Dutch protest Israeli president’s presence at museum
The Netherlands opened the National Holocaust Museum with a ceremony presided over by the Dutch king as well as Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whose presence prompted protest because of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Demonstrators protest against Israel’s President Isaac Herzog attending the opening of the new National Holocaust Museum on March 10, 2024 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.(Photo by Paulo Amorim/Sipa USA)
The museum in Amsterdam tells the stories of some of the 102,000 Jews who were deported from the Netherlands and murdered in Nazi camps, as well as the history of their structural persecution under German World War II occupation before the deportations began.
The museum “gives a face and a voice to the Jewish victims of persecution in the Netherlands,” the Dutch King Willem-Alexander said in the address at the inaugural ceremony on Sunday.
Earlier, the king and the Israeli president visited Amsterdam’s famous Portuguese Synagogue.
Herzog hailed the Netherlands’s initiative to create a new Holocaust museum amid what he said was raising antisemitism around the world.
“At this pivotal moment in time, this institution sends a clear powerful statement,” Herzog said. “Remember! Remember the horrors born of hatred, antisemitism and racism, and never again allow them to flourish.”
Sunday’s ceremony came against a backdrop of Israel’s devastating attacks on Gaza that followed the deadly incursions by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7.
Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered amid tightened security at the Waterloo Square in central Amsterdam, near the museum and the synagogue, waving Palestinian flags, chanting “Never again is now,” and demanding an end of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
The protest leaders emphasised they were against Herzog’s presence, not the museum and what it commemorates.
“For us Jews, these museums are part of our history, of our past,” said Joana Cavaco, an anti-war activist with the Erev Rav Jewish collective, addressing the crowd ahead of the ceremony.
She added: “How is it possible that such a sacred space is being used to normalise genocide today?”
Herzog was among Israeli leaders cited in an order issued in January by the top United Nations court for Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza. He accused the International Court of Justice of misrepresenting his comments in the ruling.
“I was disgusted by the way they twisted my words, using very, very partial and fragmented quotes, with the intention of supporting an unfounded legal contention,” Herzog said, days after the ruling.
A pro-Palestinian Dutch organisation, The Rights Forum, called Herzog’s presence “a slap in the face of the Palestinians who can only helplessly watch how Israel murders their loved ones and destroys their land.”
In a statement, the Jewish Cultural Quarter that runs the museum said it is “profoundly concerned by the war and the consequences this conflict has had, first and foremost for the citizens of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.”
AAP
