By Herman Meester
Right-wingers
The Netherlands is perhaps Israel’s best “friend” in Europe; and our most xenophobic member of parliament is Israel’s best “friend” in the Netherlands. I mentioned that in the first letter, where I give an impression of how anti-Semitism and the Holocaust is (mis)used for political goals in this little part of Europe.
http://normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1785
But you don’t have to be an Israel apologist if you’re a right-winger. See the below excerpt from a Belgian interview I translated. Summarizing the more amusing points, the most controversial member of parliament of the nominally independent, sovereign state of the Netherlands (which is the host of the International Court of Justice in The Hague), who frequents the Israeli Embassy, not only claims not to be a Zionist, he also claims that the “transfer” of Palestinians from their own land is not ethnic cleansing, he even claims that the blows that Israel is taking from the Arab Islamists are actually meant for “us”, and the most cogent argument he can find in this interview for his Israel apologetics is that Israel is “an oasis of democracy and Western values in the Middle East.”
For those who wonder how people holding these convictions can end up being elected as representatives in the Dutch Parliament, perhaps somebody in the Education Ministry would know the answer.
From standaard.be:
The system is rotten - that’s our raison d’etre
http://www.standaard.be/partners/index.asp?articleID=EL1TKPGQ
Jean-Marie Dedecker and Geert Wilders
Geert Wilders, known by his anti-Qur’an film Fitna, and Jean-Marie Dedecker had never met before, but they’ve made a remarkably similar political journey. Having both begun in the right-wing liberal party [in their respective countries], and left it under less-than-friendly conditions, they scored an unexpected victory in the following elections with their own parties.
(…) Int.: (addressing Wilders) Yet there are big differences between you. Mr Dedecker is against all kinds of prohibitions, whereas you want to forbid many things, for starters, the Qur’an. (…)
Wilders: (…) it’s utter nonsense that I would want to forbid all kinds of things. I only want to forbid things to defend our rechtsstaat [the constitutional state and the rule of law].* I’m still enough of a liberal [in Europe, liberal means right-wing economically, libertarian ethically] to only resort to prohibitions in the most extreme case. I really don’t like to forbid books. You won’t be hearing me plea for that with other books.**
Int.: Mr Dedecker, do you also feel our rechtsstaat is under siege?
Dedecker: I feel threatened by the fact that the separation of church and state is being weakened. But I have no existential fear. There are now two phobias in our society: islamophobia and climatophobia. Both are being cultivated.
(addressing Wilders) You think Eurabia is coming, I do not. Our Enlightenment values are strong enough to be able to resist that. What we do have to do is wake up. The things the politically correct Left has done to our society has become exactly our success.
(…)
Int.: Have you seen the anti-Qur’an film Fitna, by Geert Wilders, Mr Dedecker?
Dedecker: Yes, I think it’s a successful compilation of the extravagant violent tendencies of Islam, but it’s not a film. The images were real (…)
But I really don’t feel the urge to make such a film. (…)
Int.: Some say your [Wilders'] intransigent attitude toward Islam has to do with your personal situation. Being constantly secured, you are alleged to be the victim of a tunnel vision.
Wilders: As far as I can judge that by myself, it’s incorrect. I’ve been in parliament for ten years and my first law proposals on the danger of Islam in the Netherlands and Europe date from my first year in parliament in 1998, three years before 9/11. People looked at me as if I was a complete lunatic. But I had lived and traveled in the Middle East and studied the theme. I’d already seen those dangers ten years ago.
Dedecker: Partly, you’re also a Zionist. That I think is remarkable about you.
Wilders: A Zionist? Well, am I now.
Dedecker: The way you always defend Israel - that’s something that happens more in the Netherlands than in Belgium, by the way. We have both visited Israel and the Palestinian territories and I consider Zionism and Islamism as similar phenomena. You’re constantly defending Israel while you obviously do know what they’re doing to the Palestinians? Do you happen to do that because Zionism is also an opponent of Islamism?
Wilders: It’s interesting that you say that. “Zionist” might go a bit far, but indeed I am a great defender of Israel. Because Israel is an oasis of democracy and Western values in the Middle East. I’ve been in other countries in the region, from Syria through Iran to Afghanistan: all those countries are [sic] dictatorships. Israel is the only country where a majority in parliament can send a minister home - as members of parliament, shouldn’t you and me appreciate that?
Dedecker: In part, you’re right. But that doesn’t justify Israel as an apartheid regime - and that’s what so greatly troubles me. I call Israel a kippah democracy.
Wilders: I have a different opinion. Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip and the Western Bank of the Jordan might very well go to the other side of the Jordan - to Jordan or other territories. There’s room and space enough and many Palestinians already live there.
