Rutte defends mayor after Wilders condemns Holocaust museum demo
- Published in Soualiga Newsday Focus
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Demonstrators outside the National Holocaust Museum on Sunday. Photo: Paulo Amorim/Sipa USA
SINT MAARTEN/THE NETHERLANDS – Caretaker prime minister Mark Rutte has defended Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema after she came under fire from PVV leader Geert Wilders over the weekend demonstrations outside the National Holocaust Museum.
Wilders took time out from coalition talks at the Zwaluwenberg estate outside Hilversum on Monday to attack the mayor on social media over what he called an “unprecedented scandal”.
Hundreds of protesters turned out at the opening of the museum to voice their objection to the presence of Israeli president Isaac Herzog and his country’s military intervention in Gaza.
Wilders intimated it was a political decision by the “extreme left-wing mayor of Amsterdam”. But Rutte said that while everyone had hoped the opening of the museum would pass off peacefully, decisions by mayors on public order issues were non-political.
The demonstration has divided public opinion in Amsterdam. The VVD group on the city council has demanded an emergency debate after anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas slogans were chanted by some protesters.
“Intimidating”
Eddo Verdoner, the national co-ordinator for combating anti-Semitism, described the atmosphere as “intimidating and terrifying”. Thirteen out of the crowd of around 2,000 people were arrested.
Other demonstrators held banners saying “Never again is now” – a reference to the Holocaust – and “Jews against genocide”, or directing the Israeli president to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
A spokesman for Halsema said the law allowed demonstrations to be held “within sight and earshot” of people they were directed at.
Parties on the left, such as D66 and Labour (PvdA), have said the demonstrators had the right to protest, but acknowledged that it carried responsibilities.
Wilders replied to Rutte on X that he was “supporting Dutch Jews” while the prime minister chose the side of the mayor. But while some members of the Jewish community denounced the protests against president Herzog, others sympathised with them.
GroenLinks-PvdA MP Laura Bromet, who lost members of three generations of her family in the Holocaust, said she found Herzog’s visit in the midst of the war in Gaza “painful”.
(DutchNews)