An impression of the political use of anti-Semitism in the Netherlands
Zionist propaganda: a charity
Gifts to the Israel-supported Zionist propaganda institute (so Haaretz) CIDI (Centrum voor Informatie en Documentatie Israel), http://www.cidi.nl/, are tax deductible. This is a privilege in the Netherlands usually only granted to charities.
Among the activities of this charity are: reporting instances of anti-Semitism; informing the public of AIPAC meetings with presidential candidates (the American elections are popular in the Dutch media); demythologizing the Nakba; inviting students of Hebrew, history, and related studies to write end-term papers on Israel and offering financial rewards for the “best” end-term paper; making a habit of bringing up, whenever necessary, “Hitler's friend” mufti Al-Hussaini of Jerusalem; co-organizing academic courses in Leiden University on Zionism; informing the public on Israel's politics; stressing the intense bonds between the US and Israel; stressing that the Palestinians have ruined the 2000 peace talks by rejecting “Barak's generous offer”; stressing that the Palestinians are after the conquest of all of Israel, which makes an end to the occupation of the Palestinian Occupied Territories quite dangerous; quoting president Bush's thoughts on Arafat as “evidence” that Arafat is unreliable (a claim CIDI goes to great lengths to prove); etc.
The greatest friend of Israel
The Netherlands' prime crusader against Islam, member of parliament and “film director” Geert Wilders much admires Israel's policies, frequents The Hague Israeli Embassy, and thinks Israel's methods of torture and incommunicado detention are great examples for the rest of the free world in the “war on terrorism”. Yet he accuses Moroccan-descent politicians of “double loyalty” for having both the Dutch and the Moroccan nationality, even though Morocco and the Netherlands enjoy good diplomatic relations, and even though it is technically not possible to give up the Moroccan nationality by Moroccan law. The Dutch Queen and many of her relatives have dual citizenship (Dutch, British), and so does, probably, Wilders's own wife.
A great friend of Israel, some of Wilders's political statements are published by CIDI on its website, even though the word Israel is not mentioned. This happens for instance if the statements are related to “terrorism”. Wilders is a known proponent of a war against Iran, wants to introduce Guantánamo Bay-style facilities in the Netherlands for its “potential terrorists”, and thinks highly of Ariel Sharon, calling him his “political role model”. http://www.cidi.nl/isnbr/2003/hoofd4-1203.html
CIDI, or at least the organization Centraal Joods Overleg that CIDI is a member of, did distance itself from Wilders's film on the perceived threat of Islam, which outside of islamophobic circles was widely considered to be manipulative and discriminating.
Islam is Nazism, Qur'an is fascist, all terrorists are Muslims
Mr. Wilders calls the Qur'an a “fascist”, “terrible”, “dangerous” book, has uttered various discriminatory remarks on Muslims (“Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims”) and wants to specifically prevent all immigration from “Muslim countries” into the Netherlands. In his view, Islam is an “imperialistic .. ideology”, whose objective is “the destruction of Western Civilization”. He wants to “expel” from the country “Moroccan street terrorists” (“street terrorists” in this typically are young people causing “trouble” in the streets, like hanging around in groups, speeding on noisy motor scooters and similar “crimes”), and he has called Prime Minister Balkenende a “Chamberlain”, because, he alleged, he displays the same tendency to “appease” the Muslims. This effective comparison of Islam to Nazism, perhaps due to poor education and journalist's lack of familiarity with Chamberlain, did not cause the slightest stir.
Anti-Semite
In March of 2008, EAJG (see below) member Harry de Winter, a television millionaire and secular, left wing “critical Zionist” as he calls it, placed a paid-for ad in the newspaper in which he stated that Wilders' statements on Muslims and the Qur'an amount to the anti-Semitism that was directed against Jews in the 1930s. A few of De Winter's statements: “We, Jewish people, know like no other to what this type of discrimination may lead.” “If Wilders would have said the same things about Jews (and the Old Testament) he now says about Muslims (and the Qur'an) he would long have been ditched and convicted for anti-Semitism.”
In sharp contrast to the reaction to Wilders's “Chamberlain” accusation implying Islam was equal to Nazism, De Winter's analogy was ridiculed from the right. De Winter soon said he had received death threats by email, some of them, remarkably, of an anti-Semitic nature. He stated: “... I'm being called an idiot and a demagogue, I'm receiving death threats by email. This country's gone mad – people saying it's, again, those filthy Jews, who are protecting the Muslims.”
