‘The UN is rotten to the core’

The war in Gaza may be over, but the global hostility towards Israel is as fierce as ever. Hamas’s most lurid propaganda claims, accusing the Jewish State of every crime against humanity imaginable, are now treated as fact by Western governments, media and academia. Globalist institutions – from the UN to international courts – are now totally corrupted by Israelophobic lies.

Barrister Natasha Hausdorff – legal director at the UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust – has long been battling against these libels. She recently returned to The Brendan O’Neill Show to discuss the return of the hostages and the lie of the Gaza ‘genocide’. What follows is an edited version of that conversation. You can watch the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: What role do you think the West’s abandonment of Israel played in the horrors of the past two years?

Natasha Hausdorff: I think certain people have blood on their hands. The hostages that will not be returning alive to their families, the deaths of soldiers in pursuit of releasing them all, the killing of Palestinian civilians who also suffered Hamas’s endless abuse – these things should not have gone on as long as they did. The war should have ended far, far sooner. We must recognise the impact that global support for this barbaric, genocidal terrorist organisation has had in prolonging it, in delaying a deal.

There has been this bizarre pantomime playing out, where the UK’s Labour government has claimed credit for playing some role behind the scenes in securing the peace deal. The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, rightly called this delusional.

The reality is that over the past six months, the UK government, as well as others that recognised Palestine, have done nothing except impose arms embargoes against Israel and criticise it constantly, making this deal so much harder to realise. The damage that certain Western states have done with their political positioning is truly unforgivable.

O’Neill: What role have the international media played?

Hausdorff: There has been this enormous propaganda war, a war of misinformation, which does inevitably inform people’s positions. Frankly, I’ve seen an abject absence of journalistic integrity. The media have refused to report the truth out of Gaza.

Since Israel’s withdrawal to the agreed initial line, we have seen Hamas regaining power in parts of central Gaza, executing Gazan civilians and shooting others in the leg, meting out punishment for what they consider to be disloyalty. Sometimes, of course, ‘disloyalty’ can be as basic as collecting aid from organisations like the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. I haven’t seen any of this reported as it should be by the international media, or by the journalists who profess to care so deeply about Palestinians. It is difficult to buy their manufactured sentiment when they simply refuse to report real atrocities against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, and where there is still a complete absence of calls for an end to Hamas oppression, torture, humiliation and despotism.

O’Neill: What role has international law played in demonising Israel?

Hausdorff: Recently, I addressed the UN Human Rights Council. It was not the first time, but it was the first that I was addressing them on behalf of UN Watch. I was brought, essentially, to call out the council as a whole for the abuses of international law that it has been presiding over. The council serves a very important role in manufacturing falsehoods and rubber-stamping NGO reports that accuse Israel of genocide. It endorses farcical reports from the likes of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, whose information comes from Hamas propaganda. The UN Human Rights Council is, as I called it in my address, the foremost disinformation-laundering facility.

Unsurprisingly, my message was not particularly welcome to those in the council itself. There was a relatively robust rebuke, which it appeared to me had been prepared in advance by the chairwoman of the meeting. But the response online subsequent to my appearing in Geneva has been overwhelming. The significance of taking that opportunity to call out the very precise mechanism through which this council weaponises international law against the only Jewish state has resonated. The UN (along with multiple other hijacked international bodies) is rotten to the core, and there needs to be serious change before it can be taken seriously again.

O’Neill: What was your view of the UN Commission of Inquiry report accusing Israel of genocide?

Hausdorff: Perhaps I’m so jaded now that I can no longer find it entertaining. There was nothing discernibly new in that report. It was simply the recycling of all of the old fabrications. The one allegation I hadn’t come across previously – which was supposedly proof of the genocidal intent of Israel – was an attack on an IVF clinic. After researching this particular issue, I believe the building was hit accidentally by a stray tank shell. But the report’s focus on the incident was to suggest that Israel had deliberately targeted an IVF clinic in order to wipe out future generations of Gazans. I found this stretching of the imagination very interesting. It made me think: after all these fantastical claims, where can we even go from here?

Very importantly, there was a complete absence of Hamas in this report. You would think that Israel was simply fighting ghosts. Or, as the UN would prefer to present it, simply taking out Palestinian civilians because it wishes to see them eradicated. There is no mention of Hamas’s engagement in this armed conflict, nor its abuse of Palestinian civilians as human shields.

There is no mention either of the measures that Israel has taken not only to prevent civilian casualties, but also to provide civilians in the Gaza strip with humanitarian assistance. This is an enormous betrayal of the Palestinian people.

O’Neill: What do you think will happen regarding the ‘pro-Palestine’ protests? Will they continue?

Hausdorff: Yes, I think they will. Though I hope that their true motivation will be clear to everyone watching now. The refusal of the authorities and the government, in this country in particular, to act properly is only encouraging them. Such encouragement has spurred on groups like Palestine Action to move on from attacking Israel-associated buildings to attacking the Royal Air Force. I don’t see these people or their supporters going away any time soon. They are a key part of an industry that runs on vilifying Israel.

Besides, what on earth else are they going to do with themselves on a Saturday afternoon?

Natasha Hausdorff was talking to Brendan O’Neill. Watch the full video below: