Full Comment - September 30, 2024


We know the UN is immoral. This guy rubs it in their face


Episode Stats


Length

47 minutes

Words per minute

166.08809

Word count

7,958

Sentence count

591

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

39

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we talk to Halal Neuer about his work at UN Watch and why he thinks too many Canadians don t see the United Nation for what it is. Halal is a Canadian human rights lawyer and human rights activist who has been with UN Watch for over 20 years.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Ms. Duhan, as a human rights expert, why didn't you mention that China is holding a million Uyghurs in camps,
00:00:08.000 persecuted because of their religion and ethnicity?
00:00:11.000 Why didn't you mention they are being used for forced labor? 0.82
00:00:14.000 Why are you fighting sanctions imposed on the enslaving companies by the US, EU, UK and Canada,
00:00:19.000 which only seek to end the suppression?
00:00:21.000 Now, according to UN report 49-82-1, your office received a $200,000 gift from China.
00:00:29.000 Do you think it brings honor to the UN when you then do videos and reports saying the Uyghurs are happy 1.00
00:00:34.000 and that the victim is the Chinese government?
00:00:36.000 When you visited Iran, Syria, Venezuela and Zimbabwe,
00:00:39.000 why did you likewise ignore millions of victims and instead you sided with their oppressors?
00:00:48.000 Thank you.
00:00:49.000 That is the voice of Halal Neuer from UN Watch, chastising a Chinese diplomat at the United Nations recently.
00:00:56.000 Hello, I'm Brian Lilly. Welcome to the Full Comment Podcast.
00:00:59.000 The United Nations is an organization deeply loved by Canadians,
00:01:03.000 but one that unfortunately I believe too many have rose-colored glasses on when they view what happens there.
00:01:09.000 It's not a league of democracies.
00:01:11.000 It's not a collection of the best countries in the world sitting around talking about how to make things better.
00:01:17.000 It is in fact a place that is far too often run by rogues, dictators, despots.
00:01:23.000 Hello, Neuer is our guest on the Full Comment Podcast today and we're going to talk about what his work is at UN Watch and why it's so vital.
00:01:31.000 Hello, thanks for the time.
00:01:33.000 Great to be here.
00:01:34.000 How did a nice Montreal boy end up living in Geneva yelling at people at the United Nations?
00:01:41.000 Well, I never yell. I chastise them with logic, morality and politeness in the Canadian style.
00:01:51.000 But my background is that I went to school. I'm born and raised in Montreal.
00:01:57.000 I went to Concordia for my BA in political science and Western civilization at a great program called the Liberal Arts College, a great books program.
00:02:05.000 And then I went to McGill Law School.
00:02:07.000 I studied with eminent human rights lawyer Professor Erwin Kotler.
00:02:11.000 And we can blame him for my career trajectory.
00:02:15.000 I think he inspired me to want to do something meaningful in law.
00:02:19.000 I loved law, but I didn't see myself in the conventional legal practice by the time I was in law school.
00:02:25.000 And yeah, I aspired to do something that was meaningful.
00:02:29.000 And the job at UN Watch opened up.
00:02:31.000 I had worked for three years as an attorney in New York at a major law firm,
00:02:35.000 but everyone knew that I was looking to find that meaningful position.
00:02:39.000 And this opened up at UN Watch, been around since 1993.
00:02:43.000 It was started a good decade before I joined by a human rights hero named Morris Abram,
00:02:51.000 who was one of the leading civil rights activists with Martin Luther King back in the 50s before it was fashionable.
00:02:57.000 He also was a UN expert before that body got hijacked and he helped draft the UN Convention Against Racism.
00:03:04.000 So UN Watch combats anti-Semitism and fights dictatorships and upholds human rights.
00:03:10.000 So for me, I found it. I've been there now 20 years, quite a rewarding and meaningful career and never boring.
00:03:17.000 I said earlier that it's not a collection of the world's best countries.
00:03:22.000 It's not a League of Nations or League of Democracies.
00:03:27.000 Do you agree with me that too many Canadians don't see the UN for what it is?
00:03:33.000 And, you know, I'm not saying this is someone that says we should abolish the United Nations or anything like that.
00:03:38.000 But, you know, you get people saying, well, the UN says this or the UN says that as if that is better than what an elected parliamentary democratically elected government might say.
00:03:51.000 Well, it's from the UN.
00:03:53.000 Well, you know, the UN sometimes has groups like North Korea run their nuclear disarmament committees, which makes zero sense to me.
00:04:04.000 Are Canadians looking at it, you know, with clear eyes or or rose colored glasses?
00:04:10.000 Look, I think there's no question that Canada is kind of stuck in an old vision of the UN, which may have been the noble vision from 1945.
00:04:20.000 Franklin Delano Roosevelt had the idea of a liberal internationalism.
00:04:24.000 It's reflected in the UN Charter, which is a magnificent document.
00:04:27.000 Then you have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted three years later in 1948.
00:04:32.000 A Canadian John Humphrey played a key role in drafting that document.
00:04:36.000 So both the UN Charter Universal Declaration do represent the highest values of humanity and human rights and international law and freedom.
00:04:45.000 And certainly a number of the figures who were involved at the beginning, like Eleanor Roosevelt, were eminent idealists.
00:04:52.000 But over time, very quickly, the UN became hijacked by some of the worst dictatorships.
00:04:56.000 Now, you mentioned North Korea on certain bodies.
00:04:58.000 They're currently sitting on the executive board of the World Health Organization.
00:05:03.000 In the past year, just the past year, China, Cuba, Eritrea, and Algeria, Somalia, Vietnam are sitting on the UN Human Rights Council.
00:05:14.000 It's the highest intergovernmental body on human rights in the world.
00:05:17.000 60% are either full-on dictatorships or other forms of non-democracies.
00:05:22.000 A year ago in October, the Islamic regime in Iran was made chair of the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum.
00:05:28.000 They were allowed to become president of the UN Conference on Disarmament.
00:05:32.000 The Islamic regime in Iran two years ago was sitting on the UN Women's Rights Commission. 0.95
00:05:36.000 We led the campaign to expel them.
00:05:38.000 And amazingly, in a one-off, it happened.
00:05:41.000 America finally picked up on our campaign and kicked out the Ayatollahs from the Women's Rights Commission. 1.00
00:05:47.000 So these kinds of absurd Orwellian elections are routine.
00:05:52.000 They are routine.
00:05:54.000 And just to come to your question, the sad part is that today's folks who care about human rights, progressives, and so forth, tend to obscure all of this.
00:06:05.000 And there's a reason for that.
