SHARE: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer appeared on Sky News Australia’s Power House, hosted by Gabriella Power, to discuss UNRWA’s deep ties to Hamas terrorism and the October 7th massacre, after the agency was forced to fire nine of its employees found to have been involved in carrying out the atrocities.
Gabriella Power, Sky News: The UN has admitted several employees of UNRWA may have been involved in the horrific October 7 attack on Israel. An investigation found nine UNRWA employees were linked to Hamas’ attack, which killed 1 ,200 people. Joining us now is human rights lawyer and Executive Director of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer.
Hillel, thank you for joining us. Last time we spoke was earlier in the year, and you warned that Australia may be enabling terrorism if it restored UNRWA funding, and it only took our government a couple of months until funding was reinstated. Firstly, can I get your reaction to the findings of this investigation?
Hillel Neuer: Look, we’re talking about a supposedly UN humanitarian agency where nine of its employees have been found by an internal UN investigation to have taken part in the perpetration of the Hamas massacre of October 7th. We don’t know if it’s mass murder, rape, or other sadistic atrocities. So this is absolutely horrific. And what we’re seeing from the United Nations is a kind of mealy-mouthed acknowledgement. A lot of spin, a lot of weasel words. We’re not seeing strong condemnations of what this really involves. We’re not seeing talk of the international law violations. We’re not seeing talk of prosecuting these people- it’s not enough to fire nine people. What about the prosecution? Finally, it’s not - very clearly - just about a few people. The whole agency itself is rotten to the core.
Sky News: You mentioned spin. What do you make of the reporting around this? The New York Times had the headline, ‘U.N. Clears Half the Aid Workers Accused of Taking Part in the October 7 Attack.’ Is that really the point?
Neuer: No, look, this kind of taps into when there were mass violent riots in the wake of the George Floyd episode, we saw headlines like ‘mostly peaceful demonstrators hold a protest,’ or something, even if they were burning down half the city. So this is the same kind of spin from the New York Times.
Nine supposedly humanitarian aid workers were found by the UN to have engaged in the massacre. And their headline is that other people were cleared. By the way, the other people weren’t cleared. The UN said that they just found insufficient evidence for a number of them, but they were going to take measures. So the Israelis only gave 12 names at the time. Since then, they’ve given 100 names. There is evidence. The UN acknowledged it for nine people. The New York Times tried to find some kind of bizarre, inverted headline. Very disappointing for the New York Times.
Sky News: UNRWA claims that it’s continuing life -saving work with more neutrality than anyone else. How can that possibly be the case?
Neuer: Well, it’s ridiculous. The Colonna report, which was a supposedly independent review that was conducted several months ago, in fact, it was an entirely rigged process. The head of the review, Catherine Colonna from France, is a major, on the record, supporter of UNRWA. Three Scandinavian groups involved in the review were all major UNRWA supporters, including Kjersti Berg from the Danish group, CMI. She is part of a Global Palestine Network, run by UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese, that was lobbying to fund UNRWA. So the same person involved in reviewing UNRWA is involved in a lobby group lobbying to fund UNRWA, the same person. So this is the supposedly independent group that found that UNRWA had more neutrality than any other agency.
Look, this is ridiculous. I spoke in the Dutch Parliament recently, and in the Swiss Parliament, and I said that this was like the Stalinist constitution of the 1930s, which was portrayed as the most democratic in the world, and maybe on paper there were provisions, but this was a time when Stalin was executing tens, hundreds of thousands of people in show trials.
So UNRWA may have dozens of neutrality manuals. All of that is meaningless when hundreds, indeed thousands of UNRWA teachers, school principals, other employees, regularly engage in promotion of jihadi terrorism and incitement to antisemitism. All of this is documented on our website, UNWatch.org. The fact that they claim to have developed neutrality procedures is just really Orwellian.
Sky News: The UN was asked how the Secretary-General feels about the findings. Let’s take a listen.
[from video clip]
Journalist: What does the Secretary General feel about these findings? What is his view of it? What are his personal feelings about what the OIOS found?
U.N. Spokesman: He believes it’s important that we go through this very carefully, given the fact that any involvement in these attacks would constitute a major betrayal of trust. Obviously there were actions that were taken for the benefit of the agency that were very swift and very decisive in terms of dealing with the individuals who had been named at first.
We want to make sure that the reputation of our UNRWA staff, our dedicated staff, including about 200 people who have lost their lives since the 7th of October, is fully recognized and that UNRWA gets the support that it needs.
Sky News: So the focus should be on the reputation of UNRWA staff.
Neuer: Look, it’s unbelievable. He was asked specifically, how does the Secretary-General feel, his personal feelings about the fact that nine of his supposedly humanitarian aid workers were found by the UN to have engaged in a horrific massacre, mass murder, rape, torture, other atrocities, and his answer is, ‘we’re most concerned about the reputation of UNRWA.’ That’s shameful. Absolutely shameful.
