The elites in the Netherlands will stay anti-Jewish for now

I’ve mentioned before that the elites in the Netherlands are the most anti-Jewish on average though they typically hide that and claim their innocence saying things like “But I have Jews under my best friends. I’ve even played tennis with one.” Not anymore. Not that they now suddenly and en masse turned really allies of Jews. No, the other change: they’re not hiding irritation about Jews anymore.

Like the joke of the man who says to his friend: “You planned to take your son to a psychologist because he was so ashamed for still bedwetting. Did you go?” “Yes.” “And did it help?” “Totally. He’s no longer ashamed of it.”

I don’t know personally any of the 573 and counting academics who signed a Dutch-English anti-Israel petition. They “call on the Dutch government to take action to achieve a just peace by cutting all economic, political, and military relations with Israel.” They also call on the academic world to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Since the Netherlands used to be a colonial power, they think it important to support the decolonization of Palestine. They defend this with the well-known most recent infamously mendacious reports by B’tselem and Human Rights Watch. We’re not surprised that their Dutch sister organization brings the news prominently.

I may not know them but we have the names (and workplaces) of those who signed and there is something in a name. Maybe not in every individual name but on a group of names, some conclusions can be proposed. Because I saw so many Muslim names, I decided to count the names in line with their apparent ethnicity.

  • Some 22 names (4%) on the list may be typically Jewish though they don’t have to be themselves. More likely, they indicate someone with a Jewish father, grandfather, or father-in-law. (Dutch intermarried Jews were last on the Nazi list for transportation and the war was over before their turn had come. Therefore, someone with a typically Jewish family name from the Netherlands is most of the time not Jewish for Orthodox-Jewish Law. Jews there on average have a non-Jewish last name.)
  • Some 316 names (55%) seem typically not autochthon Dutch. Of them, 129 seem Muslim (23% of the total list). Again, this might indicate someone with foreign roots, a child or a partner of someone with an immigrant background, or an autochthon-Dutch person who converted to Islam.
  • And some 235 names (41%) seem typically autochthon Dutch (the Netherlands and Belgium). Again, they might just be married to someone with a Dutch Christian name.

I was curious enough to hold an absolutely unrepresentative sample of at least one from the above groups I created. But not a random name. Since the list is not alphabetical but apparently in order of signing, I took the first of each group.

Jewish

The first signee with a Jewish name. In this case a first name.

Sai Englert is a lecturer at Leiden University. We hit the jackpot. Five years ago the BBC identified him as a Jewish student. Then he was also pleading for Palestinians but very much against BDS. Not anymore, it seems. His professional page mentions that he also works on ‘settler colonialism.’ Not your average right-winger, it seems.

He also writes about Antisemitism. From him this beauty: “The contemporary struggle against anti-Semitism cannot be … effective without demanding that the fate of Jewish communities be disentangled from … the continuation of Israeli settler-colonialism.”

His family name is British and he doesn’t look very Dutch. His Dutch mother (?) is an assistant professor and also on the list.

A fuller scope of his hatred for the Jews of Israel becomes clear with him chanting for genocide: “Oh Qassam, Oh friend, strike, strike Tel Aviv”:

Immigrant or Muslim

The first seemingly immigrant signee is Dr. Saori Shibata. She comes from the UK and lectures about changes in the Japanese economy.

The first seemingly Muslim signee is Dr. Sheikh Shams Morsalin. However, he’s an associate professor from Ghent University, Belgium.

The first Dutch Muslim signee seems to be Dr. Haneen Omari. On her professional web page, she compares Jews in Israel to cancer cells. I would say: I love you too.

Christian or Secular

The first seemingly autochthon signee also opens the list of the signees. Dr. Christian Henderson.  Doesn’t his first name say it all?

On his professional web page, he defines himself as “a scholar of political economy and development in the Middle East.” He also was an Al Jazeera journalist in Qatar. Not my idea of an independent scientist. Engaged yes, independent no. Neither Al Jazeera nor Qatar would tolerate evenhanded reporting.

So, we are not surprised to find a May 15, 2021, Twitter message from him that reads: “I am an academic and I call for a free Palestine and an end to the Israeli state’s apartheid. This is integral to both my moral world view and my scholarship” – not a friend of Israel or the Jews, so to see. In fact, the web has many examples of his hostility to the Jewish State.

Not recommended to listen to this interview with him. Every third word is “eh.” What a great lecturer. That sometimes indicates a con artist. I have found that there are no honest leading Israel haters. They’re all big liars. They don’t have different views from Zionists, they rather have alternative ‘facts.’ Also, not an ounce of humility what he says about academics.

The top 20 of the list counts many people from Leiden University so he likely first went around to his local buddies to sign. During WW II, the Rector Magnificus of Leiden was the only academic in the Netherlands who closed the university when the Nazi occupier excluded the Jews. Therefore, Leiden has a name to uphold. And yes, the present University Head rejects the call to boycott by some 140 of her employees which she calls at odds with the Dutch Constitution that forbids discrimination! But then, Henderson volunteers to this most prestigious but fiercely anti-Israel Dutch newspaper that he aims at “boycotting institutions, not people.” There went my last hope that he could be just an honest idiot. The above quotes show that signees are very much hateful of Israelis, not just Israel.

Anti-Jewish After the War

One of the signees works at the wrong workplace for this. It concerns a researcher from the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies. South African Kylie Thomas studies women, photography, and resistance in and after WW II. Someone who researches WW II in the Netherlands should not favor an academic boycott of Israel. Ex-Nazis seem OK but not people who still don’t want the Dutch to buy from Jews.

Conclusion

This boycott is the reverse of what should happen. In the Netherlands, like in neighboring Germany, the autochthons should insist that new immigrant unlearn their antisemitism. Instead, the newly Dutch have helped the Dutch who strongly dislike Jews to come out of the closet.

Recently, the Dutch King and PM movingly (and finally) have apologized for the lack of resistance against and collaboration with the Nazi Holocaust during WW II. But the process of ending Jew-hatred under the population (and in the national news media), especially among the well-to-do, has not even gotten started. An exception is the Dutch Evangelicals.

Also Tue, Germany?

PS: Seeing the international anti-Zionist support at the Dutch universities, it should come as no surprise that we’re dealing with an international phenomenon, old-school Western Jew-haters teaming up with old-school Muslim Jew-haters. And, indeed, in Germany now, the same is found.

The Times of Israel rejected this blog post commenting with a sweeping generalization: “This post is not accepted for publication. It contains sweeping generalizations against an entire class of people, and singles out individuals as well.” What they try to hide in their vague rejection is that the TOI is allergic for any criticism of Muslims and groups of Muslims. You need to write before and after any criticism of any of them that you don’t mean all Muslims. Even when they are Israel-haters (antisemites). Never mind that the source of every harsh criticism is given in a hyperlink. Their always growing animosity against me makes that they don’t even give me a chance to edit it to their liking anymore. In the past, I’ve tried arguing with them which has let them to verbal abuse me and close my blog. Sad.


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