00:06:07.000 Halal, it's long puzzled me how you get groups like Iran or North Korea heading up nuclear disarmament committees.
00:06:15.000 And I remember the first time I heard about this with North Korea, it was years and years ago.
00:06:24.000 John Baird was still Canada's foreign minister at the time.
00:06:27.000 And I remember asking him, I ran into him and I said, how does this happen?
00:06:31.000 And he said, it was their turn.
00:06:34.000 And I looked at him puzzled.
00:06:35.000 And he said, they go through the list alphabetically.
00:06:39.000 So it doesn't matter that you're in the middle of trying to build nuclear bombs.
00:06:43.000 If you're next on the list alphabetically, you become the head.
00:06:46.000 It's true.
00:06:47.000 That's how it works at the Conference of Disarmament here in Geneva, which is absurd enough when you have Iran and North Korea pursuing illicit nuclear weapons programs and they're handed the gavel for a month or two on disarmament. 0.57
00:07:02.000 It's absurd, but it's much worse in that most of these memberships that we're talking about today are elections.
00:07:11.000 OK, when the Islamic regime of Iran was named chair of the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum, that was a designation made by the president.
00:07:19.000 He circulated a document to all member states saying, I'm going to appoint Iran. 0.71
00:07:24.000 Does anyone object?
00:07:25.000 No one objected.
00:07:26.000 He did it.
00:07:27.000 And then the election of China, Algeria, Cuba, Eritrea, Vietnam, Somalia to the Human Rights Council, that's a full on election, candidacies, campaigning, General Assembly votes.
00:07:38.000 And these guys will typically get 80 percent of the votes.
00:07:41.000 So, yes, it's a rotation for very rare positions.
00:07:47.000 And that's problematic enough.
00:07:48.000 But much worse is that many of these positions, again, electing Iran to the Women's Rights Commission, that was a proper election. 0.91
00:07:55.000 The issues around the UN, there's been a lot of focus on how the UN, specifically UNRWA or other UN bodies, how they deal with Israel.
00:08:08.000 But your work at UN Watch goes far beyond just dealing with issues surrounding UNRWA.
00:08:14.000 We opened with that clip of you chastising a Chinese diplomat.
00:08:21.000 Tell us about some of the other areas that UN Watch works in and what your goals are in bringing up these issues.
00:08:30.000 Sure.
00:08:31.000 And, you know, I want to come back to something you raised.
00:08:34.000 I think it's important to to to circle back.
00:08:37.000 You know, you asked whether Canadians have a rose colored view of the UN.
00:08:45.000 And the question is, why?
00:08:47.000 I mean, it's now been decades already that, you know, dictatorships like Idi Amin back in the day of Uganda are sitting on various human rights bodies.
00:08:58.000 Why is it that so many educated folks, people who are academics, professors, human rights activists, leading politicians, you know, turn a blind eye to this perversion of the bodies that they claim to care about?
00:09:14.420 And I think the answer is that it's a variety of things.
00:09:17.420 One is it's it's it's hard for them to acknowledge.
00:09:20.420 But, you know, many many of these folks have a world view that says international bodies are sacred.
00:09:27.420 And that's part of their world view.
00:09:29.420 And they just can't give it up no matter what the facts are.
00:09:32.420 But beyond that, it's it's in part because many of these world bodies are are functionally subvert the West or are attacking the West.
00:09:43.420 You know, in that clip that you played, I was a UN expert who had just gone to China.
00:09:48.420 She's she's from Belarus, but is an apologist for the Chinese regime and the Chinese diplomats commended her for going on a trip to Xinjiang in China, which they had orchestrated.
00:09:58.420 And, you know, she her whole mission.
00:10:02.420 She's the UN expert on sanctions.
00:10:04.420 The whole mission is to attack Western countries for sanctioning dictatorships.
00:10:08.420 So she's gone to Venezuela.
00:10:11.420 She's gone to Zimbabwe, Damascus, Syria, Tehran and Iran, Qatar, Russia and now China.
00:10:20.420 And she says all of these regimes are victims of Western sanctions.
00:10:24.420 And the problems in these countries in Syria, Iran, Zimbabwe and Venezuela are due to Western sanctions, not the fact that Venezuela has an evil dictator named Maduro, who caused seven million to flee, not Zimbabwe, who has an evil dictator.
00:10:38.420 Manangawa, who arrests human rights activists and throws them in prison, just like his predecessor, Mugabe or Syria, Bashar al-Assad, killing half a million people or the Chinese regime subjugating 1.5 billion people to the worst forms of oppression. 0.55
00:10:53.420 So she is a UN expert dedicated to attacking the West.
00:10:58.420 And sadly, you know, many folks who have some kind of anti-capitalist, anti-Western agenda and are seeking to undermine the West.
00:11:08.420 I'm talking about people on the left, especially on the far left.
00:11:11.980 They see an ally at the UN and the ally, the alliance is based on the common interest, which is both the dictatorships and those on the far left are seeking to demonize the West.
00:11:24.420 And that's where you have this toxic alliance.
00:11:26.120 And that's, I think, part of why the UN gets away scot-free.
00:11:28.760 It isn't a bizarre alliance, but it's one that's gone on for years. 1.00
00:11:33.760 And as you say, I mean, the way you describe it, it sounds like they're what Lenin would have called the useful idiots. 0.99
00:11:39.760 They're helping the dictatorships continue to get away with things like the Uyghur persecution in China. 1.00
00:11:48.080 Yeah. And, you know, one of the things you asked about our work, one of the things that we do is we are often the one of the only voices giving a platform to the true human rights heroes of these countries.
00:12:03.800 So, yes, I know that China, Cuba, Eritrea are sitting on the Human Rights Council.
00:12:10.400 But actually, if anyone deserves to be on the Human Rights Council, it's their political prisoners.
00:12:14.400 And that's who we bring.
00:12:15.140 You know, we just brought a few months ago to speak inside the UN at our annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights.
00:12:21.540 We've done it now for over 16 years with 30 other NGOs around the world that do understand who the true villains are and who the heroes are.
00:12:31.680 We bring dissidents.
00:12:33.080 We brought a young woman named Rae Cha.
00:12:34.720 Her crime, Brian, was that she stood on a street in Shanghai and lifted a blank piece of paper.
00:12:41.060 That was her crime.
00:12:42.040 Right away, police took her away.
00:12:43.340 Right. There was nothing written on the paper.
00:12:44.780 So, you mentioned this story when you were speaking recently in Toronto and I heard that and I didn't get a chance to follow up.
00:12:54.420 What was her crime?
00:12:56.440 What was she trying to do with a blank piece of paper?
