Hillel Neuer’s appearance on the Fox News Rundown with Eben Brown to discuss what changes to UNRWA and the United Nations are bound to happen under the incoming Trump administration.
Eben Brown, Fox News: It’s been nearly four years since the Biden administration worked to re-establish certain groups funding, namely the UN Relief Works Agency in the Palestinian territories (UNRWA), agencies now known to have worked alongside with and shared resources and even manpower with Hamas and Hezbollah in their efforts to attack and destroy the state of Israel. Namely, also on the October 7th attacks.
Those funding cuts originally were engineered by the Trump administration, and there’s a new one of those coming to power in January.
Hillel Neuer is an internationally renowned human rights lawyer and is the Executive Director of UN Watch.
Hillel Neuer: One of the memorable actions by the Trump administration was an unprecedented cutting of funds. I think the only country to have done that before was the Canadian government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper who had done that around 2011 but otherwise that’s a relatively small amount compared to what the United States has been paying every year which is well over $300 million.
The Biden admin has given over $1 billion to UNWRA. And you’re quite right, tragically this is an agency that systematically employs terrorists. Let me say make this very clear, it’s not accidental, it’s not a few bad apples, this is an agency that is rotten to the core.
Keep in mind just over a month ago, Israel eliminated terror-chief Fathi al-Sharif. He was the head of Hamas in Lebanon. Eliminated. When he was killed, Hamas said Israel killed our leader in Lebanon. Also, his day job was principal of an UNRWA school, a major school. And get this, head of the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon.
So the head of the teachers’ union, in charge of thousands of teachers, was the head of Hamas in Lebanon. That’s not a one off. The same happened in Gaza. Suhail al-Hindi, head of the teachers’ union of UNRWA in Gaza, was on the Hamas politburo, and is still on the Hamas politburo.
So, UNRWA is infested with terrorists. They know it. We have photos. We have photos of the heads of UNWRA meeting with local officials. The heads of UNRWA are the one or two or three international people, like Philippe Lazzarini, who’s Swiss, but 99% of UNRWA people are Palestinians. But, the Swiss head of UNRWA, when he goes to Lebanon, he meets with people who are Hamas.
And this is systematic and the U.S. was paying for it in the past three years. Now, after it was revealed that several UNWRA staff participated in the massacre of October 7, then there was enormous pressure. The Republicans led legislation, and the Democrats needed to pass some bipartisan bill to get foreign aid, so they agreed to it. It was an agreement President Biden signed into law in March. A one year freeze on funding that ends on March for UNRWA.
And the Biden administration said they want to reinstate funding. So the Trump administration will come in January, and I think you can bet your bottom dollar that the Trump administration will deny any reinstatement. The freeze will be made final. And I think UNRWA is not going to get another U.S. dollar.
And that’s a very powerful statement. Because more than the money, you know, UNRWA, their budget is little over $1 billion. They could get that funding in a second from Qatar and other wealthy Arab or Islamic states. But they want the funding because they want the legitimacy.
And people have to understand UNRWA is not in its essence an aid agency. There are many massive aid agencies that can give out food and medicine and all that. The UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, the World Health Organization (WHO), they take care of millions of people around the world.
The point of UNRWA is because their agenda, not really hidden, is to dismantle Israel. And by America denying a penny to that agency, they’re saying America will not legitimize that agenda of hate and destruction.
Eben Brown, Fox News: Do we have any reason to believe that the incoming Trump administration would act any differently towards UNRWA than the first Trump administration did? Certainly President-elect Trump hasn’t signaled any change. But I would imagine it would be more of the same, wouldn’t it?
Hillel Neuer: Well, we’re in a different time. You know, during Trump’s first term, UNRWA was not really in the crosshairs of Israel. This is important to understand. The defenders of UNRWA say “Netanyahu is always trying to destroy UNRWA. Israel always wanted to destroy UNRWA.” Not true. Maybe they should have, but it’s not true.
The reality is that when Israel entered the territories of Gaza and Judea and Samaria in 1967, they said, UNRWA is there it’s managing things for Palestinians. We’ll kind of let them take care of it. It gives some stability and Israel allowed them to operate. What Israel didn’t fully understand was what the agenda of UNRWA is.
