UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer appeared on public intellectual Gad Saad’s podcast, The Saad Truth, to discuss the rampant anti-Israel bias at the United Nations.
Full Transcript:
Gad Saad:
Hi everybody, this is Gad Saad. Unfortunately, I now have to wear glasses even when I look at my guests, because that’s what happens with the degradation of your visual system. Today I have Hillel Neuer with me. How are you doing, Hillel?
Hillel Neuer:
I’m well. How are you?
Gad Saad:
Very, very, very well. I’ve been a fan of your work since I first saw you in that unbelievable speech — about what, six, seven, eight years ago now? “Algeria, where are your Jews?” But before I cede the floor to you, let me mention to the folks who may not know who you are: you’re a civil rights lawyer, Executive Director of UN Watch — which is where I first became familiar with your work. You’re the founding chairman of the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. Now, this I may be misspeaking, but you may be the first alumnus of Concordia University, which is my home university (we can get into some of the dynamics there).
And this I just found out — I think I already knew about your Concordia affiliation — you’re a past employee of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, where I serve on the Academic Advisory Board, originally headed by Frederick Krantz. Am I missing anything, Hillel? Or do you want to add anything to your intro?
Hillel Neuer:
No, first, it’s great to be here, and we need you as a defender of Western civilization. And so, we live in different places now — although, indeed, I’m from Montreal and I graduated from the university where you’ve been teaching for many years. I think we missed each other. Did I see that you arrived in ‘94?
Gad Saad:
I arrived in ‘94 exactly. When did you finish?
Hillel Neuer:
I missed you by a year. Not that I knew much beyond my little world, which was the great Professor Krantz. He had the Liberal Arts College, which he created — which was a terrific Great Books program in university, which I’m sure we might get to it. But the University has a lot of problems. One of the pearls for humanities folks like me was the Liberal Arts College at Concordia University, a terrific Great Books program — a sort of boutique program that Professor Krantz created. Actually, I was just in Jerusalem recently, and I met a graduate from there also. So maybe this won’t sound nice, but there are a few good folks at Concordia — or from Concordia — and I’m glad that we meet. And I’m sure you’re also the first show that I’ve done from a faculty member at Concordia, so it works both ways. And I’m glad that we found each other.
Gad Saad:
That’s wonderful. So maybe we could start with UN Watch — and then, you know, there’s many places we can go. But just tell us: what is UN Watch? How did it start? How did you get involved? Give us the whole scoop.
Hillel Neuer:
Sure. UN Watch was founded by a great American. And you called me a civil rights lawyer, which is legitimate, but this person was a real civil rights lawyer — by which I mean he was there from the founding of the civil rights movement in the United States.
Morris Abram was a lawyer who grew up in a small town in Georgia — a place called Fitzgerald, Georgia — a real small, little place in the Deep South. He became a lawyer; he actually worked on the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal after the war. As a young lawyer, I think he worked with Justice Robert Jackson, if I’m not mistaken. And then came back, was a lawyer in Atlanta, and began in the 1950s to help a young, unknown preacher-activist named Martin Luther King.
And in the 1960s, it was “in” already to be with Martin Luther King. The 1950s, in Atlanta, if you were a lawyer, you were not getting any points. You were not winning any clients if you were helping that “troublemaker” who was getting thrown into prison. So Morris Abram helped him get out of prison. He connected him to the Kennedy family. And in the 1960s, Morris Abram was one of the leading civil rights figures — certainly who wasn’t Black.
There’s a photo of LBJ, called a Conference on Civil Rights at the White House, in 1965. And there’s a picture of about four or five African Americans, including Martin Luther King — the leaders of the civil rights movement. And then there’s a tall white guy, Jewish, named Morris Abram.
So he did many great things, served presidents in different ways, and eventually was made U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations headquarters in Europe, which is in Geneva. So he saw what the UN was about. He was someone actually who believed in the UN — in the 1960s, he had served on a UN committee and helped draft the Convention Against Racism in 1964.
So someone who was very much part of the idealistic phase of the UN — talking about Eleanor Roosevelt, founding Chair of the Human Rights Commission; René Cassin, Vice Chair of the Human Rights Commission; Morris Abram — there are these figures who were part of the founding idealism of the UN.
But then Morris Abram saw it in the late ’80s, when the Soviet Union had already corrupted it, turned the “Non-Aligned Movement” — the Third World — against the West, and especially against Israel.
And when he retired in 1993, he decided to stay in Geneva, and he had the idea — together with others, including one of my mentors, Professor Irwin Cotler — to create UN Watch.
So they created UN Watch in 1993. It always had a hybrid focus — a particular focus on fighting antisemitism and demonization of Israel, and a universal focus. Morris Abram was not only a civil rights lawyer — he also was a Jewish leader. He was head of the American Jewish Committee, the Soviet Jewry movement in the 1980s.
So UN Watch has always had a dual focus: fighting the obsession with demonizing Israel, which takes up a large part of the UN’s time, and speaking out for human rights — to see that the United Nations would work. So that’s UN Watch.
He died in 2000, and I joined four years later — I joined in 2004. So I never got to meet Morris Abram, but I’ve been there now 21 years. And that’s more or less what we do — trying to hold the UN to account, and bringing human rights victims to testify. It’s a big part of what we do.
Gad Saad:
So if you were to allocate 100 points to reflect how much of your time — you meaning you, Hillel, but also you meaning the 10 others at UN Watch — how much of your time are you spending specifically on the “Jew question” versus all other civil rights issues? How would you allocate those points?
Hillel Neuer:
You know, it depends on the time. If you say over the space of a year, it might be 50/50.
Gad Saad:
Okay.
Hillel Neuer:
Like, we just held — you mentioned the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy — we just held our 17th annual conference. It’s turned into a really high-class event. We had about 700 people this year; we had even more attending in Geneva. And we had the leading figures on human rights in the world’s worst dictatorships.
