Hillel Neuer testifies before U.S. Congress on UNRWA and the Colonna Report

the hearing uh will come true and good afternoon everyone this hearing on the UN relief and works agency or unra, its complicity for decades in the most vicious forms of antisemitism, hatred, antisemitic hatred with a focus today on the so-called review independent conducted by Ms. Katherine Colona will come to hell order the new executive director of un watch will testify today that the review of the colonate appointment was not independent the verdict was determined in advance Mr. newer you have the floor president Smith thank you for inviting me to testify This important audience means a lot because there are others who seek to disinvite me.

In fact, here in Washington on Monday I was a guest and a confirmed speaker at a panel discussion at the Stimson Center, one of the witnesses who was scheduled to appear here. Andre hides from the Center Stimson is one of the panelists in that debate, it is a debate about accusations of bias in the UNRA and the panelists are William Deer, the American representative of the UNRA, who is a professional lobbyist and a former Jordanian official and someone from the Stimson Center. I was also a confirmed speaker and suddenly received an email several days ago informing me that I had not been invited and it turns out that Barbara Slaven of the Stimson Center told me that it was Unra Unr's representative in Washington, Mr.

William Deer, who said that would not appear. unless I've been disinvited and she's chosen to do something dishonorable and I've been cancelled, so it means a lot that I'm invited here, in fact I'd say this isn't the first time Unra has refused to debate me. Invited to a hearing in the European Parliament about a month ago, Unra was also invited. They receive more than 100 million euros a year from the European Union. They refused to come here, so the UN is trying to cancel me, but the United States Congress and under your presidency, uh, we can share the truth, so I appreciate that now what you would have said to the panelists in this debate here in Washington on Monday following the Colona

report

that was released just a couple of weeks ago is that we were told an independent audit has given UNRA a clean bill of health exonerating the agency of all charges of its links to terrorism.

This headline was repeated around the world and was used by several countries to restore funding. There is a problem, although Mr. President, these claims are completely false, let's examine each one first, since you implied that the notion that this was an independent audit is questionable at best, first we know how it started this, this started by UNRA itself, the UNRA commissioner general, Mr. Philipe Lazarini, decided in January, actually it is earlier. the revelations of UNRA employees involved in terrorism, but in response to our Revelations and some others about the incitement of UNRA on social media in the Telegram chat group of 3,000 UNR teachers that we exposed and who celebrated the attacks on October 7 in response to all of these commissioners.

Lazarini decided to initiate some kind of review and in doing so told the press that these claims about the riots and links to terrorism were, among other things, false, politically motivated and constituted a smear campaign, for which the boss himself of the UNRA who was preparing the investigation in the At the same time, he characterized the accusations as a smear campaign and, in doing so, irreparably tarnished the credibility of the investigation. He now moved on to select particular individuals. He selected Krin Kona, the former Foreign Minister of France. It is no accident that he simply chose her. because just a few weeks before she had tweeted a message to the public praising anra and saying that her work is more necessary than ever, this is days after we exposed the horror program to 3,000 unra teachers in a group that celebrated the October 7th attacks on Madame K. was praising unra so she chose someone who she knew very well was sympathetic to unra to say the least she is also basically a member of the board of directors of unra because she was part of the advisory commission, like France, sat on the advisory commission.

France is the fourth largest country. donor, so the idea that she would make adverse findings against a U is absurd. She would have involved herself if she had done it in a very meaningful way, so they were chosen. She was deliberately chosen to give the predetermined result and in fact as you indicated. Mr. President, the heads of the United Nations and UNRA told us exactly, they said in their own words, what the

report

was about. In fact, former UNRA spokesperson Chris Gunnis, who is now acting as a surrogate, appeared on uh Al Jazer and said the following: He said the report of the former French Foreign Minister's appointment will provide donors with more cover if that's what they need with their own internal constituencies to resume UNRA funding, so the quiet part said out loud and then the Secretary General Spokesperson said the goal of the report is to reassure donors and in fact , kinaa itself said that the purpose of its report was to allow donors to regain trust when they had lost it or when they had doubts, so everything was fixed, Mr.

