Ellie Cohanim: The UN Has Become a Corrupt and Hypocritical Body

– The obsessive antisemitism at the UN, relentlessly targeting the one Jewish state of Israel, the outrageous number of resolutions passed against Israel, and even one resolution against the United States — the bastion of freedom and human rights — over its embargo on Communist Cuba… Well, all of this shows what a joke the UN has become,” former U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Religious Freedom Ellie Cohanim emphasized in an interview with our newspaper at the CPAC Hungary forum.

Ellie Cohanim, former U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Religious Freedom (Photo: Sandor Csudai)

Arriving in the United States in 1985 as a Jewish refugee from Iran, Ellie Cohanim has since become one of America’s leading experts on Middle East policy and religious freedom. At this year’s CPAC Hungary, she delivered a speech sharply critical of global antisemitism, the Iranian nuclear threat, and what she described as the UN’s loss of direction, bias, and entrenched corruption. According to her, dismantling the UN’s monopoly on Gaza aid, confronting antisemitic incidents on Western college campuses, and halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions are all urgent challenges — ones that require a coordinated response from the United States and its allies. In our interview, she speaks candidly about what’s at stake, and how the credibility of international institutions may be restored.  

Ellie Cohanim, former U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Religious Freedom, speaks to Magyar Nemzet at CPAC Hungary (Photo: Sandor Csudai)

– “Deport, Deport, Deport!” Revoke visas and immigration statuses, to combat the tsunami of antisemitism from the Biden administration, typically present at corrupt universities that are in moral decay - you said on X. Is the defense of Jewish students on campuses a basic right, and what can the Trump administration do?

– Well, we have a lot to unpack there. President Trump issued an executive order back in 2019 to combat antisemitism, granting American Jews civil rights protections under U.S. law for the first time in American history. So, in fact, it’s not a question of whether Jews in America have civil rights — these rights are already secured under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. What we’re really talking about is enforcement.

Trump came into office almost two years after the Biden administration allowed a pro-Hamas, pro-terror movement to sweep through our university campuses and our city streets,

and so the question we faced was how do we combat antisemitism after all of this damage has been done.

One of the policy paths that the Trump administration has explored, and is in fact putting in place, is deporting foreign students who are on American soil as they are attacking their fellow Jewish students on campuses, and undermining American society. So when you heard me say that if you're a foreign student who's in America and you're coming to attack your fellow Jews, then I have three words for you: deport deport deport! That's what i was referring to.

– In a post you reposted on X, you say, and I quote: the “Free Palestine” hate movement is not spontaneous, disorganized, or humanitarian in nature. It is a coordinated campaign that directly mirrors the four classic stages of Marxist-communist revolutionary strategy, refined across a century of global political subversion. Can you explain this?

–  I think many people assume that the Free Palestine movement is some sort of organic, grassroots campaign that has recently emerged in the United States— as well as in Europe and other cities around the world — as an expression of solidarity with Gaza. But the reality is very different. For years now, we’ve known that several radical Islamist groups — many of them linked directly to Iran, the country where I was born — have been deliberately cultivating an anti-Israel movement on a global scale.

And I'll give you an example: in European capitals, many people are familiar with Al-Quds Day. It falls on the last Friday of Ramadan, and it was established and promoted by the Iranian regime itself. In Arabic, ‘Al-Quds’ means Jerusalem, and the entire premise of the day is that Jerusalem should be occupied, or taken, and freed of the presence of Jews.

So the Iranian regime has been funding these so-called protests in European capitals for years now, year after year. They are very organized, with flags and thousands of people out, and it has turned into a hateful movement which is attacking the local jews, and they're wearing the symbols and flags of terror groups like Hezbollah, and Hamas.

So i would argue that this is the playbook that the Iranian regime has put into place, and it’s the same playbook that we saw explode all around the world. but also in the United States, and not on October 8th, but on October 7th, when Israel was still in the middle of its defense against terrorists who were still in Israeli cities, in the southern Gaza strip at that time. So the Israelis had not even had a moment to bury their dead, protesters were already out on the streets supporting Hamas and waving Palestinian flags. They were organized, they were funded, they were out there, and again: these are foreign funded groups, and there's nothing organic about them.