So we’re allocating our time… we are not focused on Canada or Switzerland — places that have issues; every country does. We’re focused on the worst dictatorships. And every year we bring folks who are in prison in China, Russia, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, and other dictatorships.
And we just hosted Edmundo González, who is the real president of Venezuela in the ballot that was held in July. Nicolás Maduro faked it. And the real president was Edmundo González. We brought him.
We brought Vladimir Kara-Murza — a hero in Russia who dared to speak out against Putin, was poisoned twice. Went back to Russia. They threw him into the Gulag. He was left to die. I’m talking about April 2022 — right after the invasion. He went back to Moscow, spoke out on CNN against Putin’s war crimes. They took him away hours later from his home in Moscow, threw him into a Siberian penal colony, isolation, solitary confinement. By a miracle, he got out in August in a prisoner swap. And we were able to bring him and reunite him with his wife on stage — which was really quite, quite a moment.
So that’s the kind of work. We just did that a month ago.
Gad Saad:
Wow, that’s amazing. So in The Parasitic Mind, I talk about, in chapter eight, “activate your inner honey badger,” which is a term that I use. I think most people would know what I’m referring to, but for those who may not: the honey badger is reputed to be the fiercest animal in the animal kingdom. It’s the size of a small or medium-sized dog, and yet it could withstand attacks or approaches by six adult lions. And I say six because there’s footage on YouTube where you see six lions saying, “Okay, I don’t want any part of that.”
And so when I say “activate your inner honey badger,” I’m not, of course, imploring people to get violent, physically violent, but I say: stand tall, defend your principles. Now, I suspect that all the people that you invite to this Geneva Summit would easily fit under the rubric of being honey badgers. So in your years of work, is there something that you see that is common to all of these extraordinary individuals that we can bottle and then use as a perfume on people to implore them to be a bit more courageous? Because these are guys who are being sent to the gulags in Siberia, who could be killed tomorrow by ISIS — real courageous people. And yet I receive every day, Hillel, emails from someone saying they’re too afraid to speak in the West. And not to minimize whatever their threats seem to be, they are astoundingly lesser than the people you typically invite and yet they stand up and stand tall. So what is common to these people that the rest of the folks may not have?
Hillel Neuer:
It’s a great question. Because when you’re with these people — someone who flies back into Moscow a month or two after the invasion because he believes it’s his destiny to speak out — and he’s not crazy. He’s one of the most brilliant intellectuals I know. There is something that you want to bottle. I don’t know what it is. Obviously, to say the obvious, maybe it’s almost tautology, but they’re extremely principled people. That goes without saying. But what makes them so principled? I don’t know.
Some of them are Christian, are people of faith. But I don’t know if it’s all of them. I’ve recently met a few people who I didn’t know if were religious or not, and then I found out, oh, this one is religious, and that one. Certainly, if you’re in prison, it helps if you have a powerful faith of some kind — no question about that.
I don’t know yet. I don’t know what it is but I do know that there are so many terrible things that I have to deal with at the UN. You walk into the room and you’re in an Orwellian universe. And we can talk about that. So a lot of the stuff that I’m dealing with is very nasty and if I’m the honey badger, it’s because I’m in the lion’s den and they’re very nasty.
I just walked out of the Human Rights Council last week. I was accused of being Mossad because I called out a supporter of terrorism. The Palestinian ambassador interrupted me. He didn’t have anything to say — he just said, “Mr. Chair, stop him. He’s Mossad.” Alright.
What I could’ve said, and didn’t, I could’ve raised up some kind of device and said, “Mr. Ambassador, I don’t think you want to use this today.” But I chose not to do that.
But one of the great things of my job is when I meet these people. You just sit with someone like that — and they’re extraordinary. Whether they’re from China — a young woman who stood up in Shanghai and lifted a white piece of paper — a blank piece of paper. Minutes later, they took her away. In China and Russia, if you just stand there and lift up a blank piece of paper, they’ll take you away. So those kinds of people — it’s something extraordinary.
Gad Saad:
I think I’m going to answer the question that I asked you. I think it’s probably the following that they all have in common — when you go to bed at night and you’re in the privacy of your thoughts — I think every single one of them would feel that had they not spoken out, they would feel fraudulent. In other words, they have a personal code of conduct that is so exacting that they would feel false if they did not speak up.
Now, again, in a sense, that is tautological — I’m saying the reason they are courageous is because they are courageous and principled. But I think that’s what it is. Now, I don’t mean to incorporate myself into this but people ask me, “How come you take all the risks that you do? And so on.” Well, frankly, that’s because that’s my answer to why I do it. I can’t do otherwise because if I modulate my speech, I feel that then I’m being fraudulent. Other people may not know it, but I would know that I could have spoken out and chose not to. And therefore that would be akin to being a charlatan. I can’t live with myself if I do that. I would have bouts of insomnia. Therefore I must speak out.
And again, I’m not facing the threats of being sent to the Gulag. But of course, I’m sure you do too — we receive tons of death threats and so on. So it’s certainly not minimal, the types of threats we take. You could be fired, or this or that. So I think that’s probably it: it’s a code of conduct that is so principled that they can’t do otherwise. What do you think of that?
Hillel Neuer:
Yeah, that makes sense. And these people are rare. I’ve met them in other contexts, just in life. Like a roommate, the light went out and he was sharing an apartment with me and said he wanted to give me the 50 cents for the light bulb. And it sort of seemed ridiculous, but you can see for him if he felt that he used something of yours that cost money, he really cared about it. Most people would say, not they’re not principled, but: “that doesn’t really matter.” But some people who are principled, these little things really matter. Like you said, they can’t live with themselves. They wouldn’t be able to go to sleep at night.
