet this is not what is happening. Instead, despite some occasional cursory condemnations of Hamas, the vast majority of statements issuing from United Nations bodies and officials have been pointing the finger instead at Israel. Often this is done by misrepresenting basic facts, such as by falsely accusing Israel of attacking a hospital, when in fact the culprit was the Islamic Jihad.
The UN Charter guarantees the equal right of all nations large and small. Yet nowhere is this principle more violated than when it comes to the UN’s treatment of Israel at the United Nations General Assembly, which is about to open days from now. Last year, there was one resolution on the Islamic regime in Iran, one resolution on Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, one resolution on North Korea, and 15 resolutions against Israel. No other country in the world comes even close to be condemned that many times. Meanwhile, there were zero resolutions adopted on China, which is oppressing one-fifth of the world’s population, 1.5 billion people. Zero resolutions on Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and 180 other countries, many of them gross violators. Zero.
At the United Nations General Assembly, Hamas has never been condemned once. They cannot even mention its name. And I’m sad to say that the high commissioner for human rights who comes from Austria, Mr. Volker Turk, as was mentioned yesterday evening here, someone who himself, a year ago in September 2023, spoke about having grown up in Austria, being aware of the anti-Jewish attacks and murder that occurred here during the Holocaust. He said fighting antisemitism is very personal to him, and yet, his office helps promote some of the most demonizing language against the Jewish State which is used as a pretext to target and attack Jews around the world.
A week ago, his office issued a statement calling Israel, not ‘Israel,’ but ‘apartheid Israel.’ His office issued a statement by another rapporteur, not put in quotes, apartheid Israel. No other country would ever be demonized like this at the United Nations, which is very careful to be diplomatic. And a few days ago, when six hostages were shot in cold blood by Hamas, Mr. Turk’s office did put out a statement condemning the actions, but couldn’t even mention the word Hamas, spoke about armed groups. They’re afraid to even mention the word Hamas.
Now in Geneva, where I’m based at the World Health Organization, since the Hamas massacre, the vast majority of statements issued by the WHO and its director, Dr. Tedros, have targeted Israel. Hamas is seldom, if ever, mentioned. Tedros has posted numerous statements falsely implying that Israel targets hospitals. He fails to say that, in truth, it is Hamas who has a strategy to embed itself inside hospitals, homes and schools. They’ve had terrorist headquarters in hospitals, including al-Shifa, in order to use Gaza civilians as human shields. When Israel enters the hospitals, it’s to remove the terrorists, or to search for hostages who were kept in those hospitals. None of this is ever mentioned.
At the UN’s highest human rights body, the Human Rights Council, where I’ll be speaking in two days, most of the world’s serial abusers get a free pass. Many sit on the council, including communist China, communist police state, Cuba, Eritrea, Algeria and Qatar, which is the sponsor of the Taliban and Hamas, and they’re running for reelection next month. None of these countries has ever been censured once.
In November, when the UN Human Rights Council opened its social forum, the chair was the Islamic regime in Iran, the same regime that beats, blinds, tortures and rapes women for the crime of demanding their basic freedoms. Now, while dictators are honored democracies, the one democracy in the Middle East, Israel, is scapegoated. The only country in the world with a standing agenda item is not China nor Iran, but actually Israel.
In this session, we’re going to have one agenda item, number four on the whole world and one agenda item on Israel alone. No other country in the world is targeted in that way. From the Council’s creation in 2006 until today, it has adopted more resolutions on Israel, 108, than on any other country in the world. In fact, it’s more than on Iran, Syria and North Korea put together.
One of the speakers here today, Assita Kanko, a great member of parliament from the European Parliament, mentioned UNRWA. This is the organization that educates Palestinians.
You know that a few months ago, in March, I was in a debate with the former legal advisor of UNRWA in Gaza, Mr. Johann Soufi, and he mentioned that 90% of the Gazans are educated in UNRWA schools — 90% of Gazans are educated in UNRWA schools. What do they learn in those schools?
Under the slogan “peace starts here” — that’s the slogan — UNRWA tells donor states, which is most of the countries represented here, that they educate Palestinians about human rights and peace and that they promote stability. On that basis, last year, they received $400 million in U.S. funding from the United States. From Germany $212 million, from the EU $120 million, France $62 million, Sweden $49 million, Norway $45 million, Japan $48 million, The Netherlands $40 million, Canada $36 million, the UK $37 million last year.
Yet our reports for the past nine years have documented in detail how UNRWA teachers, school principals and other staff regularly call to murder Jews. They create teaching materials that glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis, and incite antisemitism.
As soon as news of the slaughter broke after October 7th, UNRWA staff immediately celebrated on social media. We’ll give you just a few examples from a report we published in October. UNRWA Gaza teacher Osama Ahmed wrote, “Allah is great, reality is surpassing our wildest dreams,” in response to the massacre, as it’s taking place on October 7th. UNRWA school principal, Iman Hassan, said the massacre was “restoring rights and redressing grievances.”
Sadly, I need to mention the UN Secretary-General, who just yesterday attacked Israel in a very harsh way. When he condemned Hamas back in November he said, “I condemn Hamas”, but he said “these attacks did not happen in a vacuum,” and then he went on to list the grievances. The same grievances mentioned by this UNRWA school principal. He enumerated one after another, supposed grievances. In effect, The UN Secretary-General was justifying the massacre.
