“It’s a hostile assembly when I walk in,” says Hillel Neuer.
“If looks could kill I’d be dead 1000 times.”
Neuer is the executive director of UN Watch, a human rights NGO in Geneva, Switzerland. He’s often regarded as one of the world’s foremost human rights advocates, yet when he enters the United Nations assembly he is met with various looks of hostility from all over the room.
Facing hostility at the UN
“There’s first the Arab and Islamic states who hate me because we speak out against their lies when it comes to Israel,” Neuer tells The AJN.
“And then there’s the dictatorships of all kinds – Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe. We don’t only speak out on Israel, we’re also active on democracy and freedom around the world.”
And then, Neuer says, there’s the UN officials themselves who would like to think that they work for a body that is pure and objective, but they end up “parroting propaganda by Hamas”.
“We lift the mirror and show that UN bodies have been taken over by dictatorships,” he says.
“Like Iran being on the Women’s Rights Commission, Iran being chair of the UN Human Rights Council, China, Cuba and Eritrea sitting on the Human Rights Council. Syria on the executive board of the World Health Organisation, North Korea getting the rotating chairmanship of the Conference on Disarmament.
“When we say these things, the people who work for the UN get embarrassed because, you know, cognitive dissonance – they’d rather not think about it.”
Neuer has been at UN Watch for over two decades, but he says the post-October 7 period has been the most challenging.
“The United Nations has become worse than ever,” he says.
“Sadly, UN officials were never that friendly, but didn’t seem to be obsessed by Israel. They still went along with the anti-Israel rhetoric, but not every day, not every five minutes. In the past year it’s been endless.”
Neuer says UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres was “horrible” shortly after the October 7 massacre, condemning the attacks but saying they “did not happen in a vacuum”.
“He went on to list numerous alleged Palestinian grievances over the years, effectively justifying the attacks,” says Neuer.
“So yes, it’s been an extremely challenging time, but we’re busy and we’re fighting back and we’re holding them to account.”
Australia’s funding of UNRWA
During Neuer’s visit to Australia for JCA, he travelled to Canberra and met with representatives for Foreign Minister Penny Wong. After presenting them with yet more evidence linking UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA with Hamas, he expects to see Australia either push for UNRWA to fire those individuals, or stop funding the organisation altogether.
Australia is a longstanding supporter of UNRWA, contributing financially since 1951. In recent years, Australia has typically provided $20 million annually.
“I gave the information and I expect to see action,” says Neuer.
“UNRWA has declared numerous times they have zero tolerance for incitement to violence or racism or antisemitism. We’ve documented hundreds who violate this, so either UNRWA investigates why these people were hired and take action to change their ways, or Australia stops funding terrorism and incitement to terrorism. And if we don’t see this within a matter of weeks, then this is a serious problem.”
UN Watch has testified against UNRWA in the US Congress about four times, with the US government going on to end all funding to the organisation.
“The Netherlands also announced in December that they’re going to begin to defund UNRWA over the next few years and Sweden immediately cut its funding,” says Neuer.
“We have many hundreds of pages of UNRWA officials, including school principals and teachers, who are either members of Hamas or openly support Hamas terrorism. And it’s completely out there – they’re hiding in plain sight.”
Exposing Francesca Albanese
Neuer has been exposing Francesca Albanese’s unsuitability to the role of UN special rapporteur and recently published damning details about how she and the UN allegedly concealed her funding by pro-Hamas lobby groups.
In November 2023 she travelled to Australia and New Zealand claiming that her trip was funded by the UN, but the UN Watch report reveals that parts of it were funded by several pro-Palestinian organisations, including Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFPA), Free Palestine Melbourne, Palestinians in Aotearoa, Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) and Palestinian Christians in Australia.
“AFPA published a video of someone praising Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 massacre, for his moving remarks,” says Neuer.
“So they thought that the mastermind of the October 7 massacre was someone who gives inspiring, moving remarks.”
After UN Watch filed an initial complaint, the UN secretariat referred the matter to the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. This panel was made up of Albanese’s close allies, with one member, a South African envoy for health issues, who had previously called Israel “hell”, referred to Israelis as “savages, evil, deserving of hell on Earth”, and “bloodthirsty genocidaires”.
Albanese was ultimately cleared.
During her appearances in Australia and New Zealand Albanese made many anti-Israel claims, which Neuer says is something an “agitator” would do, not a supposedly impartial UN investigator.
Albanese’s reappointment to the role this year was opposed by The Netherlands, Hungary and Argentina and she has been condemned for her various antisemitic comments by the US, Canada, France and Germany, but “sadly, not yet by Australia”.
“Australia has been silent and that’s troubling,” says Neuer.
“Australia has always been a very respected democracy and their voice matters. When it comes to someone like Francesca Albanese, who abuses her UN mandate every day to make wild incitement against Israel and Jews, Australia cannot be silent.”
Pressuring Australia to investigate
Neuer says he is trusting the Australian government to live up to its own principles and launch an investigation into Francesca Albanese’s visit to the country.
“This is a scandal, and the Australian government needs to investigate because it happened on their territory,” he says.
When he was in Canberra, he handed over a letter for Wong calling for an immediate investigation into the financial wrongdoing and the ethical breaches of the UN code of conduct in relation to Albanese’s Australia trip.
Photo: AAP Image
“Which groups paid her? How much money did they pay? Was it for flights, meals, expenses? Was there a speaking fee? Given we don’t know any of this, and if the UN wants to maintain any credibility, any reputation for objectivity, impartiality, we need to see a minimum amount of transparency,” says Neuer.
“Australia is a respected democracy. They believe in principles of transparency and accountability.”
Murders in Washington
The cold-blooded murders in Washington of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, a young couple who worked for the Israeli embassy, came shortly after a UN official claimed 14,000 babies in Gaza would die in 48 hours.
“I think the UN in this case just made up a lie,” says Neuer.
“There was no basis for it.”
The alleged murderer, who is part of a radical left, was shouting “Free, free Palestine” while he was being apprehended.
“These are the kinds of people who immediately pick up on lies put out by the UN, so whether this individual saw that lie is entirely possible,” says Neuer.
“We don’t have specific evidence of it, but we know in history that before Jews were massacred in the Middle Ages, it was preceded by incitement of the mob. And the way you incited the mob is you say, ‘the Jews are killing babies’. It’s the classic blood libel.
“People get enraged and it’s a moral outrage, so that justifies anything that you’re about to do.
“And when we have this endless repetition of lies that Israel is committing genocide, then the outrage, it’s deliberate. It’s done to demonise Jews, and this is where it leads.”
Neuer’s motivation to continue
Despite the challenges and hostility Neuer often faces, he doesn’t see any other choice but to continue doing this critical work.
“My job has put me at the United Nations and I’m seeing how a vital world body has been hijacked by dictatorships, by antisemitic regimes, regimes that kill their own people, and that dominate bodies like the Human Rights Council, and how they appoint apologists for terrorists, like Francesca Albanese,” he says.
Even here in Australia, Neuer says, academic Ben Saul is also an apologist for terrorists at the UN. Saul is the UN special rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism and holds the Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney.
“Seeing how such an influential world body has been so subverted, and because we have the access that we have – we’re in a position where we’re seeing it – and because we know where the bodies are buried, so to speak, for us at UN Watch it’s a vital mission that we’re playing,” says Neuer.
“And we know that, in many cases, no one else is going to expose these things. When we do expose it, it does get seen.”
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