Hillel Neuer appeared for a studio interview on Brazil’s Globo to discuss the rise of antisemitism and UN Watch’s role in holding the UN accountable.
Globo: So, Hillel, when and how was UN Watch created?
Hillel: It was created in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1993 by a great American civil rights leader, Morris Abram. He’s someone who grew up in a small town in the South of America. He saw the segregation, the racial segregation that was taking place in the Deep South in America, and he was one of the leaders in fighting it. He was in Atlanta in the 1950s, and he became close with Martin Luther King.
Eventually, he was named U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in Europe. And he retired in 1993, and he had the idea to create an organization-for the first time-a body that would monitor the United Nations to see that it lives up to its charter.
And Morris Abram was himself a UN human rights expert. In the 1960s, he was on the Sub-Commission for Human Rights, and he drafted the Convention Against Racism. The idea of UN Watch is to have what they have in America-checks and balances. We all need to be monitored and held to account.
So our organization is there to watch the UN, with a general focus on human rights-to see the UN lives up to its human rights dream-and a particular focus on combating antisemitism. Part of our work is being the conscience at the United Nations.
The United Nations has the highest ideals. It was founded after World War II to respond to barbarous acts which outraged the conscience of mankind. And that was the dream of the United Nations-to reaffirm the principle of human dignity after the Nazi Holocaust, created by those who defeated Hitler.
So, sadly, the body that was meant to bring international peace, security, and fundamental freedoms has become very politicized. And even our countries-our democracies-whether it’s Brazil, whether it’s EU countries like France or the UK or Germany-do deals with countries. They say, “Well, we don’t want to make trouble. Okay, the Islamic regime of Iran, they’ll chair the women’s rights commission. And China and Cuba and Qatar, which supports terrorism, they’ll sit on the Human Rights Commission.”
So many cynical political deals are done. Many diplomats-our diplomats, democracies-go along to get along. And you need some voices to speak out, to bring the victims. And we’ve brought victims who were poisoned and imprisoned-in Russia, in China, from Eritrea-and we are sort of the moral compass of the United Nations, to sound the alarm.
Globo: So Hillel, how do you think your work changed after October 7?
Hillel: Yeah, it’s a good question. You know, our organization is also at the lead in fighting antisemitism or the obsessive demonization of Israel. There is a certain inclination to say the source of all the trouble in the world is a small little country called Israel, the Jewish state, and they’re the ultimate racist country, the ultimate war criminal, the ultimate human rights violator.
So we speak out against that, and we always have. On October 7, we saw something that we never imagined. The head of the United Nations, António Guterres, spoke weeks after the massacre where 1,200 Jews were slaughtered in one day - in front of their families, tortured, sexually assaulted.
A few weeks later, António Guterres spoke to the United Nations. He said, “I condemn Hamas,” but he said, “These attacks did not happen in a vacuum.” And then he went on to enumerate numerous alleged Palestinian grievances against Israel-one after the other, after the other. In effect, the head of the United Nations was justifying-saying, “Yes, I condemn, but you have to understand, there’s a context. It didn’t happen in a vacuum.”
And I was shocked, because nothing justifies murdering families in front of them, kidnapping 250 people-grandfathers, Holocaust survivors, little babies. Hamas kidnapped infants and then killed them with their own hands. Nothing justifies it. And the head of the UN was justifying it, in effect, in his own diplomatic language.
Globo: President Trump says he wants to build a Riviera of the Middle East in Gaza, but that’s supposed to remove all the people from Gaza, from there. So this would constitute ethnic cleansing. Do you agree with that?
Hillel: No. Ethnic cleansing is a war crime, and no one should be doing that. However, people from Gaza should have a choice. And sadly, what has happened until now is Hamas oppresses them.
In the past week, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza said, “Out with Hamas, down with Hamas, Hamas is ruining our lives.” Hamas has, I think, 58 hostages that they refuse to release, and they want Israel to keep bombing. They want the war - the never-ending war. And people of Gaza need a future.
