For more than two decades, Hillel Neuer has made a career out of walking into one of the world’s most powerful diplomatic institutions and asking questions many of its members would rather avoid.
The executive director of UN Watch joined Episode 24 of ynet Global’s ALL CAPS, hosted by attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner alongside actress and singer Sarai Givaty and activist India Naftali, for a wide-ranging conversation about the United Nations, its treatment of Israel, UNRWA and the international institutions that claim to defend human rights.
Watch ALL CAPS Episode 24
Neuer argued that the UN’s disproportionate focus on Israel is nothing new. He traced its modern roots back decades, pointing to the infamous 1975 General Assembly resolution declaring that “Zionism is racism,” which was eventually revoked in 1991.
“The attacks on Israel have been going on really for at least 50 years,” Neuer said, arguing that the campaign intensified after the Six-Day War as the Soviet Union and its allies sought to mobilize developing and non-aligned countries against Israel.
Today, he said, the imbalance remains unmistakable.
According to Neuer, during the past year the UN General Assembly adopted one resolution on Iran, one on Syria, one on North Korea and 15 targeting Israel — a disparity he sees as evidence of an institution that applies fundamentally different standards to the Jewish state.
The speech that asked: ‘Where are your Jews?’
One of Neuer’s most famous confrontations with that system came in 2017.
Speaking before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Neuer responded to Arab governments accusing Israel of apartheid with a question that would ultimately be watched millions of times online: “Where are your Jews?”
He recalled sitting in the chamber listening as country after country accused Israel of racism.
Israel, Neuer noted, has roughly two million Arab citizens who vote, serve in the Knesset, work as doctors and lawyers and sit on the judiciary. Meanwhile, he said, many of the Arab states making those accusations once had substantial Jewish communities that have now almost entirely disappeared.
“I’m thinking, listening, this is absurd,” he recalled.
So he began naming countries. “Algeria used to have 100,000 Jews. Where are your Jews?” The room, he remembered, fell silent. “There’s nowhere else in the world where a citizen, a simple civilian, not an ambassador … can point the finger at Algeria and say, ‘Algeria, where are your Jews?’”
For Neuer, the power of the moment came precisely from that silence. “No one had an answer because there was no answer,” he said.
Darshan-Leitner described the speech as a brilliant reversal of the rhetoric routinely directed at Israel. “You used the propaganda against Israel toward them,” she said. “They were not prepared for it.”
The speech has since accumulated millions of views across different platforms and remains one of Neuer’s most recognizable moments.
The ALL CAPS panel Episode 24
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Why does Israel get singled out?
But the larger question remains: Why Israel?
Neuer explained that many anti-Israel initiatives at the UN are introduced by the bloc of Arab and Muslim-majority states, which can then build majorities with authoritarian governments and other countries.
But, he stressed, the votes cannot simply be blamed on dictatorships. Western democracies frequently support resolutions singling out Israel as well.
Neuer offered several explanations for why governments participate: diplomatic vote-trading, economic interests, energy relationships and the influence of wealthy states such as Qatar. He also suggested that some countries may fear becoming targets of terrorist organizations if they conspicuously side with Israel.
Those explanations, he said, represent the rational — if deeply uncomfortable — calculations of international politics. But Neuer believes there is another element that cannot be explained by national interest alone.
“I see many European countries gladly raise their hand to demonize the world’s only Jewish state,” he said.
Living in Geneva, Neuer said he cannot ignore Europe’s history of blaming Jews during periods of crisis. During the plague in the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of poisoning wells; today, he argued, similar impulses can manifest themselves through the collective targeting of the Jewish state.
“There’s an instinct to scapegoat the Jews, now in the collective of the Jewish state,” he said.
UNRWA and the battle over accountability
The conversation also turned to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which Darshan-Leitner’s Shurat HaDin organization has targeted through legal action on behalf of victims of the October 7 massacre.
Neuer argued that while UNRWA began with a legitimate humanitarian mission following Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, the agency evolved into an institution that perpetuated rather than resolved the Palestinian refugee issue.