Gad Saad:
Now, do you think that prior to entering the proverbial lion’s den — if I would had asked you in 1990, “Are you a honey badger?” Because you certainly are a honey badger now — I grant you that official title — would you have said in 1990, “Oh yeah, I’m a honey badger”? Or is this something that you discovered that inner voice of courage as you tackled your new role?
Hillel Neuer:
To be frank, probably the first place that I encountered that challenge — to be confronted by a majority that’s maybe hostile — was actually at Concordia.
You know, I went to Hebrew school in Montreal — Hebrew Academy — a great school. I was like everyone else. I was Jewish, and so in most things there wasn’t a huge issue where I had to speak out on the kinds that we’re talking about. But when I went to Concordia, it actually prepared me for the UN. There was this alliance — I was there from ’88 to ’93 — of the radical left and those I guess they were maybe Islamists or from the Arab world, anti-Israel forces.
So you had radical left — from at the time, gay, lesbian radicals and various intersectional groups (though we didn’t use that term yet in the late 80s) But I remember, there was a student newspaper called The Link, and I would write an article, and I would go to their office and they would say, Oh yeah, okay, that’s the inbox. You put it there. And the radical left woke person at the time, I realized, after, you know, several times, they were throwing it in the garbage my submission, and actually Professor Krantz had launched a publication called Dateline Middle East, where people like me who cared about the Middle East could never get published in the student newspaper, and we created our own magazine. So my journalism began then.
But to answer your question, certainly there on campus where it was nothing like what’s happened in more recent years. And I know you’ve been through some horrible things in recent years, so it was nothing compared to them, but, but when we walked on campus and there was a huge sign saying the Star of David is the swastika, equals swastika, you know, the symbol of Judaism equals the Nazi swastika, that kind of thing was happening, and whether it was in class or just in the mezzanine of the hall building, to speak out, I would be at a table and speaking out against activists, radicals. I remember one time a young man from the Arab world came up to me. I was at a table putting out some materials, maybe from our publication, whatever it was. And this Arab young guy was talking to me, and he said, you know, Israel, the Zionists, they want to control everything from the Nile to the Euphrates and saying things that are ridiculous. I said, “where did you get that?” And he pulled out of his shirt pocket, I’ll never forget, a publication called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And I think it was published in Beirut, if I’m not mistaken. And I looked at it, and I was in shock. It’s something I heard about, you know, this is sort of the great antisemitic conspiracy theory tract of the last century, 1920s a bit before, and to see someone on campus with it, and it was, yeah, it was published, I think it was published in in Beirut, maybe the Palestine Information Office. Don’t remember exactly who, and I’m looking at someone. He was basically a young Hamas guy, and so that was the scene on campus. So then, whether it was in student politics, I remember in the Student Association, the radicals were there, and yeah, so that’s where it began. That’s where I was confronted with a kind of radicalism. There was a price. Wasn’t a huge price. I wasn’t being thrown in the gulag. And that’s where I honed my activism skills and maybe moral compass. I don’t know.
I’ll just finish with this. I give credit of course to my family and the values they taught me — but my first bit of activism, I was about nine or ten years old when Anatoly Sharansky — as he was then called, we’re talking 1978-79 — was being arrested and thrown into the gulag and there were huge demonstrations in Montreal. You came to Montreal in ‘75?
Gad Saad:
Exactly.
Hillel Neuer:
Were you aware of those marches that would happen downtown in Montreal?
Gad Saad:
Not then.
Hillel Neuer:
So there were these marches — it was in front of the Soviet consulate, right above Dr. Penfield, on Avenue du Musée. Very steep. It was a Soviet consulate, and we had hundreds — thousands — from the Jewish community there regularly. It was freezing cold, minus 30, and you’re standing there and we would say:
“1, 2, 3, 4, open up the iron door! 5, 6, 7, 8, let our people emigrate!”
And we would march on Sainte-Catherine Street. So that’s just a little bit of the activism.
Gad Saad:
Wow. You mentioned earlier in the answer to sort of your first honey badger mindset at Concordia, the union between the radical, sort of woke left (and yes you’re right they didn’t use the term woke back then) and the Islam-related anti-Jewish sentiments. Now there’s a third group. I always say there are three: the academic left, there is the Islam-related Jew-hatred, and of course there is the folks on the right — the “Jews will not replace us”. If you were to take those three separate sources — which of course often times they’ll get into bed together to orgiastically engage in Jew-hatred — which of these is the champion of Jew-hatred at the United Nations? Is it coming from Algeria, and Pakistan, and Yemen? Or is it coming from Francesca Albanese — who I’m assuming is coming at her Jew-hatred through sort of an academic left perspective. Give us the dynamics of those three sources of Jew-hatred, as manifested in the UN.
Hillel Neuer:
It’s the same alliance at Concordia, which was the radical left, who claim to believe in gay rights and claim to believe in women’s rights, and then make this completely irrational alliance, this “red-green” alliance with those whose very purposes are the complete opposite of that. Whether, you know, like Jeremy Corbyn saying “my friends are Hamas and Hezbollah.” For what his stated purposes are, they are promoting the exact opposite and the one thing that unites them is that they both hate the Jews and, more particularly, Israel as the embodiment of the Jews.
So, at the United Nations, that’s what we see. People don’t understand the extent of that alliance. The right-wing antisemitism which we’re seeing today — perhaps more than ever online that’s coming in America and white supremacist and other ways — doesn’t really manifest itself at the UN. There are very few countries I can think of— offhand I can’t think of one, maybe there’s some in Eastern Europe perhaps, I don’t know— that are even close to expressing that. I guess maybe now in Europe a little bit you have some right-wing circles that have some fascist history and some leanings.
But in terms of governments, most of the governments are center-left, some might be conservative, but the left ethos is very strong among the governments. Then, of course, 56 Islamic states. But the alliance that you see at the UN — especially at the Human Rights Council where I am — is completely bizarre.