00:12:59.860 How does that get you arrested and thrown in jail?
00:13:02.320 Yeah, you know, the same thing happens in Russia.
00:13:05.400 The dictatorships are determined to stamp out any forms of dissent.
00:13:10.820 And when they see someone, you know, daring to stand up and in some way to signal that they're protesting the system, they lock them up.
00:13:19.180 So, it doesn't matter what the laws say.
00:13:21.540 So, when she stood up with the white piece of paper, everyone understood that she was saying, I object to the system.
00:13:27.320 I object to the communist regime.
00:13:28.700 And they didn't care that nothing was written on the paper.
00:13:31.660 That was enough. 0.96
00:13:32.560 You're a troublemaker.
00:13:33.600 You're challenging the system.
00:13:35.180 They took her away through her in prison.
00:13:36.600 She was arrested a couple of times.
00:13:37.960 Eventually, she got out.
00:13:39.300 She now lives in Europe.
00:13:40.020 And quite a courageous woman.
00:13:42.480 We've brought numerous political prisoners from China who've spent way more time in prison than she did.
00:13:48.900 My friend, Yang Jianli, who spent about five years in prison, was in solitary confinement because he spoke up for workers' rights and other victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre, which he survived.
00:14:02.180 And so, when these dictatorships are sitting in these elevated UN bodies, we bring their victims.
00:14:06.940 We have the right to speak at the UN.
00:14:08.780 Again, they don't always let us do it.
00:14:10.580 They sometimes stifle us and try to censor us.
00:14:13.760 But we haven't given up.
00:14:15.640 And we've been able over the years to bring well over 200 heroic activists.
00:14:20.480 Last night here in Geneva, I had the privilege to have dinner with one of my heroes.
00:14:26.820 His name is Vladimir Karamurza.
00:14:29.000 He is someone who has dared to speak out in Russia.
00:14:33.600 He's now, I would say, the leading opposition activist, certainly, with the death of Navalny in prison not long ago.
00:14:40.440 Vladimir Karamurza was poisoned twice, went into a coma each time, poisoned by the Putin regime because he's a leading democracy activist, a politician who's not allowed to run there.
00:14:52.580 And two years ago, on April 11th, 2022, he was in Moscow and he called out Putin for war crimes in an interview on CNN.
00:15:03.580 A few hours later, Brian, they came and took him away.
00:15:05.840 He was in prison for 843 days.
00:15:11.200 He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, which is astonishing.
00:15:14.600 It's even against the – Russia has some kind of laws.
00:15:17.700 It's even beyond what their laws allow.
00:15:20.540 He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
00:15:22.820 He was sent to a Siberian penal colony.
00:15:25.040 He was in solitary confinement.
00:15:26.760 He was suffering medically.
00:15:27.780 We didn't think he'd survive.
00:15:28.680 And miraculously, on August 1st, there was a prisoner swap with the West and about 16 prisoners were exchanged from Russia and he got out.
00:15:36.480 He's now meeting world leaders.
00:15:38.400 I think he'll be in Canada.
00:15:39.380 He was actually voted unanimously by the House of Commons and the Senate to get honorary citizenship of Canada.
00:15:46.440 So I believe he's on his way to Canada in the next couple of weeks for a ceremony, quite deserving.
00:15:51.940 So I met with Vladimir and he's the kind of person that we've brought to speak numerous times at the UN.
00:15:57.720 The UN will obviously often interrupt him.
00:16:01.260 We brought his wife to speak when he was in prison.
00:16:03.600 We've done the same with dissidents who defy the regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Iran, North Korea.
00:16:13.520 And that's a big part of what we do throughout the year.
00:16:16.120 In this past two weeks, we gave a platform to the head of the opposition in Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado.
00:16:24.740 She spoke for us by video.
00:16:26.320 We brought the head of the opposition in Belarus, Svetlana Tsukhouniskaya.
00:16:30.460 She spoke for us also by video.
00:16:32.900 We've brought activists on Ukraine to speak out.
00:16:36.320 And upcoming, we'll have activists on Yemen and from one of the Uyghur activists who will speak out against that ridiculous UN expert who's been an apologist for the Uyghur. 0.92
00:16:45.560 So a big part of what we do, Brian, is fighting the dictatorships and using whatever platforms we have at the UN to give to give a voice to the voiceless.
00:16:54.380 You talk about these dissidents and many of them, their lives are in jeopardy constantly.
00:16:59.420 You have someone like Mashish Alinajad, the Iranian dissident.
00:17:05.700 My understanding is she's constantly moving because the Iranian regime is trying to kill her on American soil. 0.98
00:17:12.300 Oh, yeah.
00:17:12.820 Oh, yeah.
00:17:13.180 Massey Alinajad was targeted twice.
00:17:15.980 It's astonishing.
00:17:16.780 She lives in Brooklyn.
00:17:18.360 They came to kill her twice.
00:17:20.200 Once they came to kidnap her in a plot that was revealed, documented by the U.S. Department of Justice.
00:17:26.080 They hired folks to kidnap her, bring her to Venezuela by speedboat from Brooklyn. 0.98
00:17:32.640 And then from Venezuela, they were going to take her to Iran.
00:17:35.620 And then about two years ago in the summer, a guy with a AK-47 submachine gun came to her house in Brooklyn to kill her.
00:17:44.500 He was a, maybe from Kazakhstan, from a Central Asian country.
00:17:50.120 Basically, what Iran does is they hire mafia killers from different places to do the hit jobs for them, to be the assassins. 0.93
00:17:58.060 So they hired three hardened criminals from one of the Central Asian countries.
00:18:02.680 And the United States arrested one of them, by chance, was caught at a traffic stop in Brooklyn.
00:18:08.320 And the others were picked up in Europe.
00:18:12.360 So she's been literally targeted for assassination in America, on American soil, which is astonishing that America allows the president of Iran to walk freely this week in New York for the U.N. opening to come with an entourage of some 40 advisors and diplomats, even as the regime is trying to kill President Trump, according to U.S. intelligence, and other top officials and dissidents like her. 0.57
00:18:37.080 Of course, Salman Rushdie was attacked by an attacker who was incited by the fatwa put out by the Ayatollah back in the day. 0.62
00:18:46.780 And, you know, as I said, Iran has been elected numerous times to high positions this past year.
00:18:53.800 So we brought Masi to speak in Geneva, received our Women's Rights Award at our Geneva Summit several years ago.
00:19:01.000 We hosted her a year or two ago in New York.
00:19:03.680 I do commend Bob Ray.
00:19:05.180 He did attend.
00:19:06.120 That's our ambassador, the Canadian ambassador at the U.N.
