UN Watch was quoted in multiple media outlets during December 2021 and January 2022 on topics including: UN General Assembly targets Israel with 14 resolutions; UN manipulates unverifiable data; rights abusers join Human Rights Council; General Assembly approves funding for anti-Israel inquiry.
UN Watch’s Hong Kong Campaign Reported by Christiane Amanpour on CNN International
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour reported on the campaign to free jailed Hong Kong newspaper owner Jimmy Lai that was organized by UN Watch’s Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, with the participation of lawmakers and human rights activists worldwide.
More here.
Great: CNN's Christiane Amanpour reports on our Geneva Summit campaign for jailed Hong Kong newspaper owner Jimmy Lai—who was just convicted for backing a vigil last year for victims of China's Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Lawmakers & human rights activists worldwide joined us:⬇️ https://t.co/KqL5mt8Y8b pic.twitter.com/EDL53Jjj4q
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 11, 2021
UN General Assembly Targets Israel With 14 Resolutions
Cited in the New York Daily News, “UNsurprising: The world body keeps up its assault on Israel,” Dec. 3, 2021:
Credit UN Watch in Geneva for keeping a careful eye on the goings-on here on the East River, as the United Nations continues its incessant campaign to isolate, condemn, vilify, ostracize and denounce the most democratic nation in the Middle East. That’s Israel, the only Jewish country in the roster of 193, which is probably just a coincidence, as no one would ever think of singling out and targeting Jews. What a crazy idea.
UN Watch has a new database to track the world body’s disproportionate focus on Israel. Over the last six years, the General Assembly has approved 115 resolutions against Israel and only 45 against the other 192 member countries combined.
That’s 72% of the resolutions for 0.5% of the countries. It’s even more warped considering that there are 9 million people in Israel out of 7.9 billion on Earth. So Israelis are 0.1% of the world, but they still get almost three-fourth of the UN’s brickbats.
Quoted in Israel Hayom, “UN passes 14 anti-Israel resolutions in 2021, only 4 against all other countries,” Dec. 20, 2021:
The General Assembly passed 14 anti-Israel resolutions in 2021, while the other 194 countries in the world were hit with a grand total of four resolutions of condemnation.
UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental watchdog organization, harshly criticized the United Nations.
“The UN’s assault on Israel with a torrent of one-sided resolutions is surreal,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.
“It’s absurd that in the year 2021, out of some 20 UN General Assembly resolutions that criticize countries, 14 of them – 70% – were focused on one single country: Israel. Make no mistake: the purpose of the lopsided condemnations is to demonize the Jewish state,” said Neuer.
“The UN’s disproportionate assault against the Jewish state undermines the credibility of what is supposed to be an impartial international body. When the General Assembly gives in to politicization and selectivity by discriminating against Israel, it violates the UN Charter’s guarantee of equal treatment to all nations, large and small,” Neuer added.
“Today’s farce at the General Assembly underscores a simple fact: the UN’s automatic majority has no interest in truly helping Palestinians, nor in protecting anyone’s human rights; the goal of these ritual, one-sided condemnations is to scapegoat Israel,” said Neuer.
Quoted in The Algemeiner, “Watchdog Condemns United Nations After Raft of ‘One-Sided’ Resolutions Adopted Against Israel,” Dec. 2, 2021:
A leading United Nations watchdog group on Thursday condemned the passage of three General Assembly resolutions attacking Israel, describing the “assault” on the Jewish state as “surreal.”
The first measure, focused on Jerusalem, criticized Israel’s governance of its capital and expressed “concern about the Israeli excavations undertaken” in the Old City.
Brought forward by the Palestinian delegation to the UN and other Arab countries, as well as Venezuela, the resolution called for “refraining from provocative actions and rhetoric and upholding unchanged the historic status quo at the Haram al-Sharif,” the Arabic term for the Temple Mount.
Yet the text pointedly did not refer to the Temple Mount — which is the holiest site in Judaism, and has long been a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — by its Jewish name.
“The UN shows contempt for both Judaism and Christianity by adopting a resolution that makes no mention of the name Temple Mount,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch.