You mentioned Francesca Albanese. She is the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, appointed by the Human Rights Council. In her case, and those of her peers among the rapporters, there’s about 55 mandates, meaning there’s a position called special rapporteur on Palestine, on North Korea. About 14 or 15 countries have a monitor, a special rapporteur, so that’s about 15 mandates, and there’s about 40 mandates that are thematic: the rapporteur on torture, on free speech, sort of classic civil rights but then also on social justice things, climate, and various anti-western mandates. One of them is called unilateral coercive measures, which means sanctions. Cuba and Iran created a mandate to condemn Western sanctions.
So there’s about 55 mandates. Some of them have 5 people, like a working group on arbitrary detention has five people. There’s about 80 people altogether who could have the title of independent expert or special rapporteur or something of that nature. What unites many of them, not all, they’re typically from the West. Francesca Albanese is a jurist who grew up in Italy, in the province of Arpino, Italy. She comes very much from the left, from the radical left. Many of the rapporteurs are like that; they’re academics on the far left. But to get appointed — you’re sitting in Italy, or in the US, or somewhere else in Europe; and to get appointed by the Human Rights Council, I’ll never get appointed. I’m there a lot, I know how it works, and many people in Geneva want to get appointed to those things. They get appointed, you mentioned Pakistan. Pakistan’s one of the leaders of the OIC, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, 56 Islamic states. You want to get appointed, you need them on your side. You need the African group, you need the Asian group. But the Islamic countries are very powerful, and so is China, and others. If you want to get appointed, they are the gatekeepers.
Why would they appoint radical-left professionals? Because they have something in common. Amnesty International, and that whole mindset, one of their main targets is the West: capitalism, Western society, America, Israel. And guess what? The 56 Islamic states, and the Chinas, and the Venezuelas, their main target at the UN is the West and Israel. So, if you’re a radical-left professor, it’s most oppressive regimes, the most islamist regimes, are gonna want you. You get there, and that’s the alliance: you’re both attacking the West.
Gad Saad:
Amazing. People may not understand the empirical reality. This is from UN Watch. Now I don’t have the updated data but I’ve got the expert that can update the data for us. From 2006-2015, Israel: 62 condemnations. The rest of the world (North Korea, Yemen, China and so on): The rest of the world 55. So based on that metric, Israel is more diabolical and it is justified to condemn them than all of the other nefarious actors in the world.
Hillel Neuer:
Syria, North Korea, China, Russia, Venezuela. That’s the Human Rights Council.
Gad Saad:
I’m presuming, Hillel, that the numbers of 2015-today, the dynamics have not changed. Correct?
Hillel Neuer:
Yes, mostly the same. The obsession with Israel remains. There continues to be at every meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, there’s one day on the world, Agenda Item 4, you can talk about human rights situations around the world. If our Canadian ambassador, or the American ambassador, or the French ambassador, wants to talk about Syria, Iran, North Korea, you can do so under Agenda Item 4. And a few days later, there’s Agenda Item 7, which is Israel. No other country in the world has its own day, its own agenda item. Not Iran, not Syria, not Russia bombing Ukraine — only Israel, Imperfect liberal democracy, a beacon of light in a benighted region that stretches from north Africa to the Gulf and to Iraq and Iran. That tiny country, barely 10 million people, gets its own day equivalent with the whole world to demonize the Jewish state.
Gad Saad:
How do you maintain? I mean, I’ve seen you interact. You’re very proper, you’re serious, you’re austere. Do you sometimes, sort of, in the recesses of your mind, want to pull out your hairs. I mean, because you’re incessantly dealing with this tsunami of hate. What is your secret?
Hillel Neuer:
Look, there are no doubt there are terrible moments and frustrating moments and so forth. As a whole, I wouldn’t say I’m immune, but I understand that when I walk in the room that I’m entering a dystopian universe, and it’s a very odd feeling. I live in Switzerland, it’s a beautiful country with a great democracy, and you walk into the United Nations, the Palais des Nations in Geneva — which is the old League of Nations — and you’re now in a different universe. You’re in a different universe where the Chinese ambassador is very important, and he represents the murderous regime in Beijing, and the Russian ambassador, who represents the KGB dictator, Putin, is very important.
And when I speak, all of these people are trying to censor me. I think it was maybe two years ago, I was at the UN Human Rights Council, and you walk out, and they sometimes have exhibits. These exhibits are propaganda displays. If Iran is being reviewed, which happens every four or five years, a country has to get reviewed for three hours, so when it’s Iran’s turn to be reviewed they will put up a huge exhibit for a week of contemporary women’s fashion in Iran, which will be magnificent Persian dresses, which are relatively modest. But, the Iranians tell me you couldn’t possibly wear them, it’s too colorful to wear in the Islamic regime.
Magnificent Persian dresses, but Iran is a country that beats, blinds, poisons, rapes, tortures women who dare to stand up and stand out for their rights to be free. So, that is typical.so I was there, and I had my I said, Okay, this is ridiculous. I took my phone and I started recording. I said, “Hey, I’m here at the Human Rights Council, and behind me is the Iranian women’s fashion exhibit for a week”, which has to be allowed. Someone at the UN has to give it permission. And I don’t know if it went viral, but it got a fair amount of likes.
A day or two later, I got a letter from the UN saying, “You are in violation. You are not allowed to record in that space. If you do it ever again, we’re gonna take away your badge and you’re out.” Keep in mind, when I’ve made complaints of bad things that have happened to me, intimidation and threats—A day or two later, I got this order without any due proces,; they said some kind of rule — you’re not allowed to use professional equipment. It was very harsh. It was clear that Iran had complained. When I complain about things happening to me— terrible things happening, China intimidating me or our Chinese human rights heroes, it will take them if we’re lucky half a year to respond that they’re “looking into it.” But when it comes to censorship, you realize I’m in this dystopian universe.
