.
(RNW) – An increasing number of former Dutch ministers are criticising Israel. They have joined forces in a new group called The Rights Forum, which stands up for the Palestinians’ rights and which has said it wants to exert diplomatic pressure on Israel to obey international law.
The list of names announced is a roll-call of prominent Dutch elder statesmen. Former prime minister Dries van Agt who took the initiative is there, and so are three former foreign ministers: liberal Hans van Mierlo and Christian democrats Professor Pieter Kooijmans and Hans van den Broek. Former EU commissioner and ex-Finance minister Frans Andriessen is also a supporter.
International law
Mr Andriessen told our reporter, “Israel owes its very founding and existence to international law. Israel was founded on condition that there would be two states, which never happened. I believe that Israel should respect the same international law in its contacts with the Palestinians.”
The Rights Forum wants Israel to stop building settlements on Palestinian territory, and to tear down the wall between the West Bank and Israel. The group wants to raise diplomatic pressure on Israel, and says the Netherlands should take the lead.
Mr Andriessen said, “The Netherlands are nearly always siding with those who put on the brakes when sanctions against Israel are mooted. That will have to change. It should be made clear to Israel that it can no longer oppress the Palestinians, humiliating them and keeping them poor. Because that is exactly what is happening.”
(Haaretz) – The emotion in Andreas Van Agt’s voice as he lambastes Israel’s behavior seems puzzling for a man of his status. It is especially intriguing when one is reminded that this blue-eyed professed idealist is an astute statesman who presided as the Dutch prime minister for five years, until 1982.
“My involvement in the Middle East is certainly unusual,” Van Agt confessed in an interview with Haaretz at his home in Nijmegen, where he discussed Israel, the Palestinians, European foreign policy, the Holocaust and anti-Semitism.
Currently, Van Agt is writing a book about the Israeli-Arab conflict. In December he launched an info-site about the subject, in which he accuses Israel of brutal treatment of the Palestinians, violating international law and implementing racist policies.
Van Agt hails from the ranks of the ruling party, the Christian Democratic Appeal. Such statements about Israel can therefore be seen as embarrassing for the current leadership, which is considered one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in the European Union.
Delegation headed by former Dutch prime minister Van Agt witness restrictions on movement
Ashamed for lack of knowledge on plight of Palestinian people
His penchant for criticizing Israel to varying degrees of acrimoniousness was not characteristic of his term in office. “The Dutch Jimmy Carter”, as local media sometimes dub him, says he became vocal after 1999, when his “eyes were opened” during a traditional catholic pilgrimage trip to religious sites in the Holy Land.
“I’m driven partly by my shame for not speaking up for the Palestinians when I was in power, and partly by some striking experiences I had when visiting the Occupied Territories in the recent past,” he says. “People often ask me how come I’m so outspoken now, but did not speak up when I was in a position of power. And it’s true, I never spoke up for the Palestinians, except for when Sabra and Shatila happened. And even that was in soft terms.”
Van Agt says he is still “ashamed” that he made effort to sooth matters for Israel after the 1982 massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese Christian militiamen in an IDF-controlled area of Lebanon. “That was my inclination, that was how I was mentally structured vis-à-vis Israel at the time,” he says.
But much more than Sabra and Shatila, it was the story of one Palestinian young man from Bethlehem which put Van Agt on his present course, according to the ex-premier.
“In one of my visits to Bethlehem I heard a story, which now I know is just one of many,” Van Agt recalls. “It was a story horrendous humiliation of a Palestinian student trying to get to university for a collective exam. His story, which the university president told me, struck me like lightening.”
At the last IDF checkpoint on the way, according to the story which Van Agt says he heard from the university president, the student was pulled over and ordered to climb out of the window. “Then the humiliation began. He fell down and was then ordered to walk on hands and feet and bark. Then the soldiers laughed about the Palestinians all being dogs.”
A Palestinian deaf student obtains the “Tawjihi” Certificate
(Zionism-Israel) – In a long interview with Dutch former PM Andreas van Agt on June 27, 2008, Haaretz calls his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ‘unusual’ and gives him ample room to explain these views, and to portray himself as an independent voice speaking out of humanitarian concern for the plight of the Palestinians. Regrettably, his anti-Israel views are not that unusual in the Netherlands these days. They are shared by a number of politicians from different parties and persuasions. While they are quite mainstream on the political left, these views are by no means confined to the left, as Van Agt’s example shows.
Conservative applauded by the left
Dries van Agt, a member of the mostly conservative Christian Democratic party (CDA), was a student at the Gymnasium Augustinianum, a Roman-Catholic secondary school in Eindhoven in the south of the Netherlands. The school was well known for its old fashioned Catholicism, maintaining for example for a long time the prayer mentioning the Judaei Perfides, the perfidious Jews. One wonders how much the young Van Agt was influenced by this religious inspired anti-Semitism, which was quite common in the Roman Catholic church before the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65.
A close buddy of Van Agt is former Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek, also a member of the CDA and a product of a classic Catholic upbringing, and also a vocal critic of Israel, as are a number of other members of the CDA. When Van Agt and Van den Broek were in the government in the 1970s and 1980s, most Dutch parties still strongly supported Israel, and criticizing Israel was a sensitive issue. However when others became more openly critical of Israel in the 1990s and particularly during the Second Intifada, people like Van Agt joined them, claiming their eyes had been opened by the stories of Israel’s abuse of Palestinians.
Israel-bashers always hold a double standard on rights abuse
9 July 2004 – The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion today that Israel’s building of a barrier in the occupied Palestinian territory is illegal and said construction must stop immediately and Israel should make reparations for any damage caused.
Responding to a request from the United Nations General Assembly, the World Court’s opinion said the Assembly and the Security Council should consider what steps to take “to bring to an end the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall and the associated régime, taking due account of the present Advisory Opinion.”
By a majority of 14 to 1, the judges found that the barrier’s construction breaches international law, saying it violated principles outlined in the UN Charter and long-standing global conventions that prohibit the threat or use of force and the acquisition of territory that way, as well as principles upholding the right of peoples to self-determination.
Observing that 80 per cent of Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territory now live between the barrier and the so-called Green Line marking the 1949 boundary of Israel, the Court said the structure’s route could “prejudge the future frontier between Israel and Palestine.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
