UN Watch’s Legal Advisor Dina Rovner appeared on L’Chaim with Maurice Klein to discuss the U.N.’s blatantly antisemitic Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, and the rotten nature of UNRWA.
Maurice Klein: Dina Rovner is legal adviser for UN Watch and it is a pleasure to have Dina join us tonight. Dina Rovner, welcome to L’Chaim. To life, Jewish life and more. Great to have you join us.
Dina Rovner: Thank you very much for having me.
Maurice Klein: Dina, our Melbourne Jewish community is well familiar with Hillel Neuer and UN Watch. As Hillel was the talk of the town four and a half years ago when he was the guest speaker at the Magen David Adom gala dinner also delivering the Sir Zelman Cowen Oration. Please, for our L’Chaim listeners who are not familiar with UN Watch, what is UN Watch all about? What’s the raison d’etre here?
Dina Rovner: UN Watch is a Swiss-based non-governmental organization founded in Geneva in 1993 by Morris B. Abram who was a former U.S. permanent representative to the UN and legendary civil rights leader in the United States. Now, our mission is to monitor the UN according to the yardstick of its own charter. And our main activities are combating anti-Israel discrimination at the UN holding the UN to account and fighting dictatorships at the UN. One of the activities that we’re most known for is actually our analysis of UN country resolutions.
And every year, the General Assembly adopts 14 to 15 resolutions on Israel and only 7 resolutions on the rest of the world combined which is more than two thirds on Israel. The General Assembly meets in the fall and so the resolutions come up for a vote between October and December, and they’ll be coming up soon for the next session in 2024. But I’m going to talk about the 2023 resolutions here. In 2023, the UN General Assembly adopted 15 resolutions on Israel and one resolution each on human rights violations by North Korea, Iran, Myanmar, Syria, two on Russia’s violations in Crimea and Ukraine and then one condemning the US embargo on Cuba. There were no resolutions, zero on China, Cuba Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Sudan and over 180 other countries. But it’s not just about the numbers it’s also about the content of the resolutions. And the resolutions on Israel are highly politicized and one sided. They have a lot of hyperbole there’s no background or context and they’re also extremely repetitive.
Now, we publish data on these resolutions every year and we do the same for the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, which adopts four resolutions against Israel every year and then only one on Iran, one on North Korea. Zero on China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. And we developed a very useful resource and research tool, which we call our UN Watch database. You can find our database on our website, www.unwatch.org, where you can learn about the UN’s anti-Israel bias search the resolutions, get statistics find out how your country votes and petition your country to change their votes. So, in a nutshell, that’s just some background about UN Watch.
Maurice Klein: That’s in a nutshell. Wonderful! Dina, it would be an understatement to say that little Israel, with a population of 10 million a country and people of solutions for the world is the most criticized country at the UN. Even our Australian labor government has turned hostile to Israel at the UN. Please take us through Penny Wong’s recent Australian voting at the UN.
Dina Rovner: Let me start with the bad news. In 2022, when the government changed, some of its votes at the UN also changed for the worse. Specifically, Australia started voting “yes” on three resolutions that it had previously abstained on, including the main UNRWA resolution which renews the UNRWA mandate. And it also changed its vote from “no” to “abstain” on one of the other resolutions.
But it’s not all bad, because what I want to say is that in 2022 there were two very problematic resolutions at the General Assembly that Australia voted against. And those two resolutions were the resolution asking the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the legality of Israel’s occupation which was actually just in the news because they published their advisory opinion. And then there was another resolution which we call the “Nakba Day resolution” which basically endorsed the rejectionist Palestinian narrative that the creation of the State of Israel is a catastrophe or disaster by declaring May 15th 2023, as the official Nakba Day with an official UN commemoration on the Nakba. And Australia did vote against both of those resolutions.
And then we also have the Human Rights Council. Well, the last time Australia was on the Human Rights Council was in 2020 under the previous government, and then they voted against all of the anti-Israel resolutions. But it’s hard to know if that would still be the case today.
Maurice Klein: Yes, and as you mentioned back in 2022, it was probably the previous government still in power here in Australia. Dina, Francesca Albanese, no relation to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. That said, they do very much have a lot in common. Please, could you unpack the UN’s Francesca Albanese for us?
Dina Rovner: First of all, before I talk about who is Francesca Albanese, I would like to tell you a little bit about her mandate. Francesca Albanese is one of 14 Human Rights Council country experts, and the actual title of her mandate is “Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967.” So this title in and of itself is very misleading because it makes it sound like this special rapporteur is supposed to look into human rights violations by all actors, Israel, Palestinians, terrorist organizations and against all victims, Israelis and Palestinians. But in reality, the mandate of this Palestine rapporteur is just to, and now I’m going to quote from the mandate itself, “investigate Israel’s violations of the principles and bases of international law.” So it’s discriminatory on its face. It doesn’t look at Hamas terrorist attacks against Israelis or Palestinian Authority torture of Palestinian detainees. The mandate only investigates if the perpetrator is Israeli and the victim is Palestinian.