Int.: So now you’re even for an ethnic cleansing?
Wilders: That’s not an ethnic cleansing. Israel has a justified claim to that area. Further I think we shouldn’t hurt anyone, but I see what’s going on now: “Hamastan” [sic] rules in the Gaza Strip.
Dedecker: How would the Palestinians have to move to Jordan? The Palestinians are the stray cats of the Middle East: they’re not welcome anywhere. We’re dealing with people that have been expelled on the basis of an international treaty [sic] and on the basis of pseudo-property rights provided by the Torah or the Bible. Property rights based on books of fairy tales.
Wilders: To me, the security of Israel as a democracy prevails over the rights of a group that is to a high degree guilty of terror and corruption. There is no democratic Palestinian authority - that’s, unfortunately, the truth. I am convinced that the blows Israel is taking from radical Islam, are blows meant for us.
Dedecker: Isn’t it the other way around? It is demonstrated in studies of suicide terrorists that three fourth of them are motivated by the fate of the Palestinians. If we’d just solve this situation, wouldn’t it be safer for all of us? In the mean time we’re pumping billions and billions in our security.
(change of subject)
Notes:
* Note that Wilders admires, and recommends, Israeli administrative detention and torture methods against “terrorists”.
** Wilders had claimed it was “incomprehensible” that Hitler’s Mein Kampf should be verboten, but not the Qur’an. Note by the way that Mein Kampf is not outlawed anywhere, to my knowledge, it’s merely so that most of the copyright holders, usually governments, of the original and translated versions do not allow republishing for non-scholarly purposes.
Theologians
There is an interesting cultural and political difference between the Belgians, our Dutch-speaking neighbours, and the Dutch, in our respective attitudes toward Jews and Israel. The above comments by a Belgian right-wing libertarian would never have been made by a right-wing libertarian in the Netherlands. Holland has CIDI (Haaretz: a Zionist propaganda institute), Belgium does not. Belgium was the place where the initiative was taken to try to bring Ariel Sharon to justice for crimes against humanity, Holland was (or still is?) the facilitator of arms transits from the US to Israel (even when the Dutch did not officially export arms to “regions of conflict”). Calvinist by tradition, Protestant Holland, unlike Catholic Belgium, has a large “moral majority” of evangelical and orthodox Calvinist Christians that are unconditional in their support for the “Jewish State”. And the Jews in the Netherlands are to a large extent secular with Zionist sympathies, many of them prominent in the media as Israel’s apologetics - or critics. Belgium has a large number of traditionally non-Zionist or even anti-Zionist chassidic Jews, less keen on media appearances than their Northern secular or religious Zionist counterparts.
The Protestant Church, for instance, has officially adopted as a creed that the bond between Christians and Israel is “unbreakable” (de onverbrekelijke band/verbondenheid tussen Kerk en Israël). Now, the Dutch theologians of course know that Israël means more than just the State of Israel. Essentially, in Jewish religious parlance, Israel means the Jews, not just the Jews (or a Jewish state) in a particular part of the Middle East. Most people however will understand this well-known dogma as the Christians’ unconditional support for the “David” state in a hostile, “Goliath” region.
It was therefore interesting to see that in last April, some in the Church became painfully aware that the state that has this “unbreakable bond” with the Church is doing bad things to innocent people.*** Granted, they found out about it a bit late, but better late than never. So that’s become an issue.
As we’ve seen, the relationship of the Protestant Church with Israel is one of “unbreakable bond”. Now, God and religion being at least partly about justice and all such moral inconveniences of life, what about the Palestinians who are suffering because of the acts of people supported by the Christians? It was proposed that the relation between the Church and the Palestinians be also one of “bond”. But would that perhaps mean that somehow, that “bond”, with the Palestinians, was not “unbreakable”? (Apparently, the phrase “unbreakable bond” was not even an option. True, it might have inflated the term. Before you know it, the entire planet has an “unbreakable bond” with the Church – you can’t have that.) Exit “bond”. It was then proposed, for the description of the relationship of the church with the Palestinian people, to use the “much deeper” phrase of “ecumenical communion” (oecumenische gemeenschap).
Now if that won’t warm the hearts of the Palestinians, I don’t know what will! The theologians are still thinking about it, so there’s no definitive phrase yet. Send your suggestions to crazymulgogi (that’s a gmail address), and I will pass them on to the synod!
Note:
*** “For sixty years now, we’ve felt connected with Israel. But where do we stand when it comes to the disaster that happened to the Palestinians as a result of the formation of the State of Israel? Have we ever taken responsibility for it? … We haven’t faced up to the fate of the Palestinian people. … ” H. Veldhuis, Culemborg, http://www.refdag.nl/artikel/1339362/
herman meester, july 2008