Mentioning the war
The Second World War, the fate of the Jews, Nazism and all its attributes have been essential ingredients for some time now in the Netherlands, but there have both been shifts in its perceived applicability, a remarkable erosion of terms, and re-conquest by the Right. Accusations of fascism, racism, and discrimination have been useful tools used against right-wing extremists for decades. In 2001-2, just after 9/11, the remarkable libertarian, admirer of Reagan and Thatcher, and self-declared hedonist Pim Fortuyn posed a threat to a sleepy and vastly impopular political establishment. Across virtually the entire political spectrum, he was denounced for a racist, because he had declared that Islam is a “backward culture”, he argued for a stop to the “Islamization” of “our culture”, and he claimed that if he “had anything to say about it” no Muslim would be able to migrate to the Netherlands any longer. He wanted to get rid of Art. 1 of the Dutch constitution (a document that has more symbolic than judiciary power), which states that all in the Netherlands are treated equally, regardless of race, gender, religion, etc. etc.
In a few heated months preceding the 2002 election, among the references in the political and commentator's arena were: “Anne Frank”, “in the thirties of the last century”, “Mussolini”, “Adolf Hitler's intelligence”, “Heinrich Himmler's charm”, “extremist”, “Führerprinzip”, “we've seen this before”, “extreme right”, “Hitler, Stalin”, “xenophobe”, “der Führer, il Duce”, “the Jews”, “in a line of Fascist frontmen”, etc.
Appropriating the weapon
Whether the commentators, who in their sometimes subtle, sometimes less subtle ways warned for this political outsider, would have been proven right or wrong is difficult to tell, because he was murdered shortly before the 2002 elections. His assassin: a radical animal rights activist (Fortuyn, a fact that got little publicity, had proposed to legalize mink farms, the abolishment of which the activists had been fighting for for decades, and had recently materialized).
Although the above-mentioned analogies had been made across the political spectrum, the Left was aggressively blamed for having “demonized” Mr. Fortuyn. No less predictable was the effect this had on the effectiveness of anti-Semitism as a political weapon. While “the left” had more or less “lost it” because it had now been worn out when directed at xenophobic or islamophobic characters on the populist right, it was quickly appropriated by the very same populist right. It is worth noting that in the Fortuyn era in 2002, his supporters, much less venomously anti-Islamic than Wilders's movement a few years later, had not yet discovered the Jews, anti-Semitism and Israel as a weapon against Islam and its “apologists”. Fortuyn, too, greatly admired Israel, and praised its brave resistance against Islamic “aggression”, but only after his assassination did the right discover the full potential of linking Islam to fascism, Nazism, and anti-Semitism. The Muslims, it is argued, are not the “new Jews”, they are the “new Nazis”. Among the fixed repertoire are the supposedly anti-Semitic Qur'anic verses, and the prophet Mohammed as a mass-murderer of Jews.
CIDI, anti-discrimination, and the Muslims
After the war, organized Jewish life has been associated various anti-discrimination organizations, consider for instance the Anne Frank Foundation (Anne Frank Stichting). An organization like CIDI has to package its message in politically correct terms, even when promoting the classical Zionist version of history, including the peace talks that are, in this version of reality, always spoiled by the Palestinians. In the Netherlands there is, anti-Islamic sentiment notwithstanding, still much sympathy for the Palestinian cause. In fact it appears that politically the Dutch are strongly divided in two camps – social conservatives, who do not want to give up a legacy of peaceful coexistence, social security, a non-aggressive economic model, and tolerance; and those revolting against this, advocating a confrontation with “Islam”, a preservation of “Dutch values”, and the removal of a rusty political establishment (granted, the picture is sketchy and in fact more complex). In this light, it is interesting to note how CIDI and its director Ronnie Naftaniël handle EAJG Harry de Winter's anti-Semitism accusation issue (see above, “Anti-Semite”). The CIDI:
“The Dutch Jewish community ... is less united [than the Muslim community] on the issue [of the anti-Semitism analogy with regard to Islamophobia]. Ronnie Naftaniël of the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI) thinks De Winter, in his criticism of Wilders, is mixing up Islam and Muslims. “When Wilders says, 'no Muslims should enter the country,' then that is, for sure, discriminatory. But a religion, you have to be able to criticize it. That is part of the freedom of expression. One can say, for instance, that Judaism is a backward religion.”
The analogy to the anti-Semitism of the 1930s is, Naftaniël thinks, misplaced. “The position of the Jews was not the same as that of the Muslims is now. We are now dealing with a world in which extremist Muslim groups are operating, that want to explode our law and order. One has to be able to fight that, but without lumping all Muslims together.””
Judaism
On a personal note, I wonder if in fact one could easily get away with calling “Judaism (het jodendom)” a “backward religion” in the Netherlands.
In any case, it would not be the preferred nomenclature for any anti-Semite, because the Jewish religion enjoys little interest in the Netherlands, and knowledge of it is limited to matzos, Pesach, the chanukkiah, and the idea that “real Jews” wear black, and big hats. In contrast to merely these symbols that Judaism is known for, every other right-wing political blogger has become a self-taught “Qur'an expert”, just as easily citing qur'anic verses or hadithic statements (out of context, of course) as the Rambam would quote the Mishnah or Leviticus. In other words, no-one calls “Judaism” a “backward religion”, simply because nobody really cares about Judaism as a religion. And the handful of classical anti-Semites that are still working on “exposing” the Talmud would not call Judaism a backward religion either, since they are far too busy uncovering Zionist conspiracies for global, or rather, galactic domination in past and present. It appears that Naftaniël has carefully chosen his words.
The right to insult
A background to the statement that it would not be a problem to call Judaism a backward religion, is the fashionable but perverse notion, aggressively promoted by local neoconservatives and Islam-critics, that there is something like the “right to insult”. This right, so it seems, has its roots in the freedom of expression, and its advocates expect somehow that to use this right is to defend freedom and democracy against religious fanatics, dogmatics, and left-wing Islam “appeasers”. Irritated with the, probably correct, impression that Muslims – unlike Christians with regard to their own symbols, books and the like – tend to express their outrage when the prophet Muhammad, the Qur'an or Islam is insulted, the advocates of “the right to insult” propose an extremely broad interpretation of the freedom of expression. The only exception, so it seems, is incitement to violence and other already illegal forms of expression.
But not for you
In this light, quite interesting was the fate of Dyab Abou Jahjah. A Belgian activist of Lebanese descent, he founded the “Arab European League” (AEL), enjoying, for a short while, exceptional popularity among disenfranchised Arab, Berber, Muslim youth in Belgium and the Netherlands. A gifted debater, he drove much of the political and media establishment in despair. For a while, Dyab Abou Jahjah was on every program, in every magazine, and in every newspaper.
A Lebanese in Belgium, Abou Jahjah's main point was that immigrants should economically and socially integrate in society without having to assimilate culturally and religiously. The political establishment speaking of nothing but “integration”, Abou Jahjah challenged opinion makers to explain what this buzzword actually meant and vehemently opposed forced assimilation as “fascism”.
In response to Belgium's failure of taking measures against racist prejudice in the Belgian police force, Abou Jahjah's AEL organization attracted volunteers to form “street patrols” to monitor acts of discrimination against North Africans. This was perceived of as threatening (“Muslim militias”), even though they were unarmed all the “patrols” did was to register incidents of discrimination against citizens of North African descent. In the months the patrol were active, the number of such incidents seemed to have remarkably declined. The AEL's agenda however was more ambitious and it did not conceal its political views, including those on world politics, from the public. For instance, Dyab Abou Jahjah soon addressed Zionism, Israel, and the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians.
Extremists
Under the heading “AEL wallows in extremism and exhibitionism”, CIDI reported an AEL demonstration against Israel, after its assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. AEL and International Socialists, CIDI reported, “commemorated Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin, who had been liquidated by the Israeli air force, in [a demonstration] without a permit.” Note: in the Netherlands, a permit for a demonstration is not needed, it merely has to be reported to the mayor. CIDI reported AEL spokesman Marmouch as having said:
“If you support the resistance, you cannot say you support one part and not another. If you really support the resistance, you support all of it and not just a part. The resistance is criminalized by the Zionist lobby all over the world ... here in the Netherlands, too, representatives of the Zionist Entity spread false and hypocritical information to make sure resistance against colonization, plunder and genocide is not supported. They disguise themselves as representatives of the Jews, but they represent only Zionism. ... We must not allow ourselves to be intimidated by certain politicians or organizations that want to portray us as terrorists. ... ” [emphasis hm].
