A Socialist Who Stands With the (Dead) Jews

Last weekend I posted about a notorious Socialist Party member of the Dutch Parliament, Harry van Bommel, who expressed solidarity with Muslim extremists by calling for a new intifada against Israel. Now it appears that he may be banned from joining the annual Auschwitz commemoration later this month.

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an essay on the topic by Carel Brendel:

Socialist Harry van Bommel shows his solidarity with murdered Jews

By Carel Brendel

Who said the Left and extreme Left-wing people only stand up for oppressed Muslims? The Socialist Party and the Left surely show their solidarity with Jews. With murdered Jews, to be precise.

The organization Nederland Bekent Kleur (NBK, Netherlands Admits Color) of super-activist René Danen and Trotskyite Miriyam Aouragh [of the International Socialists], for example organized a commemoration of the Kristallnacht of November 1938, the violent beginning of the persecution of Jews in Germany. That was an amazing example, because the NBK-activist Aouragh earlier stood out as a speaker in the commemoration of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of the terrorist organization Hamas and the person who embedded the murder of Jews in the Hamas charter.

The former Mayor of Amsterdam, Ed van Thijn [PvdA, Labour] served as the fig leaf for this embarrassing display. This was not received with gratitude. The criticism in the Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad [“New Israelite Weekly”], a weekly magazine of the Jewish community, was devastating. Chief Editor Paul Damen painted Van Tijn as “A marionette for terrorist trash.”

It was remarkable that some participants in the commemoration hijacked by Leftists covered themselves with the keffiyeh or kefiya, also known as the “Arafat-shawl”. This shawl appears in all shapes and sizes. In this case the commemorators wore a red keffiyeh, the color of the terror movements Hamas and Hezbollah, those who strive for the destruction of Israel and Judaism. A quite sinister dress code for the commemoration of the beginning of the persecution of the Jews.

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If De Volkskrant blogger Sabra Dahhan has her say, all progressive people must take the keffiyeh out of the closet now as a protest against the Israeli violence in Gaza. Dahhan: “In past years, the fashion-minded Dutch almost forgotten about the Palestinian cause. They started wearing the keffiyeh and singing intifada purely and simply because it was ‘cool’. Perhaps more so now, with the situation in Gaza and — due to Harry van Bommel — the demonstrated sensitivity to Palestinian slogans and attributes, it is time for a new revival of the keffiyeh.”

This certainly seems to me to be a good tip, especially for Harry van Bommel, who shows solidarity with everything and everyone. Last Saturday (January 3) the SP parliamentarian chanted intifada, intifada in the company of Gretta Duisenberg. Earlier on, Van Bommel was very understanding towards Al-Yaqeen, the website of the Salafi hate preacher Fawaz Jneid. When it comes to the right cause, Dirty Harry even demonstrates in the company of Saddam supporters, Jihadists, Stalinists and neo-Nazis, for example during the Iraq demonstration on October 26, 2002.

At the same time, “Hamas, Hamas, all Jews to the gas” was also chanted. In that respect there was nothing new under the sun last Saturday in Amsterdam. On April 13, 2002, the Hamas motto was chanted out loud at the SP-supported anti-Israel demonstration, which has become notoriously known as “the greatest manifestation of anti-Semitism since 1945”. Shocked by the outburst of hatred, MPs for the CDA, ChristenUnie, D66, VVD and SGP demanded clarifications from the Cabinet [then made up of PvdA, VVD and D66]. The SP didn’t feel included, nor did the PvdA [Labour] or GroenLinks [Green Left].

This is not due to a lack of compassion for his fellow Jewish man. On January 25, the SP parliamentarian Van Bommel will be present in Amsterdam at the annual Auschwitz commemoration (in the agenda of the SP they write “Auswitz”). A nice opportunity to follow Sabra Dahhans’ clothing advice. Commemorating with a keffiyeh is in fashion these days. This way Harry van Bommel can show how far his solidarity with murdered Jews reaches.

Carel Brendel is the author of Het verraad van links [“The Betrayal of the Left”] (published by Aspekt)

VH adds this update:

Lodewijk Nasser of the Dutch blog Het Vrije Volk also wrote about the Auschwitz invitation yesterday. Van Bommel in the meanwhile states he has been misunderstood; by “intifada” he did not mean to call for violence, but for a nonviolent protest against the Israeli “occupation”. Today Lodewijk Nasser reports that the Auschwitz Committee is considering canceling the invitation to Van Bommel.