So President Trump said things that are not realistic. But what he said that is realistic is not a single person from Gaza should leave if they don’t want to. But they shouldn’t have a gun to their head and be told, “You can’t leave your house, and you can’t move to a safe zone.”
So what we need is-what the cleansing we need-is to rid ourselves of a fanatical Islamist death cult called Hamas, funded by the Islamic regime in Iran. And that will liberate Palestinians. And they need to focus on building a Palestinian future.
You can’t eliminate the ideas-that’s true-but who is strong and who’s in power makes a big difference. At the end of the day, the Arabs in Gaza who are demonstrating now-they didn’t demonstrate last year. They’re not necessarily lovers of Israel. They feel that Hamas is bringing war and destruction.
If Hamas won, if Hamas were killing more Israelis, I don’t know if they would be protesting-the people in Gaza. But when they see Hamas losing, then they say, “We need something different.”
Globo: What do you think must happen for the war to end? Because Israel already killed most of the Hamas leadership.
Hillel: Well, the hostages have to be released, right? There are hostages now, as we speak, being tortured, being sexually assaulted, being starved-and they have to be released now.
And the people of Gaza need to tell Hamas-which some of them are trying to-“We don’t want this war. Release the hostages and surrender.” The moment Hamas says, “The hostages are released, we surrender,” the war ends.
At the same time, you also have to think about what’s next. Because in 2006, Hamas captured Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier. Israel released 1,000 terrorists to free him. So the Israeli government was kind to Gilad Shalit and his family-but was not kind to those who were murdered and raped and assaulted by Yahya Sinwar, who was released. He was released-he was one of the 1,000-and then he planned the massacre.
So it’s a horrible dilemma that no one should face. How do you choose between saving the lives of these victims-who are being, as I said, assaulted, tortured, starved-but you also have to protect your people from the next day?
Hamas says, “We want to do it again.” Their leaders say, “We want to do October 7 again.” They still have rockets. What has to happen is the world needs to tell Hamas: surrender, release the hostages-and then the war will end.
Globo: Why do you think antisemitism is on the rise after October 7?
Hillel: When Hamas invaded Israel, Israel is stronger than Hamas, but they thought, maybe we can destroy Israel. If we don’t defeat Israel, when we go and slaughter families and we do atrocities and we broadcast it and we terrorize the Israelis, they’re going to strike us back.
But where do you find the Hamas people? When they do ceremonies, they have their uniforms. Hamas-when the war begins-there’s no uniform, there’s no pictures. During a war, in all the pictures of Gaza, you will never see-during the war time-a Hamas fighter with a uniform being shot. They dress like the civilians. They put their headquarters in the hospitals. They are in the terror tunnels underneath the schools.
And the Hamas strategy was deliberate-to provoke Israel to attack them. Because every country has to defend its citizens. And if you’re attacked by thousands of rockets-or even one rocket-you must attack the rocket launcher.
And they did everything they could so that Israel would end up killing civilians - pictures of dead babies. And they knew that these pictures around the world-“Israel’s killing babies”-would provoke hatred against Israel around the world.
Hamas knows that. There seems to be a demand for that story, and Hamas is supplying it. And we’ve seen antisemitism-in my lifetime, I’ve never seen it. I grew up in Canada-one of the greatest countries for Jews to live in. Synagogues, Jewish community centers, very rich Jewish life. The antisemitism in the past year and a half has been a tsunami.
The Jewish school that my brothers went to was shot at-twice. One night, next week again. The synagogue that I went to was shot at. This never happened my whole life-not one time. Firebombs against synagogues, schools, Jewish community centers. A girls’ Jewish school in Toronto was shot at three times.
In Europe, where I live, when a Jewish person takes a taxi and he wants to go to the Jewish community center, he says, “Maybe I’ll tell him to let me off a block away.” If the driver-often Muslim immigrants-sees that I’m Jewish, maybe he’ll attack me.
So it’s been a tsunami of antisemitism. And to be honest, for me and many others, we’ve been speechless to witness this.