Sky News: Absolutely. Look, you are in Jerusalem at the moment. We know that Israel’s military is preparing for major destruction in the event of an Iranian attack. What can you tell us?
Neuer: Look, I’m based in Switzerland. I was in the Swiss Alps. I heard that the evil Ayatollah of the Islamic regime in Iran was threatening Israel with an assault with missiles and suicide drones from Iran, from the Hezbollah terrorist proxy in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Shiite proxies in Iraq and Syria, I decided to show my support and solidarity with the people of Israel by buying a ticket and flying here as soon as I could. I’ve arrived here in Jerusalem. On the streets, you will see regular daily life. But if you speak to people, they are very nervous. If you speak to families, they’re sleeping in bomb shelters. Children are traumatized. Where is the international community? The Iranian regime and Hezbollah are openly threatening military aggression in violation of the United Nations charter. They are saying not only military targets, civilian as well. Where is the outcry from the United Nations? Where is the outcry from the European Union and their foreign minister Joseph Borrell. You know, we’re hearing crickets.
Sky News: Yeah. absolutely. Another point: Israel’s Olympic Team said that some athletes have been receiving threats as they compete in Paris. Is antisemitism being normalized in your view?
Neuer: Absolutely. What we’re seeing today in Paris at the Olympics and indeed around the world is an outburst of antisemitism that we really haven’t seen since World War II. This is the lowest level of incitement to hatred, demonization of Jews, violence, attacks on Jews in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, really worldwide, and the response by institutions that are supposedly anti -racist, groups like Amnesty International, in many cases, once again, it’s silence. We should see the writing on the wall. We saw what happened in Europe in the 1930s when demonization of the Jews was allowed to run rampant. It led to terrible things. I think history is sending us a warning, and we need to stamp out any demonization of Jews, attacks on Jews, there needs to be zero tolerance, whether it’s in Paris or anywhere else in the world.
Sky News: Just quickly, on the U .S. election, Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz over Josh Shapiro. What do you make of that decision?
Neuer: Look, a little over two decades ago, the Democratic Party ran Senator Joe Lieberman as their vice president. This was an openly identifying observant Jew, an Orthodox Jew. And it was quite welcome across certainly the Democratic Party and the United States. People and having a man of faith, and he actually got the majority of the votes. They didn’t get the electoral college. So America was ready back in the late 90s to elect a Jewish vice president, to vote for Jewish vice president.
Today, we’re seeing the opposite. We’re seeing the Democratic Party’s radical left -wing fringe that seems to have taken over and actually has become not the fringe, but is quite dominating, sadly. The camp that includes Cori Bush and AOC and other even more overtly antisemitic elements seem to have taken over the Democratic Party, and they seemingly vetoed the choice of the governor of Pennsylvania, Mr. Shapiro, whose positions are, whether on Israel or other issues, are no different than the other candidates, including the one that she chose. So it seems the only objection to Shapiro was the fact that he was Jewish, a bad sign for the Democratic Party, a bad sign for where we are in the world today.
Sky News: And I’ve had plenty of Jewish people say that and express that to me, and it just breaks my heart. Finally, on UNRWA, Australia’s opposition Leader Peter Dutton says Australia should reconsider its involvement, engagement, and funding of UNRWA. What should Australia do in your view?
Neuer: The first thing Australia needs to do is to stop lying for UNRWA. You know, there were hearings held in the Australian Senate several months ago. A representative of your foreign ministry came and said that reports about UNRWA staff promoting antisemitism are false. He attacked our reports without any basis. You can go, you know, the Foreign Ministry of Australia and Minister Wong and Prime Minister Albanese should go on our website, UNWatch.org. You will see hundreds of screenshots from the UNRWA staff themselves, teachers like Elham Mansour of Lebanon, who works for UNRWA, as a teacher at UNRWA, who openly says, “in the name of Allah, we need to slaughter the Jews.” The head of the teachers’ union in Lebanon is Fathi al -Sharif. He is a senior Hamas official. He doesn’t hide it on his Facebook page. UNRWA knows it, they refused to fire him. Finally, the head of the teachers union in Gaza, overseeing over 200 ,000 students for many years was someone by the name of Suhail al -Hindi and is now on the Hamas Politburo with Yahya Sinwar, who was the head of the UNRWA Teachers Union in Gaza.
UNRWA knows all of this. The heads of UNRWA, other than a few Swiss and other internationals at the top, the people running UNRWA are Hamas terrorists, the agency is pervaded with terrorists. All the evidence is there, undisputed. The Australian government needs to stop fronting for this agency that is corrupted by terrorists. There are many other options if we want to help Palestinians. And sadly, Australia is embracing a group, UNRWA, that is only promising further education for generations of resentment, grievance, and war.
Sky News: Executive Director of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer. Thank you so much for joining us on Power Hour.
Neuer: Thank you for having me.