Now, in her last report to the Human Rights Council in March, Francesca Albanese accused Israel of genocide. But she explicitly said that the report wasn’t looking at the Hamas October 7th attack and so she didn’t talk about that. Why? The reason is, she said it in the report, it was beyond the geographic scope of her mandate. So we know this mandate is discriminatory and I think it’s important to establish that before I speak about Francesca Albanese.
But now, let me tell you, Francesca Albanese the mandate holder is also extremely antisemitic. So the mandate holder herself is extremely problematic. She is an Italian lawyer who in the past was a lawyer for UNRWA. And she has a long history of antisemitism and anti-Israel advocacy. Back in 2014, she said America was “subjugated to the Jewish lobby.” And in 2022, she told a Hamas conference, “you have a right to resist.” On Twitter, she routinely portrays Israelis as “Nazis” accuses Israel of “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide,” and equates the Palestinian Nakba with the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Now, this is someone who just in the last few months, claimed that the October 7th attack was not antisemitic and then justified it as a response to Israeli oppression. And this got her condemned for antisemitism by both France and Germany. She condemned Israel’s June hostage rescue operation of four of the hostages-she condemned that as a massacre. She started a campaign on Twitter to #UnseatIsraelFromTheUN. And Francesca Albanese also recently endorsed an antisemitic photo equating Netanyahu with Adolf Hitler. And just now, also she condemned Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. So she’s a Hamas apologist and she’s now the only sitting human rights expert that has been accused of antisemitism by three countries: France, Germany and the United States.
Maurice Klein: Unbelievable. Unbelievable stuff. And less well known is that Francesca Albanese has been running a global influence network of more than 100 individuals and NGOs to target Israel by orchestrating lawfare campaigns whitewashing Hamas, as you mentioned whitewashing the Hamas terrorism, and cynically manipulating governments into funding UNRWA. Francesca Albanese visited Australia last November 2023 which ended up being veiled in controversy and the focus of an internal UN investigation as per allegations launched by UN Watch. Please work us through that, Dina.
Dina Rovner: So Francesca Albanese’s job is to investigate and report on human rights violations in what the UN calls “the occupied territories.” And as part of that mandate she can make country visits to speak to human rights victims and local NGOs monitoring the situation. Now, the UN normally pays for one country visit per year. And in the past, when it comes to this mandate those country visits would take place in Jordan because Israel doesn’t allow this mandate holder to come into Israel. But last year, instead of going to Jordan Francesca Albanese traveled with her assistant, Sara Troian, to Australia and New Zealand for two weeks. And we estimated that the trip cost around $20,000. The trip was not to meet with victims or investigate the human rights situation on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza to engage in pro-Palestinian lobbying activities and pro-Hamas propaganda. And according to the Palestinian lobby groups that brought her, they sponsored and supported her trip. Now, some of these names might be familiar to you and your listeners, but the two main groups are the Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA), which said that they sponsored her trip to Australia and Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network (APAN), which said that they supported her trip to Victoria. And then, of course, there was the New Zealand part of her trip, which was coordinated by Palestinian lobby groups in New Zealand.
And let me tell you, some of the things that she did on this trip. In Australia, she delivered the Edward Said memorial lecture to Australian Friends of Palestine, the lobbying group. She also made media appearances, including at the Australian National Press Club, where she parodied the Hamas narrative that Israel’s right to self-defense is non-existent. The speech at the National Press Club was organized by a APAN, Palestinian lobbying group. And then in New Zealand, she lobbied a major New Zealand pension fund to divest from Israel. So the question we had is, why is this UN expert engaging in pro-Palestinian lobbying in another country and receiving support from pro-Palestinian lobbying groups? This seems to be a clear violation of the code of conduct for UN special procedures. And according to the code of conduct special procedures, they are supposed to be free of any kind of extraneous influence. They’re not supposed to accept, seek or accept instructions from any non-governmental organization or pressure group, receive gifts or remuneration from any such group.
So as soon as we learned about this trip back in November, we sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres asking for an explanation. And predictably at the time, Francesca Albanese then denied what the Australian lobby groups had already said, which is that they had supported and sponsored her trip. And she claimed instead that the trip was paid for by the UN as part of her mandate.
Now, for the UN to pay for this kind of trip would be highly unusual, because first it’s not an official country visit to investigate violations-like I said, it’s a lobbying trip-and second, it’s also not listed anywhere by the UN as an official country visit. We filed a complaint to the UN demanding an explanation, demanding an investigation, actually. And they did open an investigation which they then referred to the High Commissioner. And then there was this report from the UN office in Geneva where they said that they did pay for her trip. But even if that’s true, it only raises more questions because why would the UN pay for a lobbying trip that’s not an official country visit? And what did those Palestinian lobby groups mean when they said that they sponsored and supported her trip? So we are still waiting for answers. We’re still waiting for Francesca Albanese to produce her receipts. And as far as we’re concerned this is still an open issue.
