John Bickley (5:16)

And you said the US under the Biden administration, directed a billion dollars to this organization.

Hillel Neuer (5:22)

That is correct. And that is despite the fact that in the first Trump administration under John Bolton and Nikki Haley, the US had cut funding for two years and stopped. So Biden reinstated funding. And, you know, the State Department never called us and asked if they could learn more about what the problems are. We're the only organization that is regularly tracking who the teachers are, who the school principals are, just by looking at their social media. It's all open source and they weren't interested. So it means that they knowingly. The State Department under the Biden administration, together with European countries, right. Canada, Australia, all the European countries, were funneling over a billion dollars to UNRWA every year. The good news is, in the past year, and I testified in Congress four times, I went to the European Parliament, the Swiss Parliament, the Dutch Parliament. I'm going to be back in the Swiss parliament in 10 days in the Swiss Senate. And thankfully, I can inform you that the United States in March passed a bipartisan legislation that was initiated by my friend Representative Chris Smith and others in the Republican Party. But enough Democrats went on board they had to, if they wanted any foreign aid to get out the door, passed a law. The US has frozen funding for UNRWA until March. I'm hopeful the incoming Trump administration will reinstate that freeze, will sustain that freeze. The Netherlands voted a couple weeks ago to begin cutting funding for unrwa, which is huge, the first EU country to do so. Sweden about two weeks ago, voted to immediately defund unrwa, which is surprising, but there's now a sort of a conservative government there. And in Switzerland, the lower house voted in September to immediately suspend funding for unwra. They cited our reports and I'm invited to appear in The Senate on January 20, actually, in the city of Bern in the capital. So enough countries are beginning to see it, but sadly, the majority, France, Germany, the uk, Canada, under Trudeau. For now. Trudeau's leaving. But for now, Australia, they're all funding unra.

John Bickley (7:25)

Has there been any accountability at all from the United nations to keep this group in check over the years?

Hillel Neuer (7:30)

Not really. There were, you know, face saving gestures, artificial gestures meant to throw sand in our eyes. They, from time to time, will put a slap on the wrist on some principal, spend them for a few months. The head of the UNWRA Teachers union in Gaza is a guy named Su Al Hindi. He was exposed of having Hamas ties back in 2011. They slapped him on the wrist Suspended him for a month or two. He was back running the teachers union, running a school. And then it emerged in 2017 that he was elected to the Hamas politburo together with Yahya Sinwar, who's the Mastermind of the October 7th massacre. One of his colleagues on the Hamas committee was this leading ambar figure of education. Right. So it's not somebody who's in charge of giving out bags of food or about building apartments for people. It's the in charge of education. And we're told that the UN is making sure that the Palestinians are getting educated for peace and human rights. And it's all a lie. So from time to time, they would do fake suspensions. A few months ago, in February, they created a supposed inquiry or probe headed by the former French Foreign Minister, Catherine Colonna. It was a sham. It was rigged from the start. Catherine Colonna is a huge supporter of UNRWA. She brought three Scandinavian NGOs. Each one is a bigger champion for UNWRA than the next. It was all rigged from the start. So you asked me about accountability. There have been a few pretend gestures, but never have the donors of UNRWA actually ever attempted to do anything serious.

John Bickley (9:09)

With the US suspending funding and a few other countries like you've outlined joining that effort. It is that enough to eliminate this group or is it just going to keep existing as long as they have a few of these states continuing to give money?

Hillel Neuer (9:21)

Well, there's money, there's political support annually, there's General assembly at the un, UN General assembly resolutions that proclaim their support for unrwa. So there they get large majorities. So for now, it's going to take a lot. It's going to need defunding by major countries, meaning Germany, France, the uk. They need to get on board on defunding. And they have to recognize that the entire raison d'etre, the entire purpose of UNRWA over the years has become twisted. It was founded in 1949, approximately to actually help resettle Palestinians who had left the region and gone to Jordan after the war of 1948. 49. And over time, it became the opposite. They haven't resettled a single Palestinian. Even those who have citizenship in Jordan for 70 years, the UN says, tells them you are a refugee, which is absurd. Someone who moved to America 70 years ago became an American citizen. Neither him, his daughter, his grandson, they're not refugees anymore. They're American citizens. But according to unrwa, if you were ever a Palestinian, you are forever a refugee. And you're going to go to Israel, you're going to dismantle Israel. What they call the right of return, which we know on October 7th means to massacre, violently destroy Israel in order to dismantle it. So as long as that is the purpose of the agency, which. That is the purpose of the agency, it is pathological. There's no way to reform this agency. It is the people say, who will replace UNRWA? That's like asking, as Dr. Anat Wilfa said, that's like asking who will replace, who will replace the arsonist. UNWRA is not the firefighter. They're not the ones solving the problems of war. They're the ones creating war. They're perpetuating war. They tell Palestinians in Gaza, gaza is not your home. Your home is in Tel Aviv. And so we shouldn't be surprised that UNRWA graduates are those who carried out the massacre on behalf of Hamas on October 7.

John Bickley (11:20)

What are the next steps in terms of continuing this momentum to expose the group and defund them?

Hillel Neuer (11:25)

I think we need leadership. We need leadership. So our organization, we're a non governmental organization, we're a nonprofit group based in Geneva. We're doing our part to set out the facts. And we have huge amount of data going back 10 years, especially in the past year, documenting in detail how from the top to the bottom, there is infiltration by Hamas with this UN agency, which we're all funding again, the US Even this year, they froze funding, but that didn't stop the State Department from shoveling out, I think, over $100 million by the time the freeze was announced in January 25th, that they already shoveled out the door over $100 million, which is absurd. So the next steps are, you know, we're going to continue exposing their infiltration. We're going to need leadership. You know, at least Stefanik is the incoming US Ambassador to the United Nations. We're going to need her. We're going to need new Secretary of State, incoming Marco Rubio to take leadership and really speak to their allies, the French, the Germans, the Spanish, the Italians, the Norwegians, who are major supporters of unrwa, and tell them, look, if we want to keep perpetuating war, I'm going to quote the Swiss foreign minister in 2018, you wouldn't expect it from Switzerland. But the Swiss Foreign Minister, Ignacio Cassis, visiting UNRWA facilities in Jordan, said, look, this is a perverse logic. UNRWA is not the solution, it's the problem. We are perpetuating it. And he said, it's a perverse logic. We're just perpetuating the problem from one generation to the next. So we're going to need leadership and we're going to need Western leadership Because the truth is the Arab countries could fund Iraq. It's only one and a half billion dollars. Qatar spends that much on buying a sports team every second day. So. So they could easily fund it, but they want the Western states to fund it for the legitimacy of the pathological agenda. We need leading democracies to say this is a failure. Palestinians should and are able to govern themselves and they don't need an agency that perpetuates only war, grievance, terrorism and dependency.

John Bickley (13:22)

Well, you outlined a lot of disturbing things. I think the most disturbing though is how openly these members of UNRWA were supporting terrorism and a bunch of countries from the west just seem to turn a blind eye to it. Hillel, thank you so much for talking with us.

Hillel Neuer (13:36)

Thank you for having me.

John Bickley (13:37)

That was Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.