Approximately three-quarters of Dutch Jewry were murdered during the Holocaust
BY DANIEL BEN-DAVIDMARCH 10, 2024 13:59
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Dutch King Willem-Alexander gives a speech during the opening ceremony for the National Holocaust Museum, at the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, 10 March, 2024 (Credit: BART MAAT/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
The Dutch King has defied protests from mosques in the country to attend the opening of a new Holocaust museum in Amsterdam alongside Israel’s president.
The K7 alliance of over 200 Dutch mosques called for King Willem-Alexander not to participate in the reception given to Israel’s President Isaac Herzog on Sunday. The organisation said Herzog’s presence at the opening was a “huge blow to anyone who cares about the fate of Palestinian people”, according to the Sunday Telegraph.
But the King said the inauguration of the National Holocaust Museum on Sunday was of too “great significance and national importance” for him to not attend, according to the country’s government information service.
King Willem-Alexander arrives to take part in an opening ceremony for the National Holocaust Museum, at the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, 10 March, 2024 (Credit: RAMON VAN FLYMEN/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
The Rights Forum, a Netherlands-based political advocacy organisation focusing on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, said the museum should “not be opened in the presence of a president who promotes genocide”.
Austria’s president, Alexander van der Bellen, and a German state premier, Manuela Schwesig, were also due to attend.
King Willem-Alexander and Herzog visited a synagogue in the city ahead of the opening.
The museum, housed in a former teacher training college that had been used as a covert escape route to help 600 Jewish children escape the Nazis, will tell the stories of some of the 102,000 Jews who were deported from the Netherlands and murdered in Nazi death camps.
King Willem-Alexander attends a visit of the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, during its opening, 10 March, 2024 (Credit: RAMON VAN FLYMEN/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
The museum will also be the first in the country to explore how the involvement of Dutch officials under Nazi-installed laws led to approximately three-quarters of Dutch Jews – the largest proportion of any European country – being among the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
Exhibits include photographs and mementos which had once belonged to the many Dutch Jewish lives lost. In one room, the walls are covered with the texts of hundreds of dehumanising laws against Jews enacted by the Nazis during their occupation of the Netherlands.
A group of anti-Israel protesters demonstrated outside the museum on the day of its opening.
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News
Alison Chabloz jailed for 18 weeks
She was convicted of three counts of communication offences over two podcast interviews
BY MATHILDE FROTAPRIL 01, 2021 14:43
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Holocaust denier Alison Chabloz has been jailed for 18 weeks in connection with comments she made on two far-right podcasts in 2019.
Ms Chabloz, 56, was convicted of three counts of communication offences under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.
The charges relate to offensive comments she made about the Holocaust on The Graham Hart Show and Realist Radio in 2019.
She was serving a suspended sentence at the time for writing, performing and publishing songs which mocked Jews and the Holocaust.
According to the Mail Online, District Judge Michael Snow said: ‘I’m not sentencing you on the basis that you are anti-Semitic, I’m not sentencing you on the basis that you are a Holocaust denier. I’m sentencing you on the basis that on two separate occasions whilst subject to a suspended sentence, you participated in a radio programme where you made grossly offensive comments. The grossly offensive contributions by the defendant to both programmes are insulting to members of a vulnerable community.”
Stephen Silverman, director of investigations and enforcement at Campaign Against Antisemitism, said on Wednesday the “verdict and sentence finally give the Jewish community justice and protection from someone who has made a vocation out of denying the Holocaust and baiting Jews. It also sends a clear message to those who might be tempted to go down the same path.”
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Questions for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and its partner groups
such as, why not put our export licensing rules under the spotlight?
- Veterans Today
March 10, 2024
VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel
$ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct “aid” and $ 130B in “Offense” contracts
Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State.
Mass marches, chanting and banner waving are essential to the campaign to save Palestine but it’s also important to challenge UK Government policy and actions through all channels, democratic and non-democratic, especially now that Lord Walney, the Government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption, recommends that political leaders ban their MPs from engaging with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and other solidarity groups. Milord Walney, aka John Zak Woodcock, is a former chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, so not independent after all.
