You will enjoy my latest Q&A, which is with a brainy, interesting, consequential guy: Hillel Neuer. He is the executive director of UN Watch, in Geneva. He is also the founding chairman of the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy.
By the way, the concept of democracy is suddenly controversial, where I live. In our podcast, I ask Neuer what he means by “democracy.”
Neuer grew up in Montreal. In the atmosphere of a Mordecai Richler novel? Not exactly, he says. That was more the atmosphere of his parents’ generation. But oddly enough, he acted in a short film, based on a Richler story, Bambinger. Hillel was 14 at the time.
When he was little, his parents took him to protests outside the Soviet consulate, in freezing temperatures. There was a man standing on a makeshift stage, or on the roof of a car, speaking through a bullhorn. He was Irwin Cotler, the famed human-rights lawyer. Neuer would later study with him at McGill.
One of Cotler’s questions to students was, “What will you do when you head a human-rights NGO?” Neuer thought this was a strange question. But lo — he would become head of such an NGO.
UN Watch was founded by Morris Abram, in 1993. What a guy — one of my favorites, in recent history. He was from Fitzgerald, Ga. He became an important civil-rights lawyer — one of those southern-Jewish friends of black Americans. Before that, he served on the prosecutorial staff at Nuremberg. He would be president of Brandeis University and chairman of the United Negro College Fund.
President Reagan nominated him to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. President Bush (41) made him our man in Geneva — our ambassador for human rights at the U.N.
Morris Abram was one of those noble Cold War Democrats — Max Kampelman was another — who shone in the Reagan-Bush years. What a coalition, back then.
By the way, if I were president — ! — one of my first nominations would be of Hillel Neuer, to the human-rights position in Geneva. The watchdog would become ambassador.
But he’s Canadian, right? I would have to work that out . . .
Very few people are consistent on human rights. I will give you an example. When I was in college, people around me were very keen on human rights — in Chile (Pinochet), the Philippines (Marcos), and, above all, South Africa (the apartheid regime). They were less keen on human rights behind the Iron Curtain, say. Or in China or Cuba. Today, a lot of people will like it if you write about human rights in China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran. (I speak from experience.) They are apt to like it less well if you write about human rights in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey, Egypt.
That is very human. And I am being frank.
Hillel Neuer is utterly consistent. And he makes a point, in our podcast: The U.N.-ers seem not to care very much about property rights. And these are very important rights. They are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, championed most notably by Eleanor Roosevelt, the first American ambassador for human rights at the U.N. Article 17 of the Declaration declares,
Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
So, when the chavistas expropriate their favorite property in Caracas, the U.N. human-rights panel should go bananas. Except, the expropriators are probably sitting on the panel.
For years, there has been a big debate concerning the United States and the U.N. human-rights panel: Should we sit on it, in order to keep it from being worse than it is, in order to reform from within? Or should we say, “To hell with it. You just continue being the anti-Israel playpen that you are, but without us”?
I want to know where Hillel Neuer stands. And he says this, roughly: “I am the single most hated man at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Part of me says, ‘Just stew in your own juices.’ But when the U.S. leaves, things get extra-crazy. It’s like the teacher leaving the room, and appointing a student monitor in her stead. Mayhem breaks out, until she returns.”
Neuer further says — again, I am paraphrasing — “Americans may not give a rip about the U.N. Human Rights Council. This is understandable. But plenty of people around the world do care. So, it’s good to have the U.S. in the game.”
But: “The U.S. has to be willing to be critical of the U.N. — Moynihan-style, Kirkpatrick-style. If the U.S. is determined to defend the U.N., no matter what, it will do no good.” For sure.
Toward the end of our discussion, Neuer and I talk about Ukraine. Many people seem inured to what the Russians are doing to the Ukrainians. The mass murder, mass rape, mass deportation. The utter devastation, the attempted annihilation. Why aren’t people more aroused, more indignant?
They were at first, Neuer points out. They were shocked. But then shock wears off. Think of the Syrians. Or don’t. Initially, people were shocked, at the regime’s murder of its own citizens. I remember when the death toll was nearing 10,000. I said, and wrote, “Is it conceivable that the toll will go as high as 10,000? Will it really get into five digits? How is that possible?” Before you knew it, the number was half a million, and people yawned — when they weren’t making excuses for Assad (and his partner, Putin).
I have written enough. Hillel Neuer is really a person to know. And you can get to know him, a bit, through our Q&A: again, here.