They didn’t fully understand how Hamas, in the past 20 years since Israel left Gaza, basically subverted UNRWA. So we’re in a different time now. Now we’re in a time where the state of Israel, as you indicated, has outlawed UNRWA. Israel has passed a law saying that its officials cannot deal with UNRWA in any way.
And so the issue is really at the forefront and Israel has now put UNRWA in its crosshairs. So the issue back then when it was the first Trump presidency was just defunding, but now it’s much more a sort of what will be the U.S. policy towards UNRWA in general.
It’ll be more than funding. And I think that the administration will take a more forceful stand. In the past year I’ve testified to the Congress four times and saw the strength of the Republican understanding of what UNRWA is. So, I think we’ll get a more forceful opposition to UNRWA than we even saw before.
Eben Brown, Fox News: On a wider scale of things, you know, there’s always been a difference in how the Trump administration dealt with the UN as a whole as opposed to the way the Biden administration has. The Biden administration has been a lot more deferential to the UN than the Trump fellows were. I would imagine we’re kind of going to head back into that model.
Hillel Neuer: I would say so. Look, it should be noted that when it came to a vote, in most instances with a handful of exceptions, the Biden administration voted against anti-Israel measures. But beyond that, you’re quite right that the atmospherics of the Biden administration were basically, we love the UN, the UN is great, the UN is wonderful.
And you know, one could point to thousands and thousands of statements and tweets saying the UN is doing a great job. They were cheerleaders for the UN. Even the Human Rights Council, which is an Orwellian body, 60% percent of whom include regimes like China while the Chinese Communist Party oppresses one-fifth of humanity, the Qatari regime which is funding terrorists, the Taliban, Hamas, and the Cuban police state, which has hundreds of political prisoners. They’re all sitting on the Human Rights Council.
The Biden administration did try to do a number of good things. They did vote against anti-Israel measures. I do give them credit for that. But the message they sent every day in numerous tweets were we’re meeting with the UN Human rights folks we love them, they’re great. They were cheer leaders. That’s going to stop.
Eben Brown, Fox News: And this change in attitude that I suspect we’ll see very quickly once January 20th rolls around is also going to extend to perhaps one of the world’s worst offenders and one of the UN’s darlings, that being the Islamic regime of Iran.
This regime has been the instigator for a lot of regional problems, if not global problems. And they seem to always get that that petting on the head from the chiefs at the UN. I suspect that there’s going to be a different attitude towards them as well.
Hillel Neuer: I think we have good reason to believe that, yes. Look, the first Trump administration took a very forceful stance against Iran. When Biden came in he tried to do Iran deal 2.0. I’ll never forget that shortly after Biden came into office, my organization UN Watch revealed that the Islamic regime in Iran was elected to the UN Women’s Rights Commission.
A regime that beats, blinds, rapes and tortures women for the crime of standing up for their rights was elected to the highest women’s rights body of the UN. When we exposed it, a journalist at the State Department press briefing said, what does the Biden administration have to say? And they didn’t want to comment. They refused to comment because they were trying to make nice to Iran.
So, that was the attitude going in. And, of course, as you indicated, the UN has last year appointed the Islamic regime of Iran to be chair of the Human Rights Council Social Forum. The UN made them president of the UN Conference on Disarmament. So, that’s the attitude of the UN. The Trump administration is going to fiercely oppose that and that’s important, and I welcome that.
Eben Brown, Fox News: And, of course, we should notice that even in just the past week another incident regarding the Iranian regime and women’s rights as a young woman was stripped down forcefully by the secret police. And this was all caught on video and posted on social media. And that woman was left in her undergarments because she wasn’t wearing her hijab correctly.
And then she was arrested and taken away. And I don’t think anyone has heard from this young woman since. We’re talking about a young college-aged female student, a horrific image to see. And I wonder if there’ll be questions asked of the UN regarding this, especially since Iran, as you noted, was elected to this body regarding women’s rights.
Hillel Neuer, you are an internationally known human rights lawyer. Thank you so much for being with us. Your organization is UN Watch and we encourage everyone to follow you on Twitter. Thank you so much for being with us on the FOX News Rundown evening edition.
Hillel Neuer: Thank you for having me.