– You described the Iranian nuclear enrichment as a grave threat to the world. Iran has no need to enrich uranium other than to build a nuclear weapon, you said, adding that Iran is building a missile program that can hit the United States. President Trump recently said that if denuclearization does not happen, the military option is on the table. Can you expand on this?

– Well, one thing that anyone who's an observer of President Trump should understand by now is that Donald Trump says what he means, and he means what he says. So, if I were on the Iranian side of this negotiation table and President Trump says over and over again that we can either do this nicely, or we can do it not nicely, I would take that threat very seriously. I would understand that President Trump is giving the Iranians a real pathway through diplomacy. He’s giving them an opportunity to negotiate a deal, but that deal is not going to be Barack Obama's JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal), and it's not going to be a deal that happened under the Biden administration, when they just sat in Vienna and talked and talked until they ran out of time and nothing happened. 

And, in the meantime, the Iranians got richer with their oil sales to China. They advanced their nuclear program and they caused October 7th. They trained and funded Hamas, therefore causing a regional war to explode.

This is not what's going to happen under President Trump. President Trump is giving the Iranians the ability to sit at the negotiation table and negotiate a deal that he might accept. 

The question is, will the Iranians read the room right, and will they agree to a deal that President Trump might accept?

Ellie Cohanim, former U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Religious Freedom, speaks to Magyar Nemzet at CPAC Hungary (Photo: Sandor Csudai)

– You said the UN has been captured by China and the global south. In 2024 the UN General Assembly passed 17 reolutions on Isreael, and only 6 on the entire rest of the world, including one against the United States, for its embargo on communist Cuba. All this, while the U.S. underwrites approximately 25 percent of the UN’s overall budget. Whats at stake here?

– We're already seeing changes under President Trump in terms of the United Nations. The first change we're seeing is that President Trump, as a matter of policy and  principle, as an America first leader, has reasserted American sovereignty and says that we don't cede any of our sovereignty to any international organizations. That's the first thing to understand about Trump policy.

Secondly, the United States under President Trump has already started cutting UN budgets. We've already defunded UNRWA (the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees), which we know was tied to the October 7th attack. By the way, the U.S. also defunded UNRWA under President Trump's first administration as well.

So I would expect that under President Trump, you're going to see more and more U.S. budget cutting of that UN budget. We will no longer be spending or underwriting 25 percent of the UN budget, because the UN has completely strayed from the original mission that it was created for. It's become a completely corrupted and hypocritical body.

So all the antisemitism in the UN that’s obsessed against the one Jewish state of Israel, and the outrageous number of resolutions they’ve passed against Israel versus the entire rest of the world, and the fact that they passed one outrageous resolution against the United States – the bastion of freedom and human rights - concerning Communist Cuba… The fact that there would even be a UN resolution against the United States of America shows what a joke the UN has become.

– "The UN’s monopoly on aid to Gaza is over and they are not happy to lose their billion dollar gravy train," you said recently. Can the United States and Israel together handle all the humanitarian aid, and if so, how can the situation in the Middle East improve?

– Well, we're already seeing a new humanitarian aid program in Gaza. This comes of course after almost two years, where everything else failed. There were so many attempts by corrupted parties - like the United Nations and other aid programs - and then we saw that disastrous aid shipments that Joe Biden sent to Gaza, supposedly to feed the Gazans, and it costs the united states millions of dollars, the lives of our service members, and all of this disaster, which has gone nowhere.

The most important thing to understand about the food aid to Gaza and why it's been problematic over this almost two-year period right now, is that Hamas has been basically stealing that aid. They have been putting it into their own warehouses. It's part of why Hamas has maintained power for such a long time, because they are stealing the aid and they are selling it to Gazans who are supposed to be getting it for free.

So this money is what's continuing to underwrite Hamas. As long as we have these corrupted mechanisms that in fact keep Hamas in power, we are also elongating this war, we are elongating the suffering of Gazans, and we are elongating the suffering of Israelis. That's why you have this new mechanism finally in place: the Israelis in partnership with private American corporate entities. Just the past few days we've seen the rollout, and I am optimistic about it, because I've seen the video footage myself, where you see Gazans saying "thank you Trump,"after  they finally received the aid that they were supposed to be getting for free.

Cover photo: Ellie Cohanim, former U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Religious Freedom (Photo: Sandor Csudai)