00:19:08.560 He did attend and speak at our event with Masi Linajad, which was on the sidelines of the U.N. Women's Rights Commission.
00:19:15.820 So that's the kind of thing we're trying to do and help these incredible heroes who have the courage to really risk their lives.
00:19:22.580 One of the ways in which the United Nations shamed themselves, in my view, is how they treat the only democratic state in the Middle East, the only truly democratic state in the Middle East.
00:19:35.940 And I'm talking, of course, about Israel.
00:19:37.800 Hillel, that's where I first got to know you and your work was years ago.
00:19:43.360 You pointing out that Israel is treated differently than everyone else.
00:19:49.060 Let's start there.
00:19:50.240 The General Assembly is meeting.
00:19:55.300 The leaders are in New York.
00:19:57.200 There's going to be an awful lot of votes about Israel and condemning them.
00:20:01.800 What about these dictatorships?
00:20:03.520 Do they get the same treatment as Israel?
00:20:06.680 No, they don't.
00:20:07.460 You know, in an average year at the General Assembly, if you look at last year, the vast majority of countries were completely ignored,
00:20:15.580 meaning there was not a single resolution on China.
00:20:20.440 There was not a – it was 1.5 billion people who are denied any freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly.
00:20:27.280 If you dare to speak out, you're thrown in prison right away, as we mentioned.
00:20:32.300 Zero resolutions on Venezuela, a dictatorship that caused 7 million people to flee,
00:20:38.480 which there were elections that have been faked by the regime.
00:20:44.380 And Maduro refuses to accept what the rest of the world recognizes, that he lost the election.
00:20:49.840 Turkey's Erdogan, who's a dictator and supports terrorism in his own right.
00:20:56.500 You go across the board. 0.90
00:20:57.760 The vast majority of the world's worst abusers get a free pass.
00:21:01.440 Nothing is done at all.
00:21:02.940 And then you get a handful of countries that get one resolution.
00:21:06.920 So last year, thankfully, there was one resolution on Iran. 0.97
00:21:11.420 There was one resolution on North Korea.
00:21:13.640 There was one resolution on Syria.
00:21:15.900 And then there were 15 on Israel, right?
00:21:18.320 You couldn't make this up.
00:21:19.380 One on North Korea, 15 on Israel. 0.72
00:21:21.780 Whatever you may think about Israel, imperfect, flawed.
00:21:24.360 The notion that it would be that the UN would deem Israel a small democracy of barely 9 million people,
00:21:32.180 which has an activist Supreme Court that has free and fair elections where Arabs can vote and be elected.
00:21:38.500 Again, it's not perfect.
00:21:39.460 A lot of things that need to be fixed.
00:21:41.160 But the notion that that imperfect liberal democracy gets 15 times more condemnation than the North Korean regime,
00:21:48.620 than the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, than the Iranian Islamist regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is absolutely absurd.
00:21:58.020 And in my opinion, it undermines the very moral legitimacy of what is the UN's parliament.
00:22:03.240 The General Assembly is the UN's parliament.
00:22:05.380 And as you said before, why in the world would we, would anyone, choose to heed a pronouncement
00:22:14.260 by the United Nations General Assembly instead of a democratically elected parliament, you know, in Canada or in some other country?
00:22:23.060 So that is regular at the UN.
00:22:25.740 And I'm here in Geneva right now.
00:22:27.460 I'm speaking tomorrow at the Human Rights Council.
00:22:30.960 There is in every meeting an agenda, an agenda that we follow.
00:22:36.320 It's the same agenda.
00:22:37.680 Built in 10 items.
00:22:39.000 We're going to tomorrow be dealing with item four, human rights situations around the world.
00:22:44.720 If you want to take the floor and address any of 193 countries, you do it under agenda item four.
00:22:50.760 And then a couple of days later, there's an agenda item only on Israel.
00:22:54.120 It's called Occupied Arab Territories, Including Palestine.
00:22:57.220 That's for basically an entire day.
00:22:59.700 About 60 different dictatorships, Islamic regimes, Arab regimes, and then the Cubans, the Venezuelans,
00:23:05.900 the North Koreans, will accuse Israel of every possible crime, genocide, apartheid, you name it.
00:23:12.060 So one agenda item on the whole world, one agenda item on Israel alone, no other country,
00:23:17.720 not Syria, not Iran, not Putin blasting the Ukrainian people every day, gets their own agenda.
00:23:23.560 Hold on.
00:23:24.120 Let me go back on that.
00:23:26.580 So they spend a whole day discussing the problems of every other part of the world.
00:23:31.760 So Xinjiang and the Uyghur oppression, complete lack of freedom in North Korea, complete lack 0.96
00:23:38.100 of freedom in the Islamic Republic of Iran, complete lack of freedom in Cuba.
00:23:42.660 That gets one whole day.
00:23:45.140 And Israel gets its own day. 0.94
00:23:48.040 And the dictators get to sit there and denounce Israel.
00:23:51.680 That's right.
00:23:52.860 And this is, keep in mind, this is built in.
00:23:55.880 It's been there since the council was created in June 2006.
00:24:00.440 And it's happened around our 57th session.
00:24:02.320 It's happened over 57 sessions, three times a year, every time.
00:24:06.460 So the demonization of the world's only Jewish state is built in.
00:24:11.020 And, you know, to their credit, many democracies do not attend on that day.
00:24:14.980 They've acknowledged that it's demonizing.
00:24:17.800 But sadly, many of them do go along on the various resolutions.
00:24:20.780 You know, more resolutions have been adopted against Israel than Iran, Syria, and North Korea
00:24:25.200 put together.
00:24:26.640 And this kind of demonization of the Jewish state, which really amounts to the new anti-Semitism
00:24:30.780 in modern times, it not only harms peace because it empowers Hamas, it signals to Hamas and the 0.98
00:24:37.120 jihad and Hezbollah that the world is with you.
00:24:40.000 It does that.
00:24:40.900 And much worse, it undermines the very credibility of the human rights system.
00:24:44.720 So, you know, groups like ours, we want the UN to work.
00:24:47.860 And again, our founder wrote the convention against racism adopted in 1964 by the United
00:24:55.080 Nations.
00:24:55.720 And to see that these same bodies today completely turned upside down, and I'm accused of being
00:25:01.520 against the UN when the, you know, the Iranian regime is sitting there with the gavel, is 0.93
00:25:06.480 Orwellian.
00:25:07.560 And frankly, it's going to continue unless our countries make the political decision to
00:25:13.400 call it out.
00:25:14.100 And so far, they rarely do.