Generally, when I’m at the UN, I have 90 seconds, used to be three minutes, they keep cutting it down. I have 90 seconds when they let me speak. Everything is nonsense, they now have these computer programs where you record yourself and you push a button, you could remove out all the noise. So I now push a button, and I move out all the noise, and I have 90 seconds to speak the truth. I’m going to use every nanosecond. You’ll see sometimes at the end of my speech, I’ll say “Mr. President”, I see there’s three seconds left; I’m not giving the Chinese regime one second. I get my 90 seconds. Now I own the room. I’ll wait and say thank you. The way I compare it is for a surgeon. When someone God forbid has been shot, and there’s blood and guts everywhere, they call on the surgeon and he goes to the operating table. Me, I see blood and guts and I’d faint; I’d be out. But the surgeon, he goes in there and he can’t faint. He has to get out the bullet and save that person. So when he’s there he’s laser focused on one thing. So in my work at the UN that’s what I try to do. I can’t say it always works. But I try to just focus on giving my thing and not being horrified by the horrible things that are there.
Gad Saad:
So let me ask you this. I’ve been asked recently on a show, maybe about a year ago, a show hosted by a British psychiatrist, in all my career, which has now spanned over three decades as a professor,what was the single phenomenon that has most surprised me about the human condition. I had never been asked that before, so I paused for a moment. I said, “Well, I guess probably the fact that it is almost impossible to change a person’s opinions once they are solidly anchored.” Which is a very difficult thing to admit because I’m in the business of trying to persuade people. And yes, I often get someone who says, “You know what? I voted for Justin Trudeau. I should have listened to you. But now I’ve learned from my errors, and I’ve changed my behavior.”
In your case, you certainly are facing that difficulty which is, never mind Francesca Albanese, but can I get anyone in this dystopian ecosystem that you spoke of, can you ever hope to change any of their positions? Or, are you not even really speaking to them, or are you speaking to the outside audience, who hopefully watches your viral clip on Algeria: “Where are the Jews?” What’s the metric, other than that you have this internal purpose and meaning: “look I’m doing something that’s obviously important,” but in terms of concrete metrics, what do you use to say: “Here’s where I was, and here’s how we’ve improved?” Is there such a metric?
Hillel Neuer:
Yeah, so I mean, our metrics are, for example, working with diplomats to try to change votes. Whether it’s on the Israel things, trying not to pass resolutions that support Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists, and their Islamic regime paymasters in Tehran. Sadly, for the past two decades, there have been all these resolutions that could have been written by Hamas and Hezbollah.
And that’s why actually the founder of Human Rights Watch, a great man named Bob Bernstein, who passed away a few years ago. He was the head of Random House books, and then the leading publisher in New York, and he began to publish Soviet dissidents, and then created something called Human Rights Watch back in the ’70s which was founded to speak out for those who were voiceless behind the Iron Curtain or in dictatorships. And then he hired someone named Ken Roth, who was the director for decades of Human Rights Watch, but then Bob, was the chair; Ken Roth was the highest salaried staff member. Bob realized over the years that Human Rights Watch was putting out reports that were enabling and empowering Hamas and Hezbollah. Every time they attacked Israel, there’d be some 50-page report saying whatever Israel did to defend itself against rockets and other terrorism was a violation of international law, human rights, war crimes, and so forth. So, he wrote an article in 2009 saying “this was not the purpose of my organization.”
Coming back to your question about metrics, part of the work we do is diplomacy—trying to convince countries to do the right thing. And from time to time, you can say it’s not like you’re going to change their minds, but a few things can happen. Sometimes you can meet a country where diplomats and officials are actually on your side but they don’t have the information you do. They don’t know that there’s always an appointment coming up, an election of some kind, an appointment for a post. Those who want the post know about it. Sometimes, a small group, and the Canadian government or the Dutch government, could be the American government, might not have been focused on it. Sometimes their position is actually with you and you can alert their attention to something and mobilize them. And from time to time governments change their position. So that’s one metric: if you can help persuade governments to do the right thing.
A second part of what we do is educating public opinion. That’s a big part of our work. We know that, in a given year, UN Watch is quoted about 1,000 times in the media. So certainly, when we come out with a story, Iran being elected to the Women’s Rights Commission, things like that will go viral, which the UN buries. It’s a simple thing, you’d think everyone knows this, but they don’t. It’s buried in a report: “the economic and social council met and they elected the new members, and the Islamic Republic of Iran was elected” —no headlines. The journalists whose job it is to cover the UN will never write about it. he Reuters, AP, AFP, BBC, the leading media that are at the UN, primarily in New York but also in Geneva, typically do not put out stories that are critical of the UN or that expose the UN to shame because of either self-selection, they are working their because they have the UN as part of their ideology, or there’s and understanding that it’s bad for your career. If you write stories like that you will lose access to the UN spokesmen, you might lose the office they have given you. So journalists have told me: “That’s a great story, but I can’t cover that. I’ll give it to my colleague in Paris and maybe they can write it but I can’t.” But we’ll get out that story. It often won’t be through UN reporters, but regular reporters like Time magazine that might cover that.
So we’re in the news about 1,000 times a year. That’s something we certainly look at, and social media where if you get tens of millions of views hopefully that’s some kind of impact and you hope you’re changing opinions.
We brought the son of Hamas: Mosab Hassan Yousef. The same where I gave that speech, “Algeria, where are your Jews?” Mosab came. It’s another amazing speech. If people haven’t seen it you should check it out. Incredible, I think it was 90 seconds and silenced the room and it was just amazing. You need to see Mosab Hassan Yousef silencing the UN.
For the comic relief, because I like you Gaad, having a sense of humor is very important, and for me, always a good measure of someone’s character to be able to have a sense of humor. If they don’t, it’s a bad sign. I try to have a sense of humor, especially where I am because it’s the absurd place, it’s Orwellian, in Kafkaesque. So you gotta have the fun too. So one of the fun things when you give a speech is the reaction shots. When Mosab spoke, there were two individuals right in front of him, and you could see them freaking out. And it helps make the video. And Mosab’s speech was amazing, but it helps make the video.
