A Dutch-Muslim politician on Monday tweeted a picture of a Jewish yellow star to protest plans to monitor coronavirus carriers, JTA reported.
Arnoud van Doorn, a member of the City Council of The Hague, posted the picture hours before the start of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day.
His tweet shows a yellow star of the kind that Nazis made Jews wear during the Holocaust and bearing the words “corona app.”
Its caption reads “No obligatory corona app,” a reference to a test being carried out by the Dutch government for a smartphone app that would help authorities monitor the whereabouts and interactions of people, including those they know or suspect are carriers, in order to curb the spread of the virus.
Tom de Nooijer, a member of the City Council of Oldebroek, a town situated some 40 miles east of Amsterdam, was among the many who criticized the tweet.
“Remove that star, Arnoud. You have no right to reference it,” wrote de Nooijer, who represents the pro-Israel Christian SGP party, according to JTA.
This is not the first controversial move that van Doorn has made. In 2018, he tweeted a prayer to Allah to “exterminate the Zionists” and said that fasting on Yom Kippur won’t help Jews atone for Israel’s sins.
In 2017, another lawmaker of the same party, Abdoe Khoulani, called Israeli children “Zionist terrorists in training” and “future child murderers and occupiers.”
Dutch prosecutors dismissed complaints against Khoulani, saying that his remarks did not constitute incitement to hate.