00:25:16.000 We have to take a quick break right now.
00:25:18.500 More with Halal Luer in moments.
00:25:20.760 I remember having several discussions with the former American ambassador to the United
00:25:26.780 Nations, John Bolton, about reforming the UN.
00:25:30.640 And, you know, Ambassador Bolton is a great supporter of the UN, but sees that it is flawed.
00:25:40.220 Do we need to, well, obviously it needs reformed, but is it feasible to reform?
00:25:46.480 And I'll throw one idea out at you.
00:25:47.860 Russia was given a veto when the United Nations was founded, along with Britain, France, China.
00:25:56.460 Should Russia still even have a veto?
00:25:59.220 They're not the power they once were.
00:26:01.400 They do not control the entire Soviet Union the way they used to.
00:26:06.420 Do they still need to have a veto? 0.99
00:26:08.100 That's one idea of reforming it.
00:26:10.000 Yeah, I think that's, you're touching on something that is very important and has been identified
00:26:17.200 certainly by Russian activists.
00:26:18.700 The idea that Russia sits there at the Security Council, they too get to preside, you know,
00:26:25.220 a couple times a year and have the veto doesn't make any sense morally.
00:26:30.940 As you said, politically, we're not in 1945.
00:26:33.940 They don't control half the world as they did then.
00:26:36.840 But let's keep in mind that the moment you do reform, you open up a Pandora's box, you
00:26:41.740 say, okay, you know, let's add more countries.
00:26:43.880 So who do you add?
00:26:44.680 Do you add, you know, regional powers like India would be an obvious one.
00:26:48.540 Do you add Brazil?
00:26:49.940 Do you add South Africa?
00:26:52.700 Well, you might want to add them, but if you put Brazil in the Security Council, but
00:26:56.020 you don't put Argentina, if you put South Africa on and you don't put in Nigeria, you 0.98
00:26:59.820 know, it's a whole Pandora's box.
00:27:02.080 And so far it has impeded any efforts at reform to date.
00:27:06.840 Also, if you open it up, you know, do you dilute?
00:27:09.100 Let's keep in mind Russia has the veto, which is tragic because they use it to defend terrorists. 0.83
00:27:13.980 That's why Hamas and the Jihad are not listed as terrorists at the UN.
00:27:17.980 You know, it's only ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
00:27:19.900 For whatever reason, Russia and China allowed that to pass, but they protect their allies
00:27:23.660 and they protect Hamas and they've prevented any listing of the Hamas and the Jihad or Hezbollah
00:27:29.780 as terrorist groups at the UN.
00:27:31.780 And so, you know, Russia has the veto, but the U.S. has the veto too, which is good.
00:27:37.000 And that prevents a lot of bad things.
00:27:39.200 And do we want to dilute the U.S. veto?
00:27:41.060 Very complicated.
00:27:41.940 I'll be honest with you.
00:27:42.740 I think efforts at reform are so complicated that in many ways it's a distraction.
00:27:49.700 The simple things that could and should be done are available.
00:27:52.720 It's available for Canada to take the floor and say, Mr. President of the General Assembly
00:27:58.580 or of the Human Rights Council, it is absurd that you are giving a free pass to the Chinese 1.00
00:28:04.340 communist regime, to the Cuban communist regime, to Venezuela's Maduro.
00:28:08.520 And the list goes on.
00:28:09.840 And it's absurd that you're demonizing the only Jewish state in the manner that they do.
00:28:15.540 And all of these things, and also to call out Alina Duhan, the UN rapporteur, who acts
00:28:21.440 as a open propagandist for the worst regimes of Iran, Syria, China, Venezuela.
00:28:28.660 Just speaking out, the act of speaking out, the act of voting no, calling the vote, are
00:28:33.180 very powerful.
00:28:33.940 You know, in Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, and other democracies speak out.
00:28:38.820 Even if the vote is lost, what they say makes an impression on anyone decent, certainly in
00:28:46.100 the media, in the academic world, in the, I'd say, the leading, most influential circles. 0.99
00:28:51.480 They know that what, you know, what Zimbabwe may say, or North Korea, is silly and ridiculous. 0.95
00:28:59.300 But what the democracies say matters. 0.85
00:29:01.240 So in my opinion, the best way to make a difference would be for our own democracies to begin
00:29:07.160 to speak out, to stop going along, to get along, which is sadly what happens too often at the
00:29:13.340 UN.
00:29:14.380 Well, as a Canadian, how do you think Canada has been doing of late?
00:29:18.760 I know that starting in the, can't remember if it was the late Kretchen years or while Paul
00:29:25.760 Martin was prime minister, and then all through Stephen Harper's time, Canada took a strong line
00:29:32.680 on walking out when there were any obvious anti-Israel, flagrant abuse of Israel motions
00:29:40.940 that were going to be brought forward for a vote.
00:29:44.880 Last year, you know, we suddenly changed a bit.
00:29:50.060 How would you rate Canada, both on issues surrounding Israel, but also the wider one?
00:29:55.220 It sounds like we're not calling out China.
00:29:58.140 Perhaps we're worried about trade.
00:29:59.680 We're not calling out Cuba.
00:30:01.100 We like cheap vacations.
00:30:03.540 How would you rate our efforts at the UN?
00:30:06.420 Yeah, well, you brought some interesting history.
00:30:08.500 Indeed, Kretchen back in the days, we're talking about the late 90s or early 2000s.
00:30:13.960 Kretchen was, I would say, kind of where the Europeans are at, where they would go along 0.76
00:30:18.120 with much of the UN jackals ganging up on Israel, and Kretchen would go along with all of that.
00:30:25.860 Paul Martin, indeed, began to change that and began to move Canada away from voting yes
00:30:31.340 to abstain and to voting no, which is the principled vote.
00:30:34.980 Stephen Harper, when he was elected back in 2006, accelerated that significantly so that
00:30:41.600 eventually, when at the time there were about 20 resolutions a year against Israel,
00:30:45.500 he was basically voting no on virtually all of them.
00:30:49.060 It was controversial.
00:30:50.460 The diplomats in the foreign ministry and the CBC went crazy.
00:30:54.380 I mean, start even Paul Martin.
00:30:55.500 The sky is falling.
00:30:57.200 Woe unto us. 1.00
00:30:57.960 What will happen?
00:30:59.060 Canada and the Arab world, the relations will shatter. 1.00
00:31:01.880 This, that, and the other.
00:31:02.920 All nonsense.
00:31:04.840 Canada did not suffer.
00:31:06.680 They were respected by those who saw a country taking a principled stand.
00:31:12.460 And I remember at the Human Rights Council, George W. Bush had pulled out.
