Monday, November 5, 2012

How to incite hatred against Israel even when it comes about the Netherlands.

On Monday, November 5th, 2012, El País published an article about the problems of the new Dutch coalition cabinet (composed of liberals and social democrats), under the title El Gobierno de centroizquierda holandés se estrena con un alza de costes sanitarios (The Dutch centre-left Government makes its debut with a rise in sanitary costs). In the second paragraph is written the following (translated as accurate as possible, between quotation marks):

"The last Dutch centre-right government (in minority), headed by [Mark] Rutte himself, had to hand over the demands made by the xenophobic leader, Geert Wilders, in exchange of his support in the Parliament, and aligning himself with Israel. That produced moments of major embarrasment for a country which has boasted about its tolerance. At the beginning of this year, for example, the Netherlands were the only E.U. member which rejected to address a report concerning the violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians."

One could ask Isabel Ferrer, the author of the article and El País' correspondet to The Hague, why being aligned with Israel prevents a sovereign State like the Netherlands to be still considered a tolerant country; specially when an A.D.L. report published in March 2012 shows that Spain is less tolerant than the Netherlands towards Jews by almost all indicators, as well as the most intolerant country (when compared to Poland, Russia, Germany, France, the U.K. and the United States) towards Jews and muslims, according to a Pew Research Center report published in 2008.

1 comment:

  1. Great article. I have cross-posted it on my own blog in the US.

    http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2012/12/spains-slanted-press.html

    ReplyDelete