Hillel Neuer appeared on Fox Business with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the fall of the oppressive Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, to discuss a new UN Watch report exposing Volker Türk’s blind eye to dictatorships, and to discuss UN Watch’s work in revealing UNRWA’s ties to terrorism.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: Israel strikes multiple targets inside Syria, including airfields, military vehicles and weapons production sites, to keep them from falling into the hands of the rebels. Both the Biden administration and the UN considering removing HTS, now the largest rebel force currently in charge of Syria, from their designated terrorist lists.
The administration initially deemed them a terrorist group nine years ago after being linked to al-Qaeda, but then they were put in charge of Syria just last week. Joining me now is UN Watch Executive Director, Hillel Neuer. Hillel, nice to have you back. Welcome. Your reaction to all that has taken place in Syria?
Hillel Neuer: Well, there was an extraordinary window of opportunity. Israel destroyed some 350 targets, including fighter jets, drones, tanks, missiles, and even a research center that was linked to a chemical weapons program. There’s a lot of people in the Middle East who are very thankful that the tools of death of the Assad regime, which are about to be handed over to a whole array of jihadists, have been eliminated.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: How would you assess this last month in terms of what’s going on? Israel has pushed back very aggressively and successfully in terms of, you know, tamping down Hezbollah and Hamas. Assess the situation for us today.
Hillel Neuer: Look, for a year, the Biden administration kept trying to restrain Israel. They said, don’t escalate, don’t go into Rafah, don’t go into Lebanon, don’t do this. And had Israel followed that advice, Assad would still be holding his torture chambers, which we’re discovering are horrifying and unspeakable. Hamas would still be in full control of Gaza. Hezbollah, which helped Assad commit the genocide, would be in control, and the Iranian regime would be extending its noose all around the Middle East.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: Unbelievable. What did you call it, the fall of the Berlin Wall?
Hillel Neuer: This is a Berlin wall type moment. You know, the the the mullahs in Tehran are watching thousands of Syrian soldiers remove their uniforms and escape, and they’ve got to be going to sleep at night wondering if their troops are next and if the bell is coming to toll for them.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: Well, this is quite extraordinary. As President Trump is walking into his second term, you’re seeing a much weaker Iran, aren’t you?
Hillel Neuer: Absolutely and they were dominating the region before. They controlled terror proxies in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. And now, Hamas is decimated, Hezbollah is decimated, Assad’s regime is gone, the noose of fire that they threatened to strangle and destroy Israel with is gone, and the question is whether Tehran is next. We have to be ready to support the men and women of Iran who deserve freedom, as do many other people in the Middle East.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: And that’s why I’ve been having the Crown Prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, on a lot. Your thoughts, Mehek, jump in here.
Mehek Cooke, Fox: Well, and I have to ask, we have to look at Iran, right? Because they were the ones that were truly fighting this proxy war against Israel. They had so many conduits in ways that they were attacking without directly being involved. I think all fingers actually point to Iran. And we have a lot of terror network cells there, so we really have to go back to what was the core of this issue?
I think it starts and ends with Iran, and if we take our foot off the gas, in my opinion, this is going to come back in full force at some point after President Trump’s administration. So what’s your recommendation there, in terms of honing into Iran’s regime and making sure this never happens again? We have an opportunity to make sure we get rid of all of these cells.
Hillel Neuer: Absolutely, Tehran is the head of the octopus. The terror proxies were the tentacles. And now the main question is, what is the new administration going to do? Sadly, Obama and Biden had freed up billions of dollars by taking off sanctions, allowing Iran to sell oil to China and others. So, the new administration has got to come in and land on Tehran like a ton of bricks in terms of sanctions. They have to reimpose crushing sanctions.
And we have a moment. There are tens of millions of people in Iran who are looking to us in the West, to America, to help them. And this is the moment. This is the Berlin Wall moment. Dominos are falling, but it’s up to us in the West to see if we’re going to support the cause of freedom and democracy against jihadi terrorists who are sworn to our destruction.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: There’s a new UN Watch report which finds the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, turned a blind eye to the world’s worst regimes. He condemned the U.S. more than he condemned China, North Korea, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Qatar combined. He also condemned Israel 58 times in the past two years alone. UN Watch is now calling for Türk to resign. Hillel, what’s wrong with the UN?
Hillel Neuer: Sadly, too many at the UN go along to get along. Someone like Türk, he’s been at the UN for decades. He’s part of the system. The only way you move up is you turn a blind eye. He hasn’t said anything about Cuba despite it being a police state that has hundreds and hundreds of political prisoners, including teenagers whose crime was standing up for freedom.
Just a handful of statements on China over two years. I think one statement on the Assad regime over two years. So this is someone who was failing his mandate to protect human rights. He has no place being a human rights official. He should resign.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: UN Watch released another report revealing that high level staff of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) have actually been working with terrorists and meeting with them regularly. UN Watch also included interviews taken with UNRWA students who admitted to being taught that they should fight back and resist so that Palestine can be liberated, and that Hamas members served as staff in several UNRWA schools. Again, how is it possible that the UN has all these weak spots that terrorists come in and work on these agencies?
Hillel Neuer: UNRWA is a pathological agency that claims to be humanitarian, but in fact, it is their goal to perpetuate Palestinians for decades as so-called refugees. It’s absurd. We shouldn’t be surprised that terrorists make it to top posts.
The head of the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon, Fathi al-Sharif, was the head of Hamas in Lebanon. Luckily, justice was delivered to him two months ago after a missile took him out in an Israeli missile. Hamas then admitted that he was their leader in Lebanon. This was an UNRWA school principal, and we’re paying for it. The Biden administration gave a billion dollars of US taxpayer money to this agency.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: Is there any other advice you want to pass on to the incoming Trump administration about our adversaries? You touched on Iran, and you’re right, the sanctions need to be acknowledged. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris actually did not enforce the sanctions, enabling them to generate billions of dollars in revenue to actually help these terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah. But what about China?
Hillel Neuer: Look, China is oppressing 1/5 of humanity, 1.5 billion people. Just a few months ago, we hosted Rei Xia, a young woman who was thrown in prison for the crime of lifting up a blank piece of paper in Shanghai. So we need to stand with people like this.
Sadly, too often, China is sitting at the UN Human Rights Council where I am in Geneva. I’m sitting there and on the dais is the Beijing regime. We need to push back in ways that haven’t been done in years.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: Especially since they’re actually actively undermining us every day.
Hillel Neuer: Absolutely.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: And we’ll see if those drones are actually Chinese. Good to see you. Thanks very much, Hillel. Thanks so much for being here.