Although AEL and Abou Jahjah advocate the not widely supported idea of one single, bi-national state for both Jews and Arabs in the area, it proved hard for commentators to distinguish between their anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The above explicit distinction between Jews and Zionists, however, proves that the “extremists” were very aware of this issue. This could not prevent them from being labeled by press and commentators in terms like “eschatological madness”, “the subtlety of the new anti-Semitism”, “the Anti-Semitic League”, etc. Anti-Zionism, we may safely say, equals anti-Semitism to the large majority of dominant opinion makers, if not to all of them.
Two journalists
The reputable journalist Stan van Houcke was accused in June of being an anti-Semite for his criticism of Israel's violations of human rights, and for exposing the bigotry and one-sided reporting of retired, decades long Israel correspondent Salomon Bouman. Van Houcke had also criticised Zionism's legacy, referring to the works of Ilan Pappé, Avi Shlaim, Benny Morris, and other historians.
The accuser was Salomon Bouman, a journalist and loyal Zionist, whose apparent incompetence in reporting in a balanced way on the Palestinians had led his prestigious newspaper NRC to send an additional correspondent to the area to do the reporting on the Arab side (the entire Arabic-speaking Middle East, for that matter). Similar sized newspapers in the country have the same job done by just one correspondent. Bouman had been a correspondent for decades.
Bouman added to this accusation that the fact that Van Houcke had married a “Jewess” (Dutch: Jodin, a word that has connotations similar to Negro), who had been found “prepared” to marry Van Houcke, was quite a “gift from God”. Bouman implied that Van Houcke (who by the halakhic definition has Jewish children), is the kind of anti-Semite that in all of Jewish history in Europe has been persecuting the Jews. Van Houcke, disliked by some for his failure to just shut up on certain subjects, had been the witness of a child near him being shot in the head by an Israeli sniper, and other atrocities. Bouman would later state that Van Houcke is not an anti-Semite, but “more dangerous”, for “creating anti-Semitism” by citing quotes “out of their historical contexts.” The latter should be understood as citing the above New Historians.
Holocaust deniers
The Persian born philosopher, poet, expert on international law, professor of Social Cohesion [sic] in Leiden and respected “critic of Islamofascism” Afshin Ellian in 2008 accused a few prominent Jewish human rights activists of being “vulgar Holocaust deniers” (ordinaire Holocaustontkenners). The activist belong to the Jewish organization Een Ander Joods Geluid (EAJG, A Different Jewish Voice).
Among the accused, or rather, the main target, was author, retired physicist and Auschwitz survivor Hajo Meyer (1924), whose slogan is “No injustice justifies any other injustice”. Meyer wrote a book, The End of Judaism (Het einde van het jodendom) in which he claims that the real threat to Judaism is Jews giving up on Judaism's ethical mission of peace, justice, and kindness. The book was largely motivated by his outrage over Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people. Meyer, in his eighties, still has the energy to give lectures in a.o. the Netherlands and Germany, addressing the unjust treatment of the Palestinians, explicitly referring to his Jewish moral and ethical legacy to condemn this treatment.
Sophisms
Meyer, member of the EAJG board, had made an analogy between the Warsaw Ghetto and the Gaza Strip. And since this, in Ellian's view, meant comparing Israel to the Nazis, and since the Nazis, as we all agree, must be destroyed, it means, says Ellian, that Meyer and other members of EAJG “wanted to see Israel destroyed”.
EAJG, shocked by such bizarre, sophistic reasoning, had been stating for a long time to anyone who wishes to hear it that they, as Jews, want to stop the moral degeneration of Israel. As they say they care about Israel, used to be proud of Israel, and fear that Israel, going down the path it goes, will destroy itself. Instead of calling Mr Ellian's integrity into question, for verbally scandalizing an Auschwitz survivor in his eighties who claims Judaism is about justice, peace, and respect, Ellian's supporters continue to celebrate him as a champion of the Enlightenment spirit.
Concentration camp
Mr. Meyer also said that Israel abuses the Holocaust to justify its treatment of the Palestinians, and that the Gaza strip resembles a large concentration camp. The phenomenon of the concentration camp having been invented by the British and copied by Hitler, so not being a unique feature to the Nazis' methods, is irrelevant in the present climate.