The site, where the first and second Jewish temples once stood, “is sacred to all who venerate the Bible,” he added.
Quoted on JNS, “UN adopts three resolutions condemning Israel, ignores Jewish ties to Temple Mount,” Dec. 3, 2021:
UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer said France, Germany, Sweden and other European Union states are expected to support almost all of the 14 resolutions against Israel.
He added that “the same European nations have failed to introduce a single UNGA resolution on the human-rights situation in China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Turkey, Pakistan, Vietnam, Algeria or on 170 other countries. Where’s the supposed E.U. concern for international law and human rights?”
UN Watch recently launched a detailed database that documents the U.N.’s bias against Israel. It revealed that since 2015, the General Assembly has passed 115 resolutions condemning Israel and only 45 against other countries.
Interviewed on ILTV Israel News, “UNGA strips Jews & Christians of ties to Temple Mount,” Dec. 2, 2020:
Cited on J-Wire, “Why does New Zealand continue to support the bullies?” Dec. 23, 2021:
When Hillel Neuer, CEO of UN Watch, was asked why there is such extreme anti-Israel bias at the United Nations, he responded with five different factors:
1. Oil. Historically, the Arab countries had oil and they told countries that if the anti-Israel resolutions were not endorsed, the oil would be cut off. Notably, there are 120 member nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, including the 57 member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (out of 193 total UN member countries).
2. Sovereign wealth funds. States like Qatar tell other nations that they will not invest money unless the resolutions are supported.
3. Vote trading. Within the cynical politics of the United Nations, there is vote-trading where countries will agree to support others for a quid pro quo. When countries like Italy are happy to sacrifice Jewish citizens to terror attacks on Italian soil, it’s easy to see that votes might be traded at the expense of the Jewish nation.
This vote trading might also explain why there has been support for China’s genocide of Uyghur muslims and not one condemnatory resolution against it.4. Terrorism. Countries are afraid of terror and willing to make deals to prevent attacks – like Italy has been shown to.
5. Antisemitism. Underlying the threats and deals above is a certain amount of pure antisemitism. There is little else to truly explain the massively disproportionate number and tone of the resolutions against Israel.
It is not clear exactly which of the above apply most to New Zealand. However, it is clear that officials and ministers have long voted with the bullies and out of step with traditional, democratic allies.
Even in the UN General Assembly (UNGA), there is hope for improvement, despite the fact that this season saw the passage of the usual annual cavalcade of anti-Israel resolutions. According to UN Watch, between 2015 and 2020, the UNGA passed 115 condemnatory resolutions against Israel compared with 45 against all other countries.
UN Manipulates Unverifiable Data
Cited on JNS, “Fake news and the UN’s secret data on ‘settler-related incidents’,” Dec. 21, 2021:
A lot can be concealed—or revealed—by a footnote. It all depends on whether the reader bothers to check it.
For example, a Nov. 10 press release posted by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (“UN experts alarmed by rise in settler violence in occupied Palestinian territory“) begins:
“UN human rights experts* have expressed alarm at the rising rate of violence directed by Israeli settlers towards Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
…
However, though the footnote maintains that special rapporteurs are independent, [Michael] Lynk [Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967] has a long history of anti-Israel activity. In 2016, U.N. Watch revealed that Lynk “plays a leadership role in numerous Arab lobby groups, including CEPAL, which promotes ‘Annual Israeli Apartheid Week’ events; signs anti-Israel petitions; calls to prosecute Israel for alleged war crimes; addresses ‘One State’ conferences that seek to eliminate Israel; and argues that ‘the solution’ to ‘the problem’ must go back to Israel’s very creation in 1948, which he calls ‘the start of ethnic cleansing.’”
So much for the “U.N. experts.”
Rights Abusers Join Human Rights Council
The United Nations Human Rights Council is set to usher in new members at the start of the calendar year, with many facing allegations of abuses.…
Other countries to be added to the committee include a handful of African nations, many of which with their own questionable record.