The chairman of the Kona review group from the beginning was fixed . I will only briefly mention the other members. Three Scandinavian institutes were chosen. None were chosen by accident. Each of them is an ardent supporter of UNRA groups that have accused Israel of genocide and apartheid. and you know there's a group called the Christian Michaelson Institute. This is a group that published a major report on Unra just two years ago saying that accusations of incitement against Unra are, quote, unfounded, so they chose groups that have a long history of attacking any reports of incitement. Unra and they chose another group called the Rul Wallenberg Institute, which is a beautiful name.

Nam is named after someone who rescued Jews, but in fact the director of this institute is the complete opposite of R Wallenberg. His name is per lunberg. and tweets publications from the electronic inapa, which is an anti-Semitic group headed by Ali Abuna, and published in 2014 an essential debate on a UNRA video. UNR's Chris Gunnis takes down anti-Palestinian activist on Fox. He has shared other tweets from Chris Gunnis with UNRA. talking points, uh, attacking critics of the UNRA, so they deliberately chose individuals and groups that have a long history of attacking any critics of the HRA, so this was the least targeted type of group you can imagine , so in truth, this was not an independent audit of those who created The review and the people who were selected indicate that it was fixed from the beginning and largely the review group provided the goods.

The report says the following unra quote remains critical to providing life-saving humanitarian aid. Unra is irreplaceable and indispensable. a humanitarian lifeline Mr. President, we did not need to have an independent review group from the French Foreign Ministry and three Scandinavian institutes to produce those lines those words are the official talking points of the UNRA. We will soon publish a video where you will see dozens and dozens of ambassadors and other public officials, sometimes including from the US State Department, cutting these life-saving lines, Irreplaceable lifeline, indispensable again and again, these are the talking points to follow, so, read the headline of the Medi Hassan newspaper, which is an anti-Israel columnist in May.

Second, in The Guardian he used these words and this report to attack critics of UNRA. He said, "Ah, that shows that all the critics were wrong, they all spread lies, they all sold Israel propaganda, um, that's how the report was used. It doesn't mean that there are things here that are useful and, as I saw in the Mr. Lindsay's testimony, there are certain things here, despite the conclusions that they reached, that allowed Germany and Japan and others, in fact, that gave them the cover to resume funding. Of course, there are some things in. The report says they are helpful, but you know this gets to the point that some of the myths about the report, the myth we hear so often, is that no evidence was provided.

Israel has never provided any evidence. on UN complicity in terrorism, a Guardian quote from April 22 cites Israel has yet to provide evidence of UN staff's terrorist links says the Colona report was shared by Ken Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch and many others now the interesting thing here is that no evidence was provided is that K herself, although I am critical of her, but K herself refuted that claim when she presented her report in New York on April 22, she said the following , said that some of these quotes from the media do not respect the text of the report: I have written ara has not received evidence from Israel it is not that there is no evidence it is very different these are two separate missions accusations regarding individuals in the scope is in the scope of o iOS which is the oversight agency is under her mission she said it is not the scope of our mandate and said it is not surprising that Israel has not provided evidence to the UNRA because it does not owe this evidence.

These are her words, she does not owe this evidence during the OOS investigation to UNRA but only to OIOS, so although Kola herself said that it is perfectly normal that Israel has not given the evidence to UNRA and they are giving to OOS and Israel is operating with Cooper, said with OOS, who has returned to Israel for the second time and is investigating not only 12 but even more alleged UNRA perpetrators, so the notion that Israel did not provide evidence is false now, the other conclusion, you know, that they provided in the report that um and I'm quoting here, the UNRA has established a significant number of policies, mechanisms and procedures. to ensure compliance with a more developed neutrality approach than any other similar UN or NGO entity.