So instead of respectfully asking (since usually Holocaust survivors are quite respected), “Mr Meyer, that's a strong analogy, could you explain that, are you sure you're not exaggerating?” one calls Mr Meyer a “holocaust denier.” It seems that, at least in the Netherlands, there is an important exception to the respect usually given to Holocaust survivors.
Jewish anti-Semite
Meyer was called a “Jewish anti-Semite” by Henryk Broder, author and a friend of author and publicist Leon de Winter's (see below). Anti-Semitic expression in Germany is illegal, as it is in the Netherlands, making this a grave accusation. Outraged, Meyer sued Broder, but the German judge thought it was not a problem when a Holocaust survivor and thus victim of anti-Semitism is called an anti-Semite.
Leon de Winter, in another charge of “Jewish anti-Semitism” leveled at Meyer, decided to use this acquittal by the German judge as some kind of “proof” that Meyer actually is a “Jewish anti-Semite”. The judge however had stated no such thing, he merely confirmed Broder's right to say it. It amounts to the comical that De Winter so pedantically confuses his friend's opinion with “fact”.
Leon de Winter: “The intriguing thing about Jewish anti-Semites (at least, as judged by the German judge) like Meyer, is that they continuously need the Holocaust, but in the same time they're out there pissing [sic] on that same Holocaust.”
Meyer commented, a.o.: “... a German judge under 64 must think about his career and will consider every critical word of Israel to be anti-Semitic.” He added: “Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are.” Leon de Winter's “friend” is Henryk Broder.
http://www.elsevier.nl/nieuws/nederland/artikel/asp/artnr/201963/.
Perpetrators have more fun
Broder is on record as having said that it's not quite a bad thing for Jews to have, after “two thousand years of being the victim”, now become “perpetrators”. Interestingly, unlike some other apologists he does not deny that Israel's slate is far from clean: “It's true, these days, Israel is more often the perpetrator than the victim. That is good, and this way, it is just. For almost two thousand years, the Jews have tried to play the rol of the eternal victim; they've had nothing but bad experiences doing so. Perpetrators usually have a longer life expectancy than victims, and one has more fun.” The same mindset is displayed by friend Leon de Winter, who in 2003 pathetically urged US president Bush to kill a hundred thousand men, women and children in Saddam's place of birth. This way, he argued without a trace of irony, Bush would gain “respect” with the Arabs. In a 2008 interview, Leon confirmed having no regrets. In 2005, De Winter taught Berkeley students on the topic of Anne Frank and the Holocaust in Dutch film and literature.
Anne would have been honored.
Kosherizing your anti-Semitism
The Netherlands has its own Jimmy Carter, the Roman Catholic moralist Dries Van Agt, who was a Minister and Prime Minister to the Dutch government from 1971 to 1982. Van Agt went to the Gaza strip together with Hajo Meyer, who is Jewish. Having himself never made any inflammatory remarks beyond the obvious statement that the Palestinians are, thanks to Israel, living in harsh conditions, Van Agt's tactic, says Henryk Broder, is to “kosherize” his own “anti-Semitism”. For Dries van Agt is not genuinely worried about the Palestinians' fate, he is merely a “decent, Christian anti-Semite.” Van Agt said that he was shocked at this “grave accusation”, and a good observer will have noticed that he felt genuinely intimidated (he said this on television).
Genocidal fantasies of a self-taught orientalist
The above-mentioned Leon de Winter is a “respected best-seller author and commentator” obsessed with Islam and Arabs, and considers himself to be knowledgeable of the Middle East. His expertise leads to abstract orientalisms: the Arab, the Muslims, is Other, which impedes communication, and inevitably leads to a different treatment of them than political correctness would have it.
He has advocated the assassination by Israel of all family members of a suicide terrorist, because, I paraphrase, "the only language that The East [that perfidious Other] understands is the language of violence".
He also wrote (my translation):
"... Hamas kidnapped Shalit. Hamas must let Shalit go. If Israel does not have the will to bleed for him and, if necessary, completely lay waste Gaza for his life, then someday Hamas will lay waste Israel. Those are the rules in that part of the world. Those are the cruel and relentless Laws of the Desert of the Middle East."
Leon de Winter, when “reviewing” Norman Finkelstein's Holocaust Industry, stated that it is “astonishing that there are people who have any interest in a book that should be food for his psychiatrist.”
herman meester
rotterdam, 2008