Knowing Israel’s overriding, stop-at-nothing ambition to control all of Palestine “from the river to the sea” and seize Gaza’s offshore oil and gas; and considering its contempt for law and human decency; and noting UKGov’s lamentable habit of distorting international law to sanitise Israel’s crimes against humanity; the Palestine solidarity movement’s continuing reliance on calls for a ceasefire after 5 months of genocide clearly isn’t enough.
Meanwhile, UKGov (Department for Business and Trade) have dismissed a petition calling for all licences for arms to Israel to be revoked. Their excuse is that “we rigorously assess every application on a case-by-case basis against strict assessment criteria, the Strategic Export Licensing Criteria (the SELC)…. The SELC provide a thorough risk assessment framework for export licence applications and require us to think hard about the impact of providing equipment and its capabilities. We will not license the export of equipment where to do so would be inconsistent with the SELC.”
So everything’s just fine, yes?
No. They don’t bother to explain how Israel manages to satisfy those “strict” criteria and survive such a “rigorous” process. We’re supposed to take it on trust. Serious campaign groups, though, would check out the SELC and provide their activists with an expert briefing.
There are 8 criteria and, on reading them, you might well conclude that Israel fails to satisfy at least 5. MPs and ministers pretending otherwise mislead Parliament and insult the public. And I’ve always understood that to be a serious matter and punishable.
CRITERION 6 requires “commitment to non-proliferation and other areas of arms control and disarmament”, but how safe is anyone under the threat of Israel’s 200 (or is it 400?) nukes? Israel is the only state in the region not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It hasn’t signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention either. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, similarly the Chemical Weapons Convention.
CRITERION 4 worries about whether “the [exported] items would be used in the territory of another country other than for legitimate purposes”. Five months of genocide, human misery and almost total devastation in Gaza surely answers that one. 75 years of illegal occupation using brutal military force clinches it.
Under CRITERION 3 the Government is supposed to take into account (a) whether granting a licence would provoke or prolong armed conflict; (b) whether the items are likely to be used other than for the legitimate national security or defence of the recipient and (c) whether the items would be likely to cause, avert, increase or decrease conflict or instability in the country of final destination, taking into account the balance of forces between states or actors concerned, humanitarian impact, the nature of the conflict including the behaviour of all states or actors involved, and whether the items might be used for serious acts of violence against women or children. The answers are obvious.
CRITERION 2 is about respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in the country of final destination as well as respect by that country for international humanitarian law. The Government will not grant a licence if “there is a clear risk that the items might be used to commit or facilitate internal repression”. That includes torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary detentions and other serious violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms. As the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza are deemed to be occupied by military force, Israel’s responsibilities towards, and treatment of, the Palestinians under their control is presumably included in this.
CRITERION 1 stresses UKGov’s commitment to its UN and other international obligations and how it must refuse an export licence if inconsistent with these.
Of course Israel would fall flat on its face if these safeguards were properly applied. But, given our “rigorous” Government’s unwavering support for Israel, the SELC are bypassed and it’s business as usual with the genocidal regime. Secretary of State Kemi Badenoch has ministerial responsibility for this fiasco.
The PSC is critical of the way UKGov ignores its own rules and fails to comply with the UK’s international obligations regarding arms exports to Israel. But are the PSC and its partners taking effective action? There’s mention of a ‘Stop Arming Israel’ campaign in PSC’s literature from 2017 but no detail. With their access to law and media specialists, PSC and partners could tear apart the Government’s dishonest performance, which makes our nation complicit in Israel’s genocide and other war crimes, and hold it accountable using all available channels. That might achieve more than the usual street protests. But is any of it happening?
Stuart Littlewood
10 March 2024
After working on jet fighters in the RAF Stuart became an industrial marketing specialist with manufacturing companies and consultancy firms. He also “indulged himself” as a newspaper columnist. In politics, he served as a Cambridgeshire county councillor and member of the Police Authority. Now retired he campaigns on various issues and contributes to several online news & opinion sites. An Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, he has produced two photo-documentary books – Paperturn-view.com.
BIG BROTHER in the 21. Century 