End quote, really, Mr. President, UNRA is the best agency in the world, they tell us when it comes to compliance, when you and I know and anyone who has seen the evidence knows that the truth is quite the opposite. and when I read this I thought like others about Stalin's Constitution, the truth is that Stalin's Constitution, if you read the provisions, there are dozens of articles in the Constitution of the Soviet Union that talk about direct election and freedom. of conscience and all kinds of freedoms, but the reality was the complete opposite, you know, he adopted this constitution in 1936, just before the great Terror, the Great Purge, the reality was the complete opposite in the Soviet Union and yet , was proclaimed when its Constitution came out as the most democratic in the world, that was the Soviet propaganda line, so the fact that the UNRA may have all kinds of procedures and mechanisms may be completely true, but you and I know, Mr.

President, that the real reality is completely opposite to reality. It's just that a few days ago we saw UNR vehicles driving through Gaza alongside armed terrorists, you know, getting in and out of UNR vehicles. We know that it was not long ago, a couple of months ago, when Israel exposed a terrorist tunnel directly below. The UN headquarters in Gaza and the terrorist tunnel had computer servers, it was a Hamas spy center. Computer servers with electrical cables running directly from the terrorist tunnel from the Hamas computers to the UN headquarters, getting the electricity directly from the UN, and when Mr.

Lazarini was asked about this in February his response on Twitter was a quote: we don't know what's under the UNR headquarters, we don't know what's under the UNR headquarters, but Mr. President, a week earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that 10 years earlier, in 2014, the people of UNRA had noticed that the parking lot was sinking the parking lot was sinking no one said anything they knew exactly what it was but everyone knew the Wall Street Journal no one said anything everyone was silent but everyone knew of course they knew that the only major project of Construction in Gaza was hundreds and hundreds of miles of tunnels of terror, next to my house in Geneva they were building a huge tunnel for a train.

We knew it for a few years. Everyone at UNRA knew what was going on, but everyone was silent, so the unrealistic line that they had no idea about is simply Not credible There is no evidence of UNRA terrorism We have exposed the 3,000 teachers of the UNRA in January UNRA who belong to the GR terrorist group that celebrated the October 7 attacks We have exposed for nine years We have exposed UNRA teachers and school principles who regularly praise Hitler by people like Elham Mansour, a teacher in Lebanon who said for Allah that all Muslims must massacre the Jews, she is a professor at UNR, now these are not a few bad apples, you know, they are a few bad apples, um, I'm just going to mention a few people you know, there is Hindi, You know, people think Anra's boss is a nice Swiss guy named Philip Lazarini and he'sa very effective great spokesperson who tells lies about Anra.

The truth is, I don't think he has any idea what's going on. At UNRA, he doesn't run things, the people who run things are people like Suel Al Hindi, he was the head of the UNRA staff union in Gaza for years and in 2011, when H got embarrassed and suspended him, he mobilized to Hamas. He actually he's a member. of Hamas was suspended due to his relations with Hamas Hamas mobilized 8,000 UNRA teachers all UNRA staff went on strike in Gaza for months 243 schools were closed 220,000 students were out of school to demonstrate for months behind a member from the Hamas Office uh Suel al-Hindi sits in the Hamas Poit Office in Gaza with Yahya Sinir, the master terrorist, and for years he sat as head of the Onor Union, finally, because it became public, he had to resign , but they didn't fire him, but they asked. that he resigns, as far as I know, he is still collecting a UNRA pension and is a Hamas leader who celebrates the attacks and leads the great March of Return and there are several other examples in our reports which can be found at unw watch.org repeatedly When UNRA professors are exposed for their incitement, thousands of UNRA staff, whether in Gaza or Lebanon, come out in support of them, they are not a few bad apples, the rot is gone everywhere sides.the path to the core and um, the colonar report unfortunately misrepresents the situation in unra.