And why am I mentioning him? I lost track. We were talking about, yeah, impact. So he spoke, and it got like 10 million views on various platforms in different languages. I remember being at an event, and a Green, socialist Green Party politician in Geneva came up to me and said, “I saw that speech.” I don’t know if it was Mosab’s speech or my speech, but you know, when it reaches 100,000 people, it might just be my friends from Hebrew school and their cousins. But when it reaches 1 million, when it reaches 10 million, it’s reaching a wider audience. So, is it changing opinions? I don’t know. Certainly, I would say, you asked about the UN. In the room, their hearts are made of stone. Many of them, okay? They’re sent by the capital. If you’re the French ambassador, you’re sent by the capital, and the instructions are coming from the capital. So, it’s not like you’ll hear a speech and change your mind. Of course, the ambassador, if he or she is a senior person, they’re involved in the discussion on how to vote. But it’s rare to change their minds. To be honest, often we’re looking at wider public opinion, and we’re looking at folks who are reasonable, assuming they’re reasonable, and they’re not hostile to our position, and have some openness and can see Mosab Hassan Youssef, the son of Hamas, talking about what’s really happening in Gaza and elsewhere, and say, “You know what? Maybe he has a point.”
Gad Saad:
Do you feel, it’s strange to ask someone’s whose business it is to monitor UN shenanigans, do you feel that it’s outlived its purpose? Or, notwithstanding the fact that it is a deeply flawed, deeply diseased institution, there’s no better model and we’ve gotta live with what we have? What’s your general view on that?
Hillel Neuer:
Yeah, it’s the latter. The UN does many different things. Some of them are technical, which no one would dispute its utility. In Geneva, in particular, we have specialized agencies. The Telecommunications Union, which regulates things like area codes and internet stuff—which is problematic of course with China trying to influence it. But we need some regulation of frequencies, whether it’s for cell phones or different things. And then you have World Health, problematic, but you do need some world health body, ideally. Intellectual property, world trade, meteorological organizations— all kinds of things, you need these things. The world is becoming a smaller place, and we need to cooperate in various ways. So, you certainly need the UN on the technical, administrative things.
The international community wants them also for things like refugees. When there’s a refugee situation in Sudan, or in Syria, or Ukraine, they want an agency that will go there and help millions of people, and the U.S. and other wealthy democracies are willing to pay for an international agency. So, you could eliminate the UN, it’ll be created in some other form. Of course, many of the pathologies that exist at the UN do manifest in other fora. We talk about hijacking these bodies to attack Israel. It could be a meeting of FIFA, the international football association, and they’ll be trying to expel Israel. So, you could get rid of FIFA.
I’m no defender of the UN, and I’m the last to be an apologist for the UN, but I recognize that not every body, meaning the Human Rights Council doesn’t have to be there, or certain things. It doesn’t mean you have to attend every conference. You can walk out of things like the Durban II Conference or the ICC. But the United Nations isn’t going anywhere. The question is: are our governments doing the right thing? And if they’re not, they need to be. Even if there’s some other international body, the fact that Canada didn’t say a thing as we’re speaking out—this Francesca Albanese, who is an open apologist for terrorists, tells them you have a right to resist, one of the most horrible officials to have the name United Nations and Human Rights—it’s really obscene. The Canadian government hasn’t said a thing to oppose her reappointment. The U.S. Congress spoke out, 42 French MPs spoke out, we have the former deputy foreign minister of Italy. Canada did criticize her, eventually this year, here and there. It was really the special envoy on antisemitism, Deborah Lions, and the government a teeny bit. But they have not registered their opposition. Australia hasn’t registered their opposition. So that is a problem because of our governments. And sadly the UN is the place where a lot of bad decisions get aggregated and Israel is typically the scapegoat, but others are as well.
Gad Saad:
How do you explain so we spoke about the three main sources of Jew hatred: Islamic stuff , academic left, and sort of the far right. And I’m going to add a fourth group, and I think you’ll appreciate it in a second. I call those wood cricket Jews. Have you heard of my term, wood cricket?
Hillel Neuer:
No, I knew honey badgers and luckily I had happened to see the video independent of your term. I had seen one a month ago so I know exactly what they are. And it fits of course.
Gad Saad:
The wood cricket explanation comes from The Parasitic Mind, where I’m talking about how a wide range of animals, including humans, can be parasitized. Their brains can be parasitized and then they engage in behaviors that are detrimental to them, but then are beneficial in the service of the parasite. The wood cricket is an insect that abhors water, but when it is infected by a hair worm that reaches its brain, the parasite needs the cricket to jump into water to complete its reproductive cycle. So, when the wood cricket is parasitized, it hopelessly jumps and commits suicide in service of the parasite.
Now, wood cricket Jews would be Jews for Hamas, queer Jews for Palestine. It’s Anna Epstein. Jewish Anna Eptsein at Boston University, ripping down the posters of infants, of babies that have been kidnapped. I am so empathetic, I’m so progressive, I am so committed to my activism. Look how noble and virtuous I am and hence suicidally empathetic.
Now this manifests itself across various groups, but there seems to be something unique perplexing about ultra-progressive, ultra-suicidal Jews who support causes that that seem to support exactly the people that would be decapitating them first. Have you experienced this in your career, and if so, what is your reaction to such wood cricket juice?
Hillel Neuer:
Yeah, actually, the first time I met someone like that was at Concordia. I remember she was sitting at a table handing out some PLO propaganda. Her name was something like Elana. I was in shock because I’d never met someone like that. She seemed like a very nice person, she was pretty, but I just couldn’t understand it. And then of course, in my work at the UN and various issues, I encounter them quite a bit.
