The Dutch response to the Israel-Hamas war
Support for Israel across the board
After war broke out last weekend, outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte immediately offered support for Israel.
He said on X: “The Netherlands supports Israel in its call to immediately stop the violence of the terrorist organization Hamas. Israel has every right to defend itself.”
I wondered—is this view is held across the Dutch political spectrum? (Spoiler Alert: pretty much yes.)
And how might the battle (of public opinion) play out over the next few weeks in Netherlands?
The European position
First, some European context.
The EU is divided on Israel-Palestine. Western European countries tend to recognize only Israel as a state, and Eastern European countries tend to recognize both Israel and Palestine.
An example of the consequences of this division: after a violent flare-up in Israel and Gaza in 2021, Hungary blocked the EU from making a formal foreign policy statement about the hostilities. According to Politico:
Hungary’s unwillingness to go along with a joint statement underscored the longstanding internal disagreements among EU countries on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Europe’s limited ability to exert influence in the region.
Apparently European leaders have never had very much influence in Israel, and any sway they may have held has been diminished in the last few years, as attention has shifted elsewhere, particularly to Russia and Ukraine.
This got to a point last year that Sven Koopmans (shoutout to the Dutch guy!), the European Union special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, officially complained to the Israeli Foreign Ministry about not getting enough high-level meetings in Israel.
The Dutch position
According to Trouw:
The Netherlands has a reputation for having supported [Israel] through thick and thin since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, in all the wars that have occurred since then; there was no greater support in the whole world.
This week, leaders in the House of Representatives expressed “broad support” for the cabinet’s position on Israel’s “right to self-defense.”
One exception was radical-right wing Forum for Democracy (FVD) leader Thierry Baudet. “I am a fan of conspiracy theories," he infamously said in an interview in 2022. “I believe we are controlled by a global conspiracy of evil reptilians.”
Baudet had previously been pro-Israel, sometimes wearing yarmulkes an Israel Defense Forces t-shirt. In the House this week, he said, regarding the war: “It could be that other powers are involved” and “maybe it would be better to turn the other cheek.”
These comments are in line with the conspiracy theory that an “evil elite bent on sowing fear and division” is running the world. The NRC breaks it down:
As an anti-Semitic target, Israel almost naturally appears in these types of conspiracies. The fact that Israel was the first country to launch a large-scale vaccination campaign was a source of even more conspiracies. The large Israeli defense industry is also seen as suspect.
Parties in other corners the far right, Geert Wilders’ PVV and JA1, have expressed support for Israel.
Who’s flying which flag where
Raising another country’s flag in solidarity with a crisis is usually no big deal in the Netherlands. Various buildings have flown the Moroccan, Turkish, or Syrian flags this year after earthquakes in those countries. And of course Ukrainian flags are ubiquitous.
On Sunday, the Government Information Service announced that there would be “no general flag instructions” for government buildings. Municipalities were on their own.
Of the fifteen largest cities in the Netherlands, only Amsterdam city hall raised the Israeli flag on Monday.
The Israeli flag was also raised on the Binnenhof, the Dutch Parliament building. A government spokesperson called this Mark Rutte’s “personal decision.”
The mayors of Rotterdam, the Hague, and Utrecht flew their city flags at half-mast.
“It is my job as mayor to maintain social peace and order in the city and not do anything that causes polarization… ” said Rotterdam Mayor Aboutaleb.
On Tuesday night in Urk, a largely Christian community in Flevoland—and, interestingly, the Dutch municipality with the lowest percentage of residents with a migration background—twenty Israeli flags were torn from homes and burned.
Harrowing repatriation flights
All commercial flights out of Israel have been cancelled, and the government has started repatriation flights on military aircraft.
Repatriation is intended for citizens who were temporarily in Israel, not people who live there. Fun (?) fact: “repatriation” is different than “evacuation,” which was how—for example—Dutch citizens were picked up from Afghanistan in 2021.
The first of these flights on Wednesday was initially turned away by air traffic control because the Tel Aviv airport was under fire. Ultimately the flight took off for Eindhoven two and a half hours after it landed, with 199 people, including 28 students and two teachers.
The flights are expected to continue “as long as necessary and as long as the security situation in Israel allows.”
🥳 LEUKE DINGETJES
Heads or tails?
“Researchers at the University of Amsterdam recently made a surprising discovery that challenges long-held assumptions about the randomness of coin tossing. After flipping coins over 350,000 times, the largest study of its kind, they found that coins have a slight tendency to land on the same side they started on.” via Boing Boing
A new album from P.J.M. Bond
I cannot believe this guy is from Volendam?
*all typos in this email are on purpose