He also pointed to allegations involving UNRWA employees accused of ties to Hamas as evidence, in his view, of a much deeper institutional problem.
“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature,” Neuer said.
The discussion moved to the controversial question of immunity for UN institutions and officials. Neuer said legal battles in the United States are testing the extent to which UNRWA can claim immunity, while other cases are raising similar questions surrounding individual UN figures.
Among those discussed was Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, a frequent target of Neuer and UN Watch. Neuer argued that questions surrounding her appointment and outside support should be subjected to greater scrutiny and maintained that her status and immunity can be legally challenged.
Can the United Nations still be fixed?
After more than 20 years fighting the institution from within its own halls, Neuer was asked perhaps the most fundamental question of all: Can the UN still be fixed?
His answer was pragmatic.
“The UN is not going away,” he said.
Most countries, Neuer explained, benefit from participating in the institution. Their diplomats receive positions, titles, influence and international legitimacy. Even US administrations deeply skeptical of the organization have stopped short of advocating its complete abolition.
That means Israel and its allies have little choice but to continue engaging.
“We have to work with it,” Neuer said, “and work with it means we need to get democracies to do the right thing.”
Political changes in individual countries, he added, can eventually change voting patterns inside international institutions. That makes elections, diplomatic relationships and Israel’s engagement with other governments more important than they may appear from Jerusalem.
October 7 and the moment Neuer lost hope
The conversation ended with October 7 and UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ statement weeks after the massacre that the Hamas attacks “did not happen in a vacuum.”
For Neuer, it was a defining moment. “No, I did not expect that,” he said.
He recalled that in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, leaders including then-US president Joe Biden and then-British prime minister Rishi Sunak forcefully condemned what had happened.
The United Nations, Neuer argued, had the same opportunity.
“There were world leaders who knew that this was a horrible moment, and they stood up for the moment,” he said. “And the UN had that chance, and they did the opposite.”
He believes the language used by Guterres helped establish a pattern in which the institution increasingly echoed arguments and narratives promoted by Hamas throughout the war.
For Darshan-Leitner, it confirmed something even more fundamental. “From this point, I lost any hope that I didn’t have — but the last drop — in the UN,” she said.
From ‘colonizing’ pine trees to Hebrew in Scotland
Episode 24 also delivered the mix of politics, viral culture and unapologetically Israeli conversation that has become the signature of ALL CAPS.
The panel tackled a viral claim that Aleppo pine trees were supposedly imported by European Jewish settlers to make Israel resemble Europe. A video featured on the show pushed back on the claim by pointing to archaeological evidence of Aleppo pine being used in the region roughly 2,000 years ago.
The women also discussed Darshan-Leitner’s legal action against Al Jazeera on behalf of American victims of October 7, with the Shurat HaDin president alleging that the network provided services that crossed the line from journalism into material support for terrorism.
Later, the show highlighted the Dee family’s legal battle following the April 2023 terror attack in the Jordan Valley that killed Lucy Dee and her daughters Maia and Rina. The segment juxtaposed the family’s pursuit of accountability with another milestone: the upcoming wedding of surviving daughter Keren Dee — a symbol, the show argued, of the Jewish determination to continue building after devastating loss.
“They chose death, they chose life,” the segment concluded. “They try to destroy. We continue to build.”
And the episode finished considerably lighter. A young Scottish woman went viral after posting herself singing a well-known Jewish song — in Hebrew. Her performance immediately won over the panel.
“She’s made so many hearts happy across the Jewish world, across Israel, just by doing that,” Naftali said. And with Naftali coincidentally heading to Scotland, the assignment from her fellow panelists was obvious: find her.
Because after an episode devoted largely to terrorism, international institutions and the fight over Israel’s legitimacy, sometimes a Scottish woman unexpectedly singing in Hebrew is exactly the ending ALL CAPS needs.
Watch the full episode of ALL CAPS featuring Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, Sarai Givaty, Titi Ayanaw and India Naftali for more unfiltered conversations, exclusive interviews and analysis of the stories shaping Israel and the Jewish world.
To learn more about Shurat HaDin's efforts to fight terrorism and defend Israel through legal action, visit Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center.