00:31:15.640 We're talking now 2006.
00:31:17.500 June 2006, George W. Bush had pulled out.
00:31:20.100 Canada was sitting on the council.
00:31:21.400 It was actually previous government.
00:31:23.320 I guess it was the liberal government of Paul Martin that got elected.
00:31:25.980 But Stephen Harper inherited the seat.
00:31:28.060 And for a while, maybe about a couple of years, Canada was the only country voting no
00:31:32.640 at the Human Rights Council.
00:31:34.120 I remember there was a diplomat, a Canadian diplomat, who came to me and he said, he said,
00:31:38.720 oh, Hillel, next week there's a vote on Israel.
00:31:41.180 I hope Canada won't be the only country voting no.
00:31:43.620 Oh, gosh.
00:31:44.180 I hope.
00:31:44.880 Oh, well, you know, just really afraid, afraid to take a principled stand.
00:31:52.160 And he didn't agree with that stand.
00:31:54.080 He would tell the NGOs that he didn't agree with what Stephen Harper was doing.
00:31:58.480 So, you know, a diplomat basically telling groups that he didn't agree with the elected
00:32:05.900 government of Canada, which, you know, you can resign, right?
00:32:10.280 Yeah, and you should.
00:32:12.860 When Trump was elected, there were American diplomats doing the same thing.
00:32:16.920 No one's forcing you.
00:32:18.260 You know, I work for UN Watch.
00:32:20.000 If my board tells me to do something I don't like, I'll resign.
00:32:23.140 You know, it's a principled position.
00:32:25.420 You don't tell people I completely disagree with what my organization is doing.
00:32:29.380 It's embarrassing.
00:32:30.720 So Canada certainly did take a principled stand.
00:32:33.780 Now let's fast forward to the Trudeau years, talking from 2015.
00:32:37.200 I would say that on the annual UN votes, up until a year or two ago, Trudeau quietly continued
00:32:44.860 Harper's record.
00:32:46.780 So when I say quietly, I mean, under Stephen Harper and John Baird, when they would vote no,
00:32:52.540 they would be proud of it.
00:32:54.040 They would say, we are proud that we took a principled stand and voted no to these ridiculously
00:32:59.620 biased resolutions that give a free pass to Hamas and the jihad.
00:33:03.800 And under Trudeau, he kept the votes on the annual resolutions, but he kept quiet about it.
00:33:09.260 I guess he didn't want to antagonize the left wing of his party, the NDP folks, the pro-Hamas 1.00
00:33:14.500 lobby in the progressive circles.
00:33:17.580 So he kind of kept quiet about it.
00:33:18.760 And then I said, when there was a new vote, he would typically abstain.
00:33:22.740 So if there was a new resolution that was not among the annual 15 to 20, he would typically
00:33:27.260 abstain.
00:33:27.720 In the past year, quite astonishingly, the Trudeau government has gone full on on a number
00:33:34.700 of votes anti-Israel.
00:33:35.980 There was one shortly after the massacre of October 7th.
00:33:39.280 That was a very biased resolution against Israel and Canada voted yes, meaning the vote
00:33:44.620 splitted three ways, right?
00:33:46.500 Yes was like North Korea, Iran, Syria, and others.
00:33:50.400 Abstain was a bunch of European countries abstaining.
00:33:52.980 And no was a handful of countries, maybe the US, Czech Republic, maybe a dozen countries
00:33:59.680 voting no.
00:34:00.520 And so of those three options, Canada went to vote yes.
00:34:03.300 So Canada actually joined the North Koreans and the club of North Korea, Iran, and Syria.
00:34:08.200 That's who Trudeau joined.
00:34:10.060 Shameful.
00:34:11.260 Shameful.
00:34:11.820 And you asked about other countries.
00:34:13.080 Well, on some things, Canada does speak out.
00:34:14.920 I have heard Bob Ray speak out for the Uyghurs in his speeches and so forth.
00:34:21.200 Canada has never introduced a resolution on the Uyghurs at the General Assembly.
00:34:25.700 That's a shame.
00:34:27.140 And like you said, it's probably out of fear.
00:34:29.220 So they have signed joint statements.
00:34:31.380 There'll be speeches given by 40 or 50 Western democracies, and certainly Canada will sign
00:34:36.320 them, but they've never introduced a resolution.
00:34:38.080 You mentioned Cuba.
00:34:39.580 Canada's terrible position on Cuba.
00:34:41.820 Canada, when things come to a vote, and Nikki Haley, if memory serves, brought a resolution
00:34:47.000 to condemn Cuba for its abuses.
00:34:50.380 It didn't pass.
00:34:52.000 But Nikki Haley, when she was U.S. ambassador to the U.N., she tried.
00:34:55.560 And if memory serves, Canada either voted no or abstained.
00:34:58.940 They took a bad position.
00:35:02.140 And I know on the internet, there are these conspiracy theories that our prime minister
00:35:06.360 is the son of Castro.
00:35:07.520 I'm not getting into that.
00:35:08.360 But the reality is that his father was a buddy of Fidel Castro, and that Canada does.
00:35:15.420 I was there at Pierre Trudeau's funeral, standing as Castro got out of the car to be a pallbearer.
00:35:21.820 Yeah.
00:35:22.080 So sadly, that relationship endures, and I frankly don't really understand it.
00:35:28.500 I guess some Canadian governments see a niche because America does not have relations with Cuba.
00:35:34.100 So I guess some realpolitik might see a niche.
00:35:38.220 But I'm close with the leading dissident from Cuba.
00:35:41.700 Her name is Rosa Maria Payá.
00:35:44.280 She's been tweeting today for her friend Berta Soler.
00:35:47.300 Berta Soler is the head of the Ladies in White.
00:35:49.700 These are simple women in Havana who dare to protest, 1.00
00:35:53.720 kind of like the young woman in the street of Shanghai with the blank piece of paper.
00:35:57.260 They wear white.
00:35:58.840 They show up in downtown Havana.
00:36:01.220 And either they say something or they just stand there.
00:36:05.720 And the Cuban regime arrests them.
00:36:07.480 And they took Berta Soler.
00:36:08.620 They abducted her for two days.
00:36:09.880 She just got released this morning.
00:36:11.540 For Canada not to stand with them in any meaningful way is shameful.
00:36:15.820 Let's spend the last few minutes that we've got together talking about UNRWA.
00:36:20.100 This is an organization that should no longer exist.
00:36:25.260 Around the same time that UNRWA was created, back in the 1950s,
00:36:29.620 there was a similar organization for settling people displaced by the war in Korea.
00:36:36.160 That no longer exists.
