Prominent Dutch Jews spoke out against what they called a new trend involving hosting activists against Israel at commemorations for the Kristallnacht pogroms of 1938, according to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report.
The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, which is the Netherlands’ main watchdog on anti-Semitism, spoke out against the trend earlier this week ahead of the Nov. 9 anniversary of the pogroms in Germany and Austria, which many historians view as the opening shot of the Nazi campaign of violence against the Jews during the Holocaust.
CIDI said it was “concerned over the trend in which anti-Israel individuals receive a podium at Holocaust-related commemorations,” according to the CIP website.
The statement followed the invitation to one commemoration of Dries van Agt, a pro-Palestinian former prime minister of the Netherlands who recently said that the Jews “should have been given a piece of land” in Germany instead of in the historic Land of Israel, and the hosting at another of Anne Dekker, an activist who promotes the boycott of Israel and who said that neither Israel nor CIDI legitimately represent Jews.
Van Agt will speak at the main event organized by the Committee for the Commemoration of Kristallnacht, an NGO, at a theater in Amsterdam.Van Agt has compared Israel to Nazi Germany and in 2008 spoke at a rally in Rotterdam that featured a televised address by a leader of Hamas, was asked in 1972, upon his appointment as justice minister, whether he would free four Nazi war criminals who appealed for release for health reasons. He said he would try but that his Jewish predecessor tried and failed, adding: “I am only an Aryan.”
Ronny Naftaniel, a Dutch board member of CEJI, a Brussels-based Jewish organization promoting tolerance, called van Agt’s speaking at a Holocaust commemoration event “insane.”