In the viper’s nest: Defending Israel at the UN

STEVEN GRUZD

The pugnacious Neuer is the director of UN Watch in Geneva, Switzerland, a non-governmental organisation dedicated to countering anti-Israel bias by the UN organisations – no small task. Brought to Johannesburg by the SA Zionist Federation, Neuer was in conversation with journalist Mandy Wiener at the Sandton Shul hall on Sunday night.

A March 2017 video of Neuer at the UN Human Rights Council showed him turning the tables on a string of speakers accusing Israel of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, violence and terror against the Palestinians, land theft and “Judaising” Jerusalem. Neuer calmly asked the world’s worst human rights offenders: “How many Jews live in your countries? Where are your Jews? Where is the real apartheid?”

Neuer outlined what Israel is up against in the UN, why, and what can be done.

He said that the UN’s noble aspirations had been “hijacked”, recalling the body’s nadir in November 1975, when the then USSR successfully sponsored General Assembly Resolution 3379 – supported by most recently independent states – equating Zionism with racism, denying Israel the very same right to self-determination. Repealed in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, “its spirit lives on in many UN bodies”, said Neuer.

The UN Commission on Human Rights , founded in 1946, similarly betrayed its founding principles. Despite being “reformed” in 2006 into the Human Rights Council (UNHRC), it continued to single out the Jewish state for unprecedented condemnation, vitriol and opprobrium. From 2006 to 2016, UN Watch calculated that the UNHRC adopted 68 one-sided resolutions on Israel, and 67 on the rest of the world combined.

Neuer rattled off the deplorable human rights of many UNHRC members, including Afghanistan, Angola, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iraq, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. He said: “Every democracy has its blots and can be criticised” – but disproportionate hatred and hypocrisy painted Israel as a uniquely evil state.

He explained how Arab and Islamic countries had refused to remove or amend the UNHRC’s agenda item 7 on “the human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories”.

To explain this orchestrated campaign against Israel – led by the Palestinians, the Arabs and Islamic states, and supported by the “automatic majority” of the developing world – he cites oil reserves, sovereign wealth funds and vote-trading that can be offered as carrots and sticks. He adds a fear of being targeted by terrorists if states are seen to support Israel.

Neuer agrees with Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s former chief rabbi, that demonising the Jewish state for human rights transgressions is the modern anti-Semitism.

Neuer has chosen to fight back, to air the truth. UN Watch convinced Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Poland to join Israel and the US in boycotting the 2009 follow-up event to the anti-Semitic hate fest that defined the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban.

It exposed that Saudi Arabia – legendary for its discrimination against women – had been elected to the UN Women’s Rights Commission. Neuer’s quip that this was like “making an arsonist into the town fire chief” rapidly made global news. Belgium embarrassingly admitted voting for the Saudis after a UN Watch exposé.

The UN also appoints supposedly apolitical and credible experts as special rapporteurs on countries, regions or themes. UN Watch has exposed some so-called experts harshly critical of Israel as biased, anti-Semitic hypocrites or 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

Neuer said: “Nothing stops European states calling out human rights abusers, but they do not. They’re a weak lot.”

Pulling out of the UN is no “magic solution” for Israel. “The UN is not going anywhere,” he said. “Hatred of Israel is embedded – if you leave the UN, you will find it in FIFA, the international football federation. You can’t run away.”

He lauded America’s tough-talking UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, as a voice of truth and morality, and mused that he could do with a Haley clone in Geneva.

Wiener asked whether Neuer’s aggressive, abrasive approach worked better than diplomacy. Neuer replied: “There is a time and place for everything, and I can be a nice, polite Canadian when I need to. But I only have 90 seconds in a whole day of vitriol, so I have to think how to be most effective. That can come across as dramatic.”

He said behind-the-scenes meetings with the Palestinian and Egyptian ambassadors had yielded nothing. “They come to Geneva to demonise Israel. That’s their job.”

Countries like Egypt, ostensibly allies of the Jewish state, use this platform to shore up their anti-Israel credentials.

Reflecting on South Africa at the UN, Neuer said: “At times, it votes the right way … but it always votes against Israel.

“It has stood with the perpetrators, not the victims, in defending regimes like Iran, Sudan, Syria and Zimbabwe.”

Neuer remains bullish that change can come, noting how India, the former engine of the anti-Western Non-Aligned Movement, has developed strong bilateral ties with Israel, and has selectively abstained on some key votes.

When asked by the SA Jewish Report whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s outreach to African countries (with three trips to the continent in 18 months) had yielded greater UN support, Neuer noted that Togo had recently begun voting with Israel. He mentioned isolated abstentions from states such as Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria, but said that perhaps Netanyahu had raised expectations unrealistically.

The near-universal African backing for the December 2017 UN vote condemning the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital showed how much work remains.

He urged the audience not to give up and to bravely defend Israel and stay informed. He said changing ingrained attitudes takes time and work.

Neuer encouraged people to follow UN Watch on social media at www.UNWatch.org.