Dutch King Defies Muslim Calls To Stay Away From Opening Holocaust Museum
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
AMSTERDAM (Worthy News) – Dutch King Willem-Alexander has defied calls from more than 200 mosques to stay away from the opening of a Holocaust museum in Amsterdam alongside Israel’s president on Sunday, despite mounting anti-Israel protests and related security concerns.
The National Holocaust Museum in the Dutch capital was said to be too much of a “great significant and national importance” for the 56-year-old king not to attend the inauguration, said the Netherlands Government Information Service.
The K7 alliance of Dutch mosques condemned Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s attendance as “a huge blow to anyone who cares about the fate of the Palestinian people and values justice.” The mosques referred to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza in a statement backed by The Rights Forum, the political party Denk (‘Think’), and other anti-Israel activists.
They did not mention the October 7 attacks by Islamic group Hamas in Israel, where it killed some 1,200 people, including raped women and children.
Critics viewed the mosque protests as deeply anti-Semitic in a nation from where some 102,000 Dutch Jews died in the Holocaust of an estimated prewar Jewish population of roughly 140,000.
Sunday’s opening, 80 long years after the height of the Holocaust, came days after police in the Netherlands detained 18 anti-Israel activists who staged a sit-in in the lobby of the Dutch Parliament in The Hague on Tuesday.
Some 25 activists defied the ban on protests in the building, shouting slogans including “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan linked to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. “Zionists are the real terrorists,” they added without mentioning the Hamas massacre, the worst atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust, also known as the Shoah.
SEPARATE INCIDENT
In a separate incident on Tuesday, pro-Palestinian agitators interrupted a debate in the plenary hall with chants of “Ceasefire now, Netherlands, shame, blood on your hands.” They were removed by security.
The recently elected chair of the Lower House of Parliament, Martin Bosma, said the presidium would file a complaint with the police.
All suspects were reportedly released within hours, pending a police investigation.
Geert Wilders, who has been attempting to form a government since his pro-Israel and fiercely anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) won a landslide victory in the November 22 general election, condemned the protesters as “leftist antisemitic scum.”
“I’ve been working here, in this parliament, for about 25 years, and what I have heard and seen today, here in this room, but certainly also downstairs in the building, is pure hatred of Jews. It’s hatred of Israel. It’s antisemitism,” Wilders added during a debate following the incidents.
“I’m ashamed that it is apparently possible that those people come in here, and it takes half an hour before the police remove them,” he stressed, calling on authorities to “severely punish” the perpetrators.
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