Someone once asked me, and I get this question from time to time: “Okay there’s UN Watch that fights against bias and bigotry in Israel. Does the Arab world or the Islamic world have their own ‘UN Watch’?“ I told them, “No, they don’t. They have the UN.”
It sounds funny, but it’s not a joke. When I walk into the UN, I see 56 black Mercedes or BMWs show up, and each one, the ambassador of Pakistan gets out, the ambassador of Iran and the ambassador of Libya and Egypt, and one after the other. And they have this massive power to get any resolution they want, whether it’s targeting Israel, whether it’s attacking the West from time to time, whether it’s these various Islamophobia resolutions where you’re not allowed to criticize Islam legislated in a UN resolution. They have the UN, and any resolution they want, typically they can get.
Anyway, the point is the odd mix that the UN attracts: those from the Islamic countries pushing their own agenda—anti-Israel and Islamist views—and these wood cricket Jews from the radical left. Amnesty International, and that whole ideology. They are living in the UN, okay, the folks who live in the UN, who are built into the system, all the UN rapporteurs, are basically a part of Amnesty International and that movement. It’s basically a revolving door between the UN, the radical left, and these wood cricket Jews are part of that and I see them there all the time.
Gad Saad:
Are they typically Israeli?
Hillel Neuer:
Once in a while. To be fair, I don’t see so many of them. But groups like Human Rights Watch—the Jews with some sense of pride, moral compass, and common sense—left Human Rights Watch. The founder, Bob Bernstein, left because he was fighting against a wood cricket Jews. Ken Roth, who ran Human Rights Watch for decades, has a pathology that in words from Seinfeld, speaking about George Costanza, you would need to send you to Vienna and not not 24 hours having one psychiatrist. You need a whole team. You need a whole team. George walking around you, looking at you, and Vienna monitoring. Ken Roth would be in that category. This is a guy who controlled a budget. They had more than $200 million in the bank. In the bank more than $200 million Ken Roth had given them, sorry, George Soros had given them a $100 million gift over 10 years. So they’re swimming in money.
And every day, every single day, he asked himself, how can I turn the knife against Israel ans those who support it? And it’s pathological. In the old days, you know, Twitter now you can have, I think it’s maybe 260 characters. I don’t know what it is. You get about a paragraph. Now, originally, for the first 5-10, years, maybe more, you had a sentence. In one sentence, very hard, in one sentence. Ken Roth, if something happened, if an Israeli was attacked, if there was a Hamas terrorist attack killing a baby, he would say, if he would respond, he would say, “I condemn the attack, just like I condemn the war crime settlements that the Israelis are doing in the place where it happened.” So to you know, pretend to condemn the attacker at the end, he’s really sticking the knife at the Jews.
Gad Saad:
You see the exact same thing, which I have since satirized, where every single time there is some really bad action against Jews, I always then retweet and say: “This is why we must redouble our efforts to combat Islamophobia.” That’s exactly what you see by the Canadian government. They can never just say, we condemn this reality about Jew hatred without lumping it to appear as though they are even handed with Islamophobia. Those two have to always go together, even if you just killed 50 Jews, you have to combat Islamophobia. I want to ask you a few final things. Have you heard of my game, “Six Degrees of Jew”?
Hillel Neuer:
I do not.
Gad Saad:
“Six Degrees of Jew” works as follows: I give you any calamity around the world, and you have up to six illusory causal steps to blame the Jews. So for example, if I say an Amazonian frog just died in the Amazon: Go. Okay, six steps you could cover a lot. So now let me give you an example of this when it comes to immigration policy, which is certainly something that would be discussed in a place like the United Nations. So if I point to the names of the grooming raping gang that was just arrested in Huddersfield in England, and let me just summarize their names for you. Muhammad, Ahmed, Mohammed, Ahmed, Ahmed, Mohammed, Mohammed, Hussein, Mohammed and all, all 20 names have that commonality. Then I put out on social media, as I have: “I don’t have a big enough data analytic mind to identify what is the commonality across those 20 guys. Could somebody help me out?” I will receive, not facetiously, genuinely, the response: “Yeah, it’s your people who are responsible.” So then I know where they’re going with this, and then I say, “Well, how is that?” And then they answer, using “Six Degrees of Jews,” “it’s because it is the Jews that control the immigration policy of every possible country in the West, so even when three Muhammads rape your daughter, it’s really Mordecai who’s to blame now it.” Can we ever hope I understand you’re not a psychologist, but you truly are in the Orwellian Kafkaesque dystopian world, as you so beautifully explained. Can we ever hope to get people to be inoculated against “Six Degrees of Jews,” or is this an eternal reality that Jews will forever more have to face?
Hillel Neuer:
I don’t know enough about psychology to comment on this. Obviously, antisemitism has been around for thousands of years and seems to be one of the oldest forms of hatred. And why is it that when a mind needs to flee from rationality, when things are so difficult, it attracts itself to this age old conspiracy theory, why is it I don’t know. I mean, I can understand its potency. Meaning, if you say I’m going to blame everything on the Kurds, well, how do you even get there? But obviously the Jews are kind of an eternal people, the ancient peoples, the Greeks, the Babylonians, the ancient Persians. Many of them in theirancient empires, of what they were, the Romans. They don’t exist anymore. These empires, the Jews, were not an empire, but it’s an ancient people that’s still alive.
And when sometimes people meet a Jew for the first time, like I know you from the Bible, and you’re alive, so obviously there is, there is some kind of mystic. There’s some mystic power in an ancient people. That is, you know, one of the main characters in the Bible, which is sacred to billions of people. So certainly it has the potency. If you’re going to come up with a conspiracy theory and you’re going to make it about any number of peoples, it just doesn’t sound that interesting. But the Jews also being small people, so I don’t know how we inoculate, In the end, certainly it’s, it’s something that’s irrational. And so how do you fight something that’s so irrational? I don’t know.