00:36:38.420 So UNRWA continues to exist.
00:36:42.740 And they continue to, instead of helping with tensions and problems in the region,
00:36:50.540 they exacerbate them.
00:36:52.600 And in fact, in my view, we saw the fact that UNRWA teachers
00:36:58.740 and social workers were part of the October 7th attack.
00:37:02.660 It shouldn't exist.
00:37:04.220 Can you explain why it still does exist?
00:37:07.240 Well, I think what you said is quite correct.
00:37:09.500 UNRWA was founded initially with altruistic intentions.
00:37:12.340 America was a key founder of UNRWA.
00:37:14.520 The idea was there was the Independence War in 1948.
00:37:18.500 The UN on 29 November 1947 voted to partition what was then British Mandatory Palestine
00:37:27.100 into two states, a Jewish state and an Arab state.
00:37:29.780 The Jews embraced that decision. 0.99
00:37:31.980 They danced on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on that date, November 29, 1947.
00:37:36.980 The Arabs declared war.
00:37:38.620 They said, no, no, we will not allow a Jewish state anywhere.
00:37:41.420 And they declared war.
00:37:43.060 It was the Arabs in Palestine, together with their allies, the governments of Egypt, Syria,
00:37:49.280 Jordan, Iraq, and the others.
00:37:51.580 So they declared war.
00:37:52.980 They began a war.
00:37:54.060 They managed to kill 1% of the Jewish population, which was 6,000 people.
00:37:58.480 They succeeded in doing that, but they lost the war.
00:38:01.560 Israel was created. 0.88
00:38:03.320 The Palestinian state, Arab state, could have been created, but actually Jordan occupied
00:38:08.760 the West Bank, Egypt occupied Gaza, so no one ever cared to give the Palestinian Arabs 1.00
00:38:16.240 the country.
00:38:18.780 And there were refugees.
00:38:20.420 And the Arab refugees in Jordan and Lebanon and Gaza and so forth, they initially, America
00:38:26.480 said, let's help them, and let's help them redevelop and move on.
00:38:29.240 A few years later, the Americans who had sent the head of the Tennessee Valley Authority
00:38:33.700 to help them realized it's not working at all.
00:38:36.060 The Arabs, the Palestinian Arabs who live in Gaza and Jordan and so forth, they refused 1.00
00:38:42.060 to accept the notion that they're moving on.
00:38:43.740 If they're moving on, it means they accept that there's a Jewish state and that they lost. 0.55
00:38:47.440 So they refused to move on and begin a new life in these neighboring regions, these neighboring
00:38:56.800 countries.
00:38:57.240 Rather, they insist that they're going to go back and dismantle Israel.
00:39:01.920 And for absurd reasons, Western states continue to fund UNRWA under pressure from the Arab 1.00
00:39:08.140 countries, maybe other motives that are less clear.
00:39:11.700 They continue to fund UNRWA.
00:39:13.380 And so to this day, some 75 years later, you have the absurd situation where the UN Refugee 1.00
00:39:19.560 Agency, which is meters away from me here in Geneva, UNHCR, they will help you resettle,
00:39:25.420 if you're a refugee from Syria, from Ukraine, from Sudan, and they'll help you find a home
00:39:31.040 in Canada, in Sweden, in Switzerland, in France, what have you.
00:39:34.940 And you move on, right?
00:39:35.900 My family escaped Russian persecution.
00:39:37.600 120 years ago, we came to Guelph, Ontario.
00:39:39.960 And since 1904, my family's been Canadian and we're not Russian refugees.
00:39:44.900 All right.
00:39:45.460 But for UNRWA, it's the opposite.
00:39:48.540 UNRWA doesn't seek to resettle anyone.
00:39:51.000 The opposite.
00:39:51.600 Listen, Palestinians who live in Jordan, they've been there 75 years.
00:39:56.460 They even have passports.
00:39:58.460 They have citizenship in Jordan, which is mind-boggling. 0.99
00:40:01.680 They're citizens.
00:40:02.220 According to the UN, they're refugees.
00:40:03.880 So according to the UN, a Jordanian citizen who's been living, his family's been there
00:40:07.820 for more than 75 years, is a refugee with the right, quote unquote, to return to Israel,
00:40:14.140 which means to dismantle Israel. 0.73
00:40:15.420 So the very raison d'etre of UNRWA is to destroy Israel. 0.51
00:40:20.980 It's very clear that the Palestinians, they say it.
00:40:24.700 The point of UNRWA, it's not to distribute humanitarian aid, which they do.
00:40:27.620 They do give out food and medicine.
00:40:29.400 And it's a kind of a welfare state for the Palestinians. 0.97
00:40:31.820 But every UN agency can do that.
00:40:33.840 UN Refugee Agency does that.
00:40:35.320 World Health Organization does that.
00:40:37.400 The World Food Programme does that.
00:40:38.860 UNICEF helps children.
00:40:39.940 And they do it better.
00:40:41.860 And they do it better.
00:40:42.420 There are millions in Sudan.
00:40:43.680 They don't incite terrorism.
00:40:45.100 They don't glorify Adolf Hitler.
00:40:46.780 You know, our reports for nine years have showed how UNRWA teachers in Lebanon, in Gaza,
00:40:53.360 regularly on their Facebook pages, on their social media, incite to murder Jews.
00:40:57.740 And they're standing day after day in front of classrooms.
00:41:00.720 We sent this to UNRWA.
00:41:01.760 UNRWA couldn't care less.
00:41:03.080 They would defame us, say we're against the refugees, say that we're lying.
00:41:07.820 Only in rare cases would they suspend one or two people.
00:41:10.740 The current head of the UNRWA Teachers Union in Lebanon, Fatih al-Sharif, is a senior Hamas terrorist.
00:41:17.780 It is detailed on our website, unwatch.org.
00:41:20.820 So that's the reality, Brian, is the very purpose of UNRWA is to dismantle Israel. 0.92
00:41:25.720 It's, I'm quoting now the Swiss foreign minister six years ago, 2018, said it's a perverse logic.
00:41:31.740 UNRWA is part of the problem, not the solution.
00:41:34.000 They're perpetuating the problem, not solving it.
00:41:36.160 The fact that we're allowing this agency to go on, that we're funding it, is a perverse logic.
00:41:42.520 That's the Swiss foreign minister.
00:41:43.380 I have to say, very importantly, is that even though Canada continues to fund UNRWA,
00:41:49.280 despite all the evidence of their complicity with terrorism,
00:41:52.640 despite the fact that terror tunnels were found underneath UNRWA headquarters in Gaza
00:41:56.880 with an electric grid connecting a computer server, a Hamas computer server,
00:42:02.400 into the UNRWA electric grid, despite the compelling evidence.
