UN global comms arm under fire for anti-Israel bias as critics call for reforms

As a major "liquidity crisis" looms for United Nations entities successful the look of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) backing cuts, with experts saying the Trump medication should analyse the U.N.’s media branch, the Department of Global Communications, for its relation successful churning retired anti-Israel propaganda. 

"The U.N. continues its spin-cycle messaging instrumentality without washing retired its discarded and inefficiencies," erstwhile National Security Council Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for International Organization Affairs Hugh Dugan told Fox News Digital. "That’s its existent liquidity crisis."

Among the Department of Global Communications’ responsibilities are the proviso of property support, upkeep of the U.N. Dag Hammarskjöld Library, heading of worldwide accusation centers and coordination of the U.N.’s Twitter presence. A afloat autarkic reappraisal of the Department’s activities is acceptable to statesman this year.

HEAD OF UN WATCHDOG SAYS UNRWA HIRED PEOPLE ‘WHO WERE SUPPORTING TERRORISM’

The awesome of the United Nations is displayed extracurricular the Secretariat Building astatine United Nations Headquarters successful New York City connected Feb. 28, 2022. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Anne Bayefsky, manager of the Touro Institute connected Human Rights and the Holocaust and president of Human Rights Voices, expressed her tendency for the U.S. itself to analyse the Department of Global Communications’ funding. Bayefsky told Fox News Digital that "the United Nations is the satellite office of planetary disinformation," with an "assembly enactment of lies, hatred speech, incitement to violence, and antisemitism [that] is wholly out-of-control."

Bayefsky said it is the "organization itself that poses an integrity hazard — to satellite peace, civilized discourse, and quality rights protection. The accusation situation cultivated by the U.N. has been poisoning the minds of generations of Americans, truthful isn't it astir clip that Washington posed a hazard to this U.N. ‘work’?" 

The Department’s fixation connected Israel was evidenced successful a February study astir its operations, successful which it concisely described situation communications cells it runs regarding worldwide disasters successful Haiti, Sudan and Ukraine, and went into much expansive item describing its compartment connected "Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory."

According to the Department, the situation successful Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory "required beardown messaging and outreach to guarantee continued planetary enactment for the enactment of the United Nations and its partners." The Department besides mentioned that the compartment "analyzed accusation integrity risks, specified arsenic the dispersed of misinformation and disinformation astir United Nations work." 

Throughout 2024, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees successful the Near East (UNRWA) came nether superior scrutiny and lost donors aft accusation was uncovered astir UNRWA leaders’ and members’ ties to terrorism, and the hatred propelled done UNRWA curricula.

UN BLAMES ISRAELIS FOR ATTACK ON COMPOUND BUT DOESN’T MENTION HAMAS, SAYS FORCED TO REDUCE GAZA FOOTPRINT

Aid trucks of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees successful the Near East (UNRWA) present assistance adjacent Gaza City. (Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Fox News Digital asked Melissa Fleming, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Communications, to clarify the department’s allegations of misinformation and disinformation, and to picture wherefore "strong messaging" was required of the department. 

Fleming explained that the Department needed to "clearly explicate the role" of the U.N. and its humanitarian agencies, and analyse "information environments to amended recognize trends that mightiness airs hazard to the U.N.’s work."

Dugan, who was a elder advisor to 11 U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. said erstwhile it comes to the situation successful Gaza, "there’s immoderate peculiar attraction they’re giving to that portion and the sum of it, which I deliberation is concerning to me." He noted that cells focusing connected Haiti, Ukraine, and Sudan "don’t speech astir misinformation [or] disinformation." The situation, helium said, "wreaks… of the U.N.’s manus successful propagandizing and work arsenic a benignant of mediator of what accusation gets to whom, and when, and how." 

Asked however galore hours the Department of Global Communications devoted to its assorted situation cells, Fleming said that clip "is determined by a fig of factors," including "the standard of the situation and the velocity of developments connected the ground," and the level of planetary involvement and U.N. events progressive with the crisis. Fleming added that cells conscionable much often "in the aboriginal stages of a crisis." 

Fleming said that "the Israel-Occupied Palestinian Territory situation communications compartment has met connected a play ground for astir 1 hour" pursuing the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. She noted that this was "equivalent to the frequence and timing of meetings for the Ukraine situation during the archetypal twelvemonth of the full-scale penetration by the Russian Federation successful 2022." 

WORLD FORGETS ‘CATASTROPHIC’ WAR IN SUDAN AS RUSSIA, IRAN, OTHERS REPORTEDLY FEED FIGHTING WITH ARMS

Fighters of the Sudan Liberation Movement, a Sudanese rebel radical progressive successful Sudan's Darfur State which supports service main Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, be a graduation ceremonial successful the southeastern Gedaref authorities connected March 28, 2024. (AFP via Getty Images)

Fleming did not authorities however overmuch clip has been devoted to the Haiti oregon Sudan situation cells. The organization’s study connected its activities refers to the concern successful Sudan arsenic a "massive humanitarian crisis." 

In January, erstwhile Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that rebel actions successful Sudan constituted genocide. Blinken described however tens of thousands of Sudanese individuals had died successful conflict, that 30 cardinal required humanitarian assistance and that 638,000 were experiencing "the worst famine successful Sudan’s caller history." 

Blinken stated that Sudanese rebel radical Rapid Support Forces (RSF) "and RSF-aligned militias person continued to nonstop attacks against civilians, person systematically murdered men and boys — adjacent infants — connected an taste basis, and (have) deliberately targeted women and girls from definite taste groups for rape and different forms of brutal intersexual violence."

The U.N.’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan did not notation genocide successful its September 2024 findings that "Sudan’s warring parties person committed an appalling scope of harrowing quality rights violations and planetary crimes, including galore which whitethorn magnitude to warfare crimes and crimes against humanity." 

Conversely, the U.N. Special Committee to analyse Israeli practices declared successful November 2024 that "Israel’s warfare successful Gaza is accordant with the characteristics of genocide, with wide civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions intentionally imposed connected Palestinians."

Hamas terrorists near Kibbutz Be’eri, a colony adjacent Gaza, successful ruins. (Tomer Peretz)

Former nationalist information advisor Jake Sullivan said past twelvemonth that the Biden medication does "not judge what is happening successful Gaza is simply a genocide." 

David May, a probe expert astatine the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that "the absorption connected an imagined genocide, Gaza, is taking clip and absorption distant from an existent genocide, Sudan." May added that "essentially, the Department of Global Communications is tasked with presenting a Palestinian communicative and uses U.N. funds to enactment arsenic different pro-Palestinian U.N. body." 

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May said that "while the United States withholds backing to the United Nations proportionate to the budgets of Palestinian-specific bodies, Washington does not relationship for much wide U.N. departments carrying retired an anti-Israel agenda." 

Dugan expressed interest implicit the Department of Global Communications’ accent connected its relation successful combating misinformation successful its latest report. It "sends its mandate to spell acold beyond regular relations with the property corps," helium explained, and alternatively "sets them up to beryllium judge, assemblage and executioner connected storylines and narratives that the secretariat employees find offensive."