Gad Saad:
I can offer one possibility. I don’t know if you can actually create a “mind vaccine.” I argue– there’s a term in psychology called the self-serving bias, which is a type of attributing successes and successes and failures in such a way that protects your ego. For example, if I do well on an exam, it’s because I’m smart and studied hard. Well, it’s because Professor Saad is an asshole Jew, right? He’s unfair, and so most people unfortunately have that ego, defensive, attributional style, which is attributing successes internally and attributing failures externally.
Now imagine if we can have an external culprit for all of our failures. Now, why is it the Jews? Well, because the Jews, to use the terms of a fellow lawyer, Amy Chua, she calls them market market dominant minorities, which is when you have a small group of people that are in much larger ecosystems, but they always seem to be punching above their weight, at least in terms of their numbers, right? Anywhere you go, Jews are somehow influential in nearly everything. Well, that sucks if I’m not part of that group, right?
And therefore it becomes incredibly easy, since already the architecture of my mind is structured to find external reasons for my failures. Well, now I’ve got a ready-made one. Why did my wife cheat on me? Well, who peddles porn? It’s the Jews. Why did I get diabetes? Who controls the pharmaceutical industry and is probably holding out giving us the cure for diabetes? It’s the Jews. So it becomes a quote, “beautiful way to organize all of my failures,” and that reality has existed since time immemorial, because the Jews have always been a market dominant minority in most places, and they’re always astoundingly successful. One can talk about why Jews are so successful.
So if I can get people to experience a greater sense of personal agency. You know, some of my failures might actually be due to my wrong doings. Maybe my entrepreneurial company failed not because the Jews did it, but maybe because I made wrong decisions. Is there? Well, first of all, what do you think of this explanation, and if so, can we inoculate people by giving them a greater sense of personal responsibility for their existential failures?
Hillel Neuer:
Well, those are some interesting ideas that I’ll have to give more thought. My first reaction is, I would think that there are a number of cases in history where the Jews were not allowed to participate in the market. I’m thinking of, I don’t know, 19th century Russian Empire, Poland, the Jews are basically in the shtetls. They were not allowed into larger society. And the hate from their neighbors, the Ukrainians, the Poles, the Russians, was severe in the pogroms and I don’t think you had that phenomenon at that time, at that place. So I don’t know if that fits. Certainly it may fit in other things, I have the sense that it might even be, yeah, there’s these things are very deep, you know, some of it, some of it may be that the Jews brought the Bible and the 10 Commandments to the world, and we resent a judge and something. Jordan Peterson talks about, sometimes, when you read the newspaper and it says a priest did something terrible, or a rabbi did something terrible, there’s some kind of a comfort, because the judge who, as they say in Israel, “noo noo noo”, the one who’s reprimanding you and admonishing you, they did something bad. So suddenly, somehow you feel the judge has fallen.
So the Jews, in some sense, brought morality to the world. And if the Jews did something, are doing something bad, that also has some psychological role. I think that’s one element to it. Obviously, we know that in many places, antisemitism happens in religions that came from Judaism, and so they have an antagonistic relationship to their parent religion. But of course, it’s in other places as well, but certainly in the Christian, the Islamic world, some somehow seems more stronger than, say, in India or in China, where they don’t have it as much usually.
Gad Saad:
Okay. Last question, what are some projects that you’re currently working on that you would like to use this forum to promote? Take it away, Mr. Hillel.
Hillel Neuer:
Okay, I’ll just share one report. You know, there’s a UN agency that most of our governments is funding called UNRWA. It’s the UN agency for Palestinians and Canada gives tens of millions of dollars a year. Every Western country is funding it, except now the US is out. The Netherlands is beginning to defund. Sweden announced that they’re out. Otherwise, every single Western country is giving tens of millions of dollars to UNRWA, supposedly to help the Palestinians, schools, medical facilities.
Who runs the schools? We have a report coming out. It’s 250 pages. Screenshots. I got asked in the Dutch Parliament, do you share your material with UNRWA beforehand, the radical left Member of Parliament was given a talking point. “How come you don’t share? If you were in good faith, you would share with UNRWA.” I said, “why do you publish that? I’m not publishing.” These are screenshots of UNRWA staff posting every day “I love Hitler,” “Allahu Akbar,” Hamas pictures of themselves with Hamas leaders. So we have a 250 page report.
The head of the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon, Fthii Sharif, outside of Tyre, Lebanon. He was a school teacher, head of a major school. Head of the teachers’ union was the head of Hamas in Lebanon. I’ll say that again. The head of the UN schools in Lebanon, UNRWA, the head of the teachers’ union, 2000 teachers, was the head of Hamas when Israel brought justice to him. And I think it was late September, the day that he was killed, Hamas announced, “you killed our leader.” And suddenly a video went out eulogizing him with Ismail Haniyeh and they hailed his jihadist education. The head of the UNRWA teachers union, you and I are paying for it.
If you’re a Canadian, Swiss, European Brit, you’re paying for it. If you’re American, you paid for it up until last year, you gave a lot of money. And Gaza, same thing. Copy Paste the head of the staff union, teacher, school principal, Suhail al-Hindi, elected member of the Hamas Politburo. Half of them have been eliminated. He’s one of the ones that are still standing, he escaped. He’s now in Turkey, coordinating things with Hezbollah in Turkey and the head of the entire staff union of UNRWA, one of the elected leaders of the Hamas Politburo. 250 pages of how UNRWA knew these people were hiding in plain sight, posting pictures every single day, hiding in plain sight, and we’re paying for it. So that’s our upcoming report.
Gad Saad:
You make Montreal proud. I’m proud to call you a fellow Montrealer. Keep up your good work. Continue being a honey badger. Stay safe. Real pleasure talking to you. You could come back anytime you want. Thank you so much.
Hillel Neuer:
Thank you, great to be here.