00:42:05.240 Again, anyone who wants to go to our website, you and watch UNRWA,
00:42:07.720 we'll find about a thousand pages of screenshots of UNRWA teachers
00:42:12.300 and telegram messages of them celebrating and inciting jihad
00:42:17.720 and documenting how heads of the teachers' unions in Lebanon, in Gaza,
00:42:22.960 are senior Hamas terrorists.
00:42:24.660 Canada funds them, so do the others.
00:42:26.020 But the Swiss parliament here in Switzerland about two weeks ago had a vote,
00:42:31.020 99 to 88, the lower house voted, and I quote,
00:42:34.080 to immediately suspend financing for UNRWA.
00:42:36.820 That's an important development, and I hope others will follow.
00:42:40.340 Under the Harper government, Canada had suspended funding to UNRWA.
00:42:46.760 That's right.
00:42:47.660 By the way, I just need to say, probably the original country ever to suspend funding
00:42:52.200 is back in around 2006 or 2007 was Stephen Harper.
00:42:56.140 He gets a lot of credit for that.
00:42:58.040 We reinstated it, and it was one of the first things that the Trudeau government did.
00:43:04.880 Why do you think they refused to look at the evidence?
00:43:08.240 There was a brief suspension, and then almost immediately they reinstated funding.
00:43:15.540 By the way, UNRWA did not miss a single payment.
00:43:18.060 They had rushed the earlier payment out the door,
00:43:20.340 and all the scheduled future payments are being made.
00:43:26.040 Yeah, look, I think what happened this year,
00:43:28.580 as you rightly mentioned, as soon as Trudeau was elected back in 2015,
00:43:32.180 shortly thereafter, Canada.
00:43:33.980 Now, he would have other people do it.
00:43:35.220 He knew that the Jewish community in Canada was opposed to it and others who care about UNRWA,
00:43:39.520 so he wouldn't be the one to announce it.
00:43:41.340 He would give it to his development minister, sort of a no-name person,
00:43:44.700 to take the flack.
00:43:50.040 But obviously, it was coming from his office,
00:43:52.560 and they reinstated the funding back around 2015.
00:43:55.100 And as you rightly indicated, you know, back in January,
00:43:58.380 when it was revealed that a dozen UNRWA staffers were involved in the massacre itself,
00:44:03.240 helping to torture, rape, enslave people, kidnapping an UNRWA social worker,
00:44:08.320 kidnapped the lifeless body of Jonathan Samorano into Gaza.
00:44:12.160 You can see it on video.
00:44:14.640 When that happened, America announced they were freezing funding.
00:44:17.580 This is the Biden administration.
00:44:19.500 Brian, from what I can tell,
00:44:20.520 the Biden administration must have asked its allies to not leave them on a limb there
00:44:24.940 and to join them.
00:44:26.340 So I think Canada and about 15 other countries announced a freeze,
00:44:30.800 but the moment they announced it, they were looking to climb down.
00:44:35.340 And they, you know, a fake audit was created,
00:44:37.920 headed by the former French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna,
00:44:41.000 completely fake.
00:44:41.880 She was someone on record as saying that she loves UNRWA,
00:44:44.140 and they're amazing.
00:44:44.680 And the three NGOs from Scandinavia helping her were totally pro-UNRWA NGOs.
00:44:50.800 So the whole thing was rigged.
00:44:52.360 An UNRWA surrogate named Chris Gunness said,
00:44:54.500 the whole point of this audit, this review,
00:44:57.440 is to allow donor countries to save face so they can reinstate funding.
00:45:02.000 So they said the quiet part out loud.
00:45:03.600 It was not an objective examination into complicity with terrorism.
00:45:06.940 It was a device, a gimmick to allow them to save face.
00:45:10.680 And the funny thing is, is the Trudeau government didn't even wait,
00:45:14.140 meaning Germany and Japan waited until April, around April 20th,
00:45:17.300 when the report came out.
00:45:18.520 The report came out the next day, Germany and Japan reinstated funding.
00:45:21.400 Trudeau government didn't even wait about a month or two before they reinstated.
00:45:24.740 So really contempt for any form of accountability.
00:45:30.280 UNRWA claims to have zero tolerance for terrorism.
00:45:33.600 The Canadian, I sent Trudeau, I think it was 2017,
00:45:36.340 we did a 200-page report about Canada's role with UNRWA.
00:45:39.960 They never bothered to get back to me.
00:45:41.640 They didn't call me.
00:45:42.440 You know, Canada's giving about $25 million a year,
00:45:46.320 paying for terrorist teachers.
00:45:48.480 And we had the evidence, they couldn't care less.
00:45:51.200 So why are they doing it?
00:45:52.600 You know, charitable interpretation.
00:45:54.520 Some folks think UNRWA means stability,
00:45:56.720 that if you remove UNRWA in various places, you get chaos.
00:45:59.940 Okay, it's an argument.
00:46:01.140 Not sure that I buy it because UNRWA teaches war.
00:46:04.600 The graduates of UNRWA were the ones who did the Hamas massacre. 0.93
00:46:08.860 Not sure I buy it, but okay, there's an argument's stability.
00:46:12.360 The other interpretation, Brian's less charitable,
00:46:14.440 is that the donor states know exactly the purpose of UNRWA.
00:46:17.460 The purpose of UNRWA is long-term to instill in Palestinians 1.00
00:46:21.140 that they will undo Israel. 0.96
00:46:23.780 And the interpretation of, the uncharitable interpretation,
00:46:27.000 is that the donor states, the governments, know exactly what that is.
00:46:30.400 And I think it's up to them really to explain.
00:46:33.660 Hello, we could talk for hours and hours more on this topic.
00:46:37.920 It's near and dear to my heart.
00:46:39.000 It's why I've supported and promoted your work at UN Watch over the years.
00:46:43.720 So thank you for coming on the podcast today.
00:46:46.060 And I encourage everyone, if you're not following Hillel
00:46:49.280 and UN Watch on social media, start doing that.
00:46:52.620 Start sharing their information so that maybe more people see the truth
00:46:57.480 and that there does need to be reform.
00:46:59.600 Thanks so much.
00:47:01.140 Thank you, Brian. It's a pleasure.
00:47:03.380 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.
00:47:05.620 My name's Brian Lilly, your host.
00:47:07.100 This episode was produced by Andre Pru.
00:47:09.200 Theme music by Bryce Hall.
00:47:10.720 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.
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00:47:22.680 Thanks for listening.
00:47:23.440 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.
00:47:24.880 Thank you.