{"id":515294,"date":"2026-03-03T05:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T05:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/515294\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T05:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T05:11:09","slug":"israels-ambassador-to-australia-seeks-to-discredit-the-united-nations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/515294\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel’s ambassador to Australia seeks to discredit the United Nations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israel’s new ambassador to Australia has sought to discredit the United Nations (UN) by claiming the country “can’t take them seriously”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hillel Newman also justified the US-Israeli air strikes, saying Iran had been attacking Israel for decades through its network of proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters in Canberra after recently arriving in Australia, Mr Newman said the UN had “nothing to do with justice” or “peace and security”.<\/p>\n

“The UN is a politicised body,” Mr Newman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We can’t take them seriously.”<\/p>\n

Mr Newman said Israelis had spent years living under attack.<\/p>\n

“Families in Israel, for the past 20 years, have had to run to a bomb shelter in 15 seconds because of rockets launched by Hezbollah or Hamas,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Both are proxies of Iran.”<\/p>\n

The United States and Israel’s joint military action against Iran over the weekend has come under fire from legal and human rights groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Albanese government on legality of US-Israeli strikes on Iran<\/a><\/p>\n

The Albanese government is continuing to avoid questions about the legality of the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran, while throwing support behind the strikes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter terrorism Ben Saul said international lawyers were “united” in their assessment that the attacks breached international law.<\/p>\n

The Albanese government has so far deflected questions about the legality of the strikes, while throwing its support behind efforts to prevent Iran from holding a nuclear weapon. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Israel previously said the strikes were “pre-emptive” to remove threats against Israel, while US President Donald Trump said the attacks aimed to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program and bring about regime change.<\/p>\n

Mr Newman insisted the US and Israel’s attacks were targeted at military facilities, and questioned Iran’s claims that a strike had hit a girls’ school<\/a> and killed at least 165 people.<\/p>\n

The UN has described the strike as “a grave violation of humanitarian law”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

The ambassador said Israeli intelligence indicated the school was no longer operating, and was instead being used by members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.<\/p>\n

“Don’t believe what you hear coming out of Iran,” he said.<\/p>\n

However, he conceded “this needs to be checked”.<\/p>\n

“When you have a war, there can be mistakes,” Mr Newman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I do not believe this is the case in the situation of the school because we do not have information yet that this actually was a school and there were children there.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel’s new ambassador to Australia has sought to discredit the United Nations (UN) by claiming the country “can’t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,169697,257703,5575,6897,257702,44,31132,6902,1055],"class_list":["post-515294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-girls-school","tag-hillel-newman","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-israel-ambassador","tag-news","tag-un","tag-united-nations","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}