We've known for 10 years that we've been sending them all these reports. H's response was to attack us. We have published on the Internet on our website. un.org example after example of how we wrote to UNRA they tried to get involved, they refused to meet with us as if the UNRA representative here in Washington was trying to cancel me and instead all they did was attack us, that's the truth Mr. President, thank you very much. Mr. Newer, could you tell us that the UN was a trusted agency where, you know, the money that we provided across the board was being used effectively?

Thank you, Mr. President, and let me say that since I last appeared here in the U.S. Congress has passed bipartisan legislation signed by the President prohibiting any funding of UNRA for at least the next year and I want to congratulate you on your leadership to make this happen. It is a very significant step with respect to the help they tell us we should give. money for unra to help the Gins who need help and of course our position is that the gsin should be helped in every way possible. The question is whether unra is the right person and we just published a report last week, on May 8, that on our website youw watch.org and it was widely reported that UNR staff are stealing aid, the They are selling for profit, while those who report it face retaliation.

This is based on numerous reports that have been posted by Palestinians in Gaza in a UNRA-related chat room. there's a former UNRA official who runs a chat room and there's, uh, I'll just read some of the reports that were made from Gins. A gentleman named Dr. ISAT Shatat says there was open theft from UNRA shelter workers. The director of a school store came with 50. Boxes of food were distributed in Onra schools and sold to a merchant for $100 per box. How did you get this many boxes? Where is the administration? So people openly ask in this chat room why Anra is not doing anything and Unra staff member Muhammad Musa.

Al Sai recounts abuses committed by UNRA employees. 80% of the employees in the shelters have no morals or dignity. He says they have their houses full of help and not only them but their loved ones with him. Someone named Dimma in the chat group says when will the The directors of UNRA centers and schools, especially Rafa Girls' Secondary School B, stop stealing the food and necessities of the displaced, so these are just, but Mr. President, a handful of countless messages accusing this come from Gazin UN staff, including the directors of stealing aid in the at the expense of gazin who are in need and yet, over the past few months these calls of the people of Gaza have fallen on deaf ears, so I think it's only fair that we ask Mr.

Lazarini, your representative here in Washington, William Deer. I don't think they agree with appearing before Congress. Why when you know that the complainants say that nothing has been done? What is H's response to this in reporting and receiving accusations? Staff and staff have an obligation to report misconduct and, in turn, the right to be protected from retaliation for such reports. You just talked about petty theft, that when someone is starving, taking food out of their mouth is something very serious, but here we are. We are talking about other types of blatant anti-Semitism that Unra has been known for for decades, especially recently.

He said there were 21 alleged rapes per year and I looked in vain through this entire report to see who made the accusation. You know, it's almost like you know how to turn yourself in to the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service, you think someone is going to do that if you file an indictment, what happens? Is someone you know from Hamas U visiting them? What happens? There is nothing here to indicate uh the disposition of these cases, uh, and whether or not whistleblowers are encouraged, Mr. President, uh, I agree that the report in too many ways, uh, does not capture reality and seems be indifferent to the reality in Gaza, when time and time again And this is addressed perhaps for the first time in an official report that staff unions are often run, they say, by terrorist political parties.

His Al Hindi is a terrorist leader. He is a leader of the Hamas terrorists, fully active in leading what they do. While he was slaughtering Israelis, he was the head of the staff union in Gaza, so the idea that someone could denounce him or other teachers and the school's principles and not face repercussions is absurd. I have to say that one of my big disappointments with the report was that I saw it early on in the review group. You know that there are not many groups that expose the promotion of terrorism. It's our group, a group that impacts SE, maybe one or two others at most and they didn't approach us that we were a part of. a mass email saying they could send something but they didn't meet with us, neither Madame K nor any of the three groups bothered to meet with us, they didn't ask us since we are basically the main group who have been sending warnings for 10 years about riots, supporting terrorism by sending accusations, it would be natural for them to share their experiences, how do I respond to their accusations?