Rawya Halas, director of UNRWA’s Khan Younis training center, featured in an UNRWA video, glorified one of the terrorists as a “hero” and a “prince.” UNRWA English teacher, Asmaa Rafiq Kuheil, excitedly called to “sculpture the date of October 7,” adding a heart emoji.
So its teachers of UNRWA, which we’re paying for with our taxes, systematically glorified terrorism, and some even took part in the massacre. Now, when I bring this information to the donor states, as I did recently to the Director General of a Foreign Ministry in Europe, his response was, “yeah, but, you know, it’s a few bad apples. There are 30,000 employees. It’s just a few bad apples.”
Really? A few bad apples?
Let me give you three examples.
A year or two ago, we published a report mentioning UNRWA teacher Riyadh Nimr, who had celebrated a massacre of Jews in a synagogue. Last year, under pressure from the U.S., UNRWA suspended this UNRWA teacher. Thousands of UNRWA staff protested. In his defense, they shut down one of the refugee camps. Thousands of UNRWA people went to show solidarity with this supporter of massacring Jews.
A few bad apples?
The head of the Gaza UNRWA Teachers union for years was Suhail al-Hindi. He’s now retired, but collecting a pension that we’re paying for. Suhail al-Hindi is a member of the Hamas politburo, the head of the Gaza Teachers Union of UNRWA, and sitting on the Hamas politburo together with Yahya Sinwar. Go on the Internet, you’ll see pictures of him right next to Yahya Sinwar. When, under pressure, he was suspended, some ten years ago, all 8000 Gaza UNRWA teachers protested in his defense. They shut down all UNRWA schools for three months, putting 220,000 Gaza students out of commission.
A few bad apples?
The current head of the UNRWA Teachers Union, responsible for 39,000 UNRWA students is Fathi al-Sharif. Go on his Facebook page. It’s open to the public. He has for the past decade been celebrating Hamas attacks, celebrating Hamas leaders like Sheikh Hassan Youssef. When he has a family celebration the people sitting in the front row are the leaders of Hamas including Ali Baraka, who was just named one of the six criminals named in the U.S. indictment by the Department of Justice.
A report was issued by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, saying that “UNRWA is indispensable.” Supposedly it was an independent audit. The truth is that that report was orchestrated from the start.
UNRWA’s Commissioner, Philippe Lazzarini said himself that the whole point of it, and UNRWA surrogate Chris Gunness said the whole point of the report is to allow donor states to save face, those who had frozen funding to come back and fund it again. And so indeed, the report, as they planned, said that UNRWA is indispensable. “It has the best, the best systems of any NGO, of any organization in the world in terms of handling complaints about incitement.” And yet, all of which I told you.
And I’ll just mention one final thing: this is a report we published in January, ‘UNRWA’s Terrorgram.’ This is a chat group on Telegram of 3000 UNRWA teachers. The same kind of incitement was said on and after October 7. 3000 belonged to this group. One member wrote, “what were these heroes brought up on?”, talking about the criminals of October 7th, and the answer was, “they were brought up by mosques and on strong belief.” And the other one says they “imbibed jihad and resistance with their mother’s milk and we should do the same.”
So this is a group of 3000. A few bad apples? No, UNRWA is rotten to the core.
Now, regarding best practices, we have members of parliament around the world. I want to commend the Swiss parliament’s National Council, which just two days ago voted to immediately suspend all financing for UNRWA, to direct funding for aid to other mechanisms, and to begin to seek a replacement for UNRWA. I want to thank the Swiss parliament, including Maja Riniker, who is here with us today, for taking that bold step. I urge other parliaments to do the same.
Finally, before I conclude, I need to mention the person who is perhaps the most prominent figure on the world stage inciting antisemitism. Her name is Francesca Albanese.
It was mentioned by Professor Monika Schwarz-Friesel this morning how her language, just like people said, “the Jews brought upon the Holocaust” she told President Macron that “the Jews, the Israelis, brought on the massacre of October 7th.” She is someone who, before she was appointed two years ago, had written on Facebook that “America is subjugated by the Jewish lobby,” and “Europe is subjugated by Holocaust guilt.” She told a Hamas conference in November 2022, “You have the right to resist,” knowing full well that for Hamas, resistance means executing Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin and other hostages. That is what resistance means, and she knew it.
She uses her UN mandate to spread Hamas lies and misinformation. She wrote a few months ago that Israel killed 180,000 Palestinians in Gaza and every day is falsely accusing Israel of genocide. She mobilizes other UN experts to sign statements, then they get quoted by the ICJ. So she is laundering antisemitism, using her UN mandate.
To conclude, Mr. President, 75 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, key bodies and officials of the United nations, who we should be looking to uphold international law and human rights, are casting Israel as a racist and genocidal state, the manifestation of infinite evil, even as Israel is trying to defend itself from one of the most horrific terrorist attacks of our time.
At the moment — the very moment — when the world needs moral clarity and leadership, the United Nations has failed. Its actions only incentivize Hamas to continue its strategy of using Palestinians as human shields. The United Nations will never live up to its founding promise so long as this pathology endures.
Thank you very much.