The governments of Eritrea and Libya have been accused of conducting arbitrary executions, enforced disappearances, and torture, according to U.N. Watch, a nonprofit organization “dedicated to holding the United Nations accountable to its founding principles.”
General Assembly Approves Funding for Anti-Israel Inquiry
Israel faces an unprecedented, open-ended U.N. Commission of Inquiry created by the UNHRC, which includes notorious human rights violators such as Cuba, China, Russia, Mauritania and Eritrea.…
“The mandate essentially is to produce evidence admissible in court, and they’re hiring a team of lawyers to produce legally admissible findings. The Hague could copy and paste the findings and other courts can do the same,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the UN Watch NGO and an expert on the world body’s anti-Israel bias, who anticipates that the commission’s biannual reports will assail Israel.
“What makes this different from all of the regular U.N. reports produced from the UN’s offices in Jerusalem, by the secretary-general and other U.N. organs, is that this inquiry comes with the appearance of an independent commission, as opposed to bureaucrats. It has the appearance of being run by judges, like a court case. That’s the effect, and that’s why it can be so troubling for Israel in the eyes of the global public,” Neuer told JNS.
…
As to those judges, the UNHRC’s president appoints three members to lead the commission. The commission is currently led by South Africa’s Navi Pillay, who served as the U.N. high commissioner for human rights and has displayed a consistent, well-documented animus toward Israel. Her accusations of illegal Israeli conduct during the Gaza flotilla raid of 2010 were later refuted by a U.N. commission headed by Sir Geoffrey Palmer.
“Pillay’s appointment to lead the commission—someone who displays perpetual disdain and comprehensive condemnation of Israel—shows that this whole thing is a done deal. She has an appalling record on Israel,” said Neuer, adding that the commission’s mandate doesn’t just address alleged war crimes, but could include accusations of apartheid and of racism by Israel in the disputed territories in Judea and Samaria.
The Geneva-based UN Watch NGO has created a database that keeps track of the UN’s disproportionate focus on Israel and how different countries voted. In the UNGA’s 76th Session (2021-2022) there were 14 resolutions against Israel and five against the rest of the world combined. The resolutions call into question Israel’s rights in its capital, Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and Western Wall, and condemn Israel’s presence on the Golan Heights. The Golan, presumably, should be handed over to that luminary of human rights Syrian President Bashar Assad, who thinks nothing of gassing his own people.
I no longer do a double-take at the UN’s two-faced hypocrisy.
According to the database, since 2015, the General Assembly has issued 112 condemnatory resolutions against Israel compared to 45 against the other 192 member states combined. These include six against North Korea and five against Iran – but China not even once.
…
The UN has also been hijacked.
According to UN Watch, starting on January 1, 2022, “a staggering 68.1% of the UN Human Rights Council will be dictators and other serial human rights abusers… Qatar, Cameroon, Eritrea, Kazakhstan and Somalia were all elected in October to the UN’s top human rights body, joining China, Cuba, Russia, Libya, Pakistan and Venezuela.”
U.S. Contemplates Return to UNESCO
Cited on JNS, “A possible US return to UNESCO is a very bad idea,” Dec. 19, 2021:
Rejoining UNESCO would imply acceptance by the United States and Israel of the plethora of politically generated anti-Israel resolutions that have been adopted by various constituent bodies of UNESCO.
Indeed, as stressed by the NGO UN Watch, UNESCO passed a total of 47 resolutions between 2009-2014, 46 of which were directed against Israel and only one criticizing Syria. None of these resolutions made any reference to human rights, educational and cultural violations by the likes of North Korea, Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, ISIS or any of the other culturally destructive regimes in the world.
Should Tourists Visit Human Rights Abusing States?
Cited in Forbes, “Should Travelers Think About Human Rights Before Choosing A Country To Visit?” Dec. 23, 2021:
According to Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of United Nations Watch, on January 1, 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council will be 68.1% composed of dictatorships and other non-democracies, “the worst in history.” Current members include Venezuela, Pakistan, Somalia, Russia, Eritrea, China, Libya, and Cuba. Joining on January 1 are Qatar, Malaysia, and Kazakhstan.