They did not contact us and we actually sent them a long shipment. It's on our website. with evidence, there is no reference to it anywhere in your report, so in our experience, as you said, Mr. President, it does not seem that the review group did not seem to be interested in really grasping the reality, they went back to look at the superficialities talking about procedures and mechanisms. and policies like the Stalinist Constitution that is not very serious, how is it that we continue to hear the same frame of reference year after year decade after decade? When I raised these issues decades ago, I met with the sub-representatives and got all these platitudes about how We were fixing it and we see over and over again that it's not fixed, it's actually degraded and worse.

Why would any reasonable man or woman take into account that this is the moment when the work, in my opinion, re-raises the notion that? we can go back to unra they said that they immediately accepted all the reforms this is absurd nothing here is new there are some new elements that are mentioned here but all these things have been known to unra for at least a decade and in many cases, since before , but certainly for us since August 2015, we have been warning UNRA about its personnel promoting terrorism and its response. I will read just a few quotes from his spokesperson when it is revealed to us that ANRA teachers were inciting terrorism, he says. attacked us on Twitter quote a clock is made ridiculous credibility dead in the water someone will believe them again the next day August 26, 2015 appeal to journalists please do not turn around and look at unfounded accusations about anti-Semitism until he tells her said story It is not a story year after year over and over again when we did what UNRA could not do to hold its personnel accountable for promoting terrorism and we saw the end result that we have thousands of gases and at least half of them will be released. the graduates carried out mass rapes, mass murders, torture, a kidnapping of Israelis.

At least half of them will be university students and they received these hate messages that we documented for a long time and the UN response was to attack us. There is nothing in the report that says. that unra are systematically leading the people, they attacked us for exposing the promotion of terrorism and, you know, let's go back to what unra really is, as Dr. an not wilf has shown in her book The War of Return and how she has said. Many times support for terrorism in the UNRA is not a mistake, it is a characteristic. Anra's goal is to tell Palestinians in Gaza, for example, and you see videos telling children where your home is here in Gaza, the child says la la no no, where is your home? your home is in Jaffa in AKO in Israel, so when we, Mr.

President, give hundreds of millions of dollars in cement and we give you cement to build houses, hospitals and schools, when the UN teaches you that your home is not here in Gaza, we shouldn't I would be surprised if they are not going to use that cement to build houses in Gaza, but to build hundreds of kilometers of terrorist tunnels to enter Israel and perpetrate terrorism, that is what we should expect, that is the UN narrative and the Palestinians must accept his return. It is not a peaceful return, we saw the flooding of Al-AA, this is how they imagine the return in the most violent and brutal ways and as long as the UNRA exists, unfortunately, we can expect more massacres to occur on October 7, but the existence of UNRA will unfortunately continue.

Ensure more grievances, resentments, hatred and terrorism. There is something? Do any of you gentlemen? I think we may have missed what you would like to convey to the committee, Mr. Chairman. You mentioned the administration and I was concerned that in statements made in New York and Geneva, in response to the Colona report, we did not hear from the administration the obvious objections that the members of the review group were not independent, that the Commissioner General , when they started the report, announced in advance what the outcome would be and when they came to the conclusion that UNRA is a lifeline, a lifesaver and irreplaceable and everything else, that these are all long-used talking points that clearly do not they are the conclusion of an independent investigation, the administration should say this, the administration should object, but they didn't, they said they took it seriously and they even told the United Nations, you know, we are very proud, you know, they are those that prohibited the financing, that is Congress, not us, we are very proud to have contributed 121 million dollars at the beginning of the year. year in January and gave it to UNRA, so there is a disconnect and I wish the administration would take the evidence seriously.

The evidence is that WID has spread support for terrorism among UNRA staff, its union leaders and that UNRA has failed to take this seriously. Unra has attacked groups like ours that have exposed this and I would like to see the administration hold him accountable and that is not the message we are hearing.