Maurice Klein: Since October 7th, Penny Wong has increased Australia’s funding to UNRWA. United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine. UN Watch continues to expose UNRWA. What’s the latest here?
Dina Rovner: UNRWA is a main topic that we’ve been working a lot on and it’s actually been in the news quite a bit since October 7th, but especially since last week when the UN announced that it fired 9 UNRWA employees because they were involved in October 7th. And that’s huge. It’s basically an admission by the UN that its employees committed terrorist atrocities. But, you know, this was no surprise to UN Watch because since 2015, UN Watch has been publicizing the fact that UNRWA hires antisemitic and terrorist-supporting teachers by exposing their hateful posts on social media.
Since October 7th, we have been leading the campaign to dismantle UNRWA because we understood that reform is not enough. UNRWA does not promote peace and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. What it promotes is October 7th style terrorism. Now, it’s important to understand that aside from its humanitarian mandate UNRWA has a political mandate. And that’s the real reason for its existence. When UNRWA officials talk about this political mandate like UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazarini they describe UNRWA’s role as “protecting the rights of Palestine refugees and acting as a witness to their plight.” That’s an actual quote. And what does this mean? It means that UNRWA exists until Palestinians can achieve their so called right of return. So, in effect, UNRWA exists to promote this false claim that Palestinians have a right of return to homes in the sovereign territory of Israel. And this is exactly what drove more than 3000 Palestinian terrorists joined by countless civilians to violently invade Israel on October 7th and commit the worst possible atrocities.
So last year, Australia gave $14.5 million to the agency and the previous year it gave 13.8 million. And of course, this is something that should be concerning to every Australian. Our most recent success on the UNRWA front was our June report about Fathi al-Sharif a key Hamas figure in Lebanon who also happens to be an UNRWA school principal and the head of the UNRWA teachers union in Lebanon overseeing 39,000 students and 2000 UNRWA teachers. But this combination of UNRWA teacher and Hamas terrorist is not something new. In fact, you might be aware that Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who was just assassinated, started out as an UNRWA teacher. And before Fathi al-Sharif, we had Suhail al-Hindi in Gaza who was a senior Hamas Hamas terrorist at the same time that he was a Gaza school principal and the head of the UNRWA staff union in Gaza overseeing 240,000 students and 8000 teachers until eventually Hindi was forced to resign after he was elected to the Hamas politburo in 2017, along with Yahya Sinwar. And since then, he’s been a senior member, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza. He helped orchestrate the October 7th massacre.
And it’s a modus operandi for UNRWA to have senior Hamas leaders also with senior roles in UNRWA. What we know is that Fathi al-Sharif is a key Hamas figure in Lebanon. He is very close to the top Hamas leadership. Since at least 2013, he has been endorsing jihadi terrorism on Facebook, praising and honoring terrorists and terrorist attacks. And throughout this whole time, UNRWA did not fire al-Sharif, but instead, in 2019, they awarded him with a certificate of appreciation. And then after October 7th, al-Sharif was instrumental in organizing massive rallies on UNRWA premises in support of Hamas. Aside from the fact that this in itself is a clear breach of neutrality, it was also very disruptive to UNRWA.
But UNRWA did nothing about any of this. And then in January, Israel revealed that twelve UNRWA employees had participated in the October 7th attacks. Then the number was raised to 19. And then we know that last week nine of them were fired by UNRWA. And this revelation back in January led to 18 donor countries, including Australia, suspending funding to UNRWA. And it also led UNRWA to create a so-called “independent review” of UNRWA on neutrality. And the purpose of that review was just to provide cover to donors to resume funding the agency. And that’s, of course, what happened in the end. So the whole process was rigged from the start.
Now, this is scandalous and it’s a slap in the face to all donors who demanded accountability and have since resumed their funding to ownership trusting UNRWA when it said that it would implement the recommendations of that independent UN review that I mentioned before. And, of course, this includes Australia, which resumed its funding to UNRWA back in March. So the main takeaway I want to leave for your listeners on UNRWA is that UNRWA continues to employ top Hamas terrorists. It’s not just about those nine employees that were fired. It’s not just a few bad apples. UNRWA is rotten to the core. And Australia is funding this.
Maurice Klein: No doubt it’s rotten to the core. And what you just told us about would only be the tip of the iceberg. Dina, there are UN Watch videos that are seen worldwide. They are excellent. A few that come to mind. “Algeria, where are your Jews? Hillel Neuer silences the UN.” The expressions there are amazing. “UN: Israel’s fault when Palestinian men beat their wives.” “Neuer: where is your data?” “And son of Hamas shocks UN delegates as PLO abusers exposed.” Everyone should check out the UN Watch YouTube page. There’s amazing videos there. Dina, how can our L’Chaim listeners support and follow the very important work of UN Watch?
Dina Rovner:
