Amsterdam: Jalal Al-Baz’s elder daughter did not celebrate her birthday this year. It was on October 9, two days after the first anniversary of the war in Gaza. “We are devastated,” he said.
Since October 7 last year, Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinians – including around 16,000 children – and displaced nearly all of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents in an offensive that began after Hamas’s attack that killed around 1,200 Israeli citizens and soldiers, among others.
Al-Baz is 56 years old. A sociologist by training, he works with refugees from the Middle East as well as eastern European countries, helping them integrate into Dutch society. He teaches them Dutch, educates them about Dutch culture and helps them find a job.
A refugee himself – born in Jordan, to where his parents fled after the destruction of their village during the Nakba of 1948 – he came to the Netherlands three decades ago. The Nakba refers to the attacks that took place in 1948 against Palestinians after the creation of Israel.
His elder brother, Ibrahim Al-Baz, was already living here, having moved to the Netherlands after being arrested and jailed in the early ‘70s for smuggling bombs to Berlin.
“It was temporary. I wanted to go to the US for studies,” he said, standing at the Dam Square – which was filled with protesters demanding an immediate end to the Israeli offensive in Gaza – on October 13.
But he stayed on. He shares custody of his two grown-up daughters with his Dutch wife, from whom he is now separated.
From the stage, Palestinian journalist Taghreed El-Khodary denounced the Israeli government: “We need a political solution based on United Nations resolutions and international law. The Israeli government is not interested in diplomacy. They say no to peace for resistance. They say no to violent resistance. What the hell do they want?”
A protester holds up a placard. Photo: Abhimanyu Kumar.
Many protesters held placards; one of them said ‘Stop the Violence’; another said ‘Zionism Is Not Judaism, Anti-Zionism Is Not Anti-Semitism’; yet another read ‘Stop Arming Israel’.
“And our Dutch government … They say they are against refugees. How come they are not standing against war?”, El-Khodary asked.
Her remarks on the Dutch government’s role elicited the loudest clapping from the crowd.
Protesters, rights groups critical of Dutch government’s role in conflict
Protests over what is being called ‘Dutch complicity’ with Israel have been taking place regularly: at the Dam Square, in front of the central station in Amsterdam and other train stations in the Netherlands, and in universities. They have peaked since the one-year anniversary of the start of war in Gaza, and the last protest on Dam Square turned confrontational, with several protesters being arrested.
Baz spotted an MP from a Dutch party on the Left at the protest and pointed him out to me. “History doesn’t start from October 7. It starts with the Nakba,” he insisted. He believes there is “growing sympathy” for Palestine in the Netherlands and that there exists a “gap” between Dutch people and the government, which leans to the Right.
“Even voters of right-wing parties want justice for Palestine. The Dutch government does not represent the feelings of the people,” he claimed.
An opinion poll conducted in May this year reported that most Dutch people would like a ceasefire in Gaza and for the Dutch government to stop selling weapons to Israel.
Curiously, coverage of the protest is difficult to find in the newspapers the next day. When asked about it, Thomas Van Gool, an expert on the Israel-Palestine dispute with the NGO Pax, which was one of the main organisers of the event and which commissioned the poll mentioned above, is careful not to generalise beyond a point but agrees that the media does not pay enough attention to such protests.
“There was not much coverage,” he says over the phone a couple of days after it took place. “[A lot] more could be done to explain the role of the Dutch government [to the public]”.
Critics of the Dutch government point to its sale of arms to Israel, especially parts of the F-35 fighter jet, which an appeals court earlier this year ordered a halt to citing concerns of their potential use in violating international law in Gaza.
The government implemented the ban but appealed it, and rights groups argued that the Dutch government was exporting F-35 parts to the US, which in turn sent them to Israel.
The European Legal Support Centre, a Europe-based NGO with offices in London, Berlin and Amsterdam, along with other rights organisations from the Netherlands, sued the government over the issue earlier this month.
“In July 2024, the ICJ [International Court of Justice] determined that all states have the obligation to prevent and abstain from economic dealings that assist Israel’s unlawful policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The court case filed today seeks to bring an end to Dutch trade and investment relations that help maintain the illegal occupation, racial segregation and colonisation through settlements,” the ELSC said in a statement published on its website on October 10.
It added: “The Netherlands must take effective measures to that effect and push other states to do the same.”
The Nederlands Palestina Komitee is among the organisations that filed the case against the Dutch government. Its chair Robert Soeterik told The Wire that public discourse in the Netherlands has remained focused, especially during the commemoration of the one-year anniversary of the war, “on Jews in Dutch society and their experience of antisemitism”.
“It is the same in the US and other European countries. There has been an instrumentalisation of antisemitism to put pressure on those who speak in favour of Palestine and to make their motives seem suspect. But the opposition to Israel is political and concerns the history of colonialism and an ongoing genocide,” he told The Wire.
Berlin considers law to expel activist students
Germany, whose capital Berlin reportedly has the largest population of Palestinians in Europe, has been particularly severe on protests against Israel and many activists have been arrested in police crackdowns on protests. Al Jazeera reported in April that local prosecutors had registered 2,140 possible criminal cases and launched over 380 investigations between October 7 last year and mid-February 2024.
Germany set up a special task force for dealing with the situation arising from protests over Palestine on October 10 last year. The slogan ‘From the river to the sea’ has been criminalised.
Taghreed El-Khodary addresses the protest at Dam Square. Photo: Abhimanyu Kumar.
The country is also considering the reintroduction of an old law that will allow the government to expel students for activism.
In Berlin, the ruling coalition government introduced a new draft law in March to bring back the power to expel students for disciplinary reasons, Al Jazeera reported. It added that the law was first introduced in the ‘60s in response to left-wing radicalism on campus, where students held demonstrations against the Vietnam War and the rehabilitation of Nazi officials by West Germany’s government.
There have been reports suggesting that Germany will not grant citizenship to those who do not support Israel’s right to exist.
However, Nin Solis, a Mexican photographer living in the Neukolln neighbourhood of Berlin, said that she was not asked about her views on the subject before being granted her German passport in July.
Home to a large Arab population, Neukolln has seen many protests in the last year.
“Perhaps it is applicable currently in other regions, but it is not being implemented in Berlin,” she told The Wire.
Solis, who has been active in protesting against the Israeli offensive in Gaza, said there was a certain fatigue among protesters, but that the protests have continued. “The neighbourhood remains full of cops.”
Regarding charges that the police have acted brutally towards protesters, she pointed out that sometimes protesters also provoke the police by acting aggressively, such as by throwing fireworks at them. “They are tired and angry and rightly so.”
Nevertheless, many reports have noted several instances of the police dealing with the protesters in a heavy-handed manner.
Solis alleged that no public institution in Germany can criticise Israel. “It is completely prohibited to do so.”
German weapons exports to Israel create consternation
Germany, like the Netherlands, has been sending weapons to Israel, which has led to a case against it in the ICJ brought by Nicaragua. According to Shir Hever, an activist closely tracking the situation, Germany is trying to justify its actions by distinguishing between ‘weapons of war’ and other weapons, and claiming that it only sent those under the latter category to Israel.
“Germany has been sending motors for tanks to Israel. These tanks run on German engines and they are being used to run over people in Gaza, which makes it a war crime,” he alleged. The allegation could not be independently verified.
Hever also alleged that Germany was letting Tel Aviv use its Heron drones stationed in Israel for its Gaza offensive.
According to a Reuters report, approvals for German defence exports to Israel rose in value by ten times between 2022 and 2023 to €326.5 million ($351 million) as the country began treating permit requests as a priority after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
However, the German tabloid Bild on October 13 reported that arms exports to Israel had been blocked by ministers from the Green Party, which rules Germany in a coalition with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party. Citing Bild, DW wrote that they demanded that the Israeli government confirm in writing that the exports “not be used for genocide” and that this written confirmation had since been reportedly given.
In the last three months, Germany sent weapons worth $100 million to Israel, Reuters reported.
‘Guilt in French society makes it more sympathetic to Israel’: activist
The situation in France is hardly different, says Edouard Soulier, a French activist associated with the ‘Boycott, Divest, Sanction’ campaign against Israel. French authorities have banned many pro-Palestinian protests.
According to Soulier, several organisations, some of whom were active in protests, have been forced to shut down. Others, including members of leftist political parties, have been harassed as ‘terror apologists’ for not condemning Hamas.
“Since France collaborated with the Nazis, there exists a guilt in French society that makes it more sympathetic to Israel,” he claimed. Soulier alleged that this goes together with laws against the hijab, the surveillance of mosques and, sometimes, the mocking of Muslims.
“Repression has become worse since October 7 this year,” he told The Wire.
However, French president Emmanuel Macron called for an arms embargo earlier this month, leading to an angry response from Israel.
Protests in Ireland too; legislation proposed to restrict ties with Israeli settlements
Ireland is an exception, although as Zoe Lawlor, chair of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Committee (IPSC) points out, the government is not doing as much as it could or should be doing on the issue.
Earlier this year, Ireland recognised Palestine as an independent state. Lawlor believes it was due to sustained protests on the ground that forced the government to take the step. “140 countries in the world already recognise Palestine. The government wanted to do something as it was under pressure.”
According to Lawlor, Palestine is “a big issue” in Ireland. “We share the colonial experience with the Palestinians,” she explained over the phone from Ireland. “There are protests every week in Limerick where I live. In Dublin, there is a protest every month. All polls show that people want sanctions on Israel and believe Israel is an apartheid state.”
Also read: What Israel’s Eroding Impunity Means for India
She criticised the government for not “taking concrete action” on the issue.
Currently, Ireland’s legislature is considering three new Bills. One aims to restrict trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, one to have the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund divest all holdings in companies that operate in these settlements, and the other to restrict the transit or export of weapons to Israel through Ireland.
Lawlor also mentioned an investigation by Irish website The Ditch, which reported that American weapons were routed through the Shannon Airport in Ireland to Israel.
“There was a big demonstration there last week. Two demonstrations have been carried out by the IPSC there before that,” Lawlor told The Wire.
Just like Ireland, Spain and Norway have also acknowledged Palestine as a state. But many European countries continue to not do so. As of late last year the EU was the largest donor to Palestine, sometimes contributing over a billion dollars annually for supporting the country financially.
But since the start of the war, most EU countries have backed Israel. “Europe is still living with its colonial heritage,” said Baz. According to Soeterik, Israel represents the West in the Middle East, which is an important strategic consideration for the EU, among other things.
“They continue to support it even when Israel acts against European interests in the region,” Soeterik told The Wire.
Van Gool pointed out that there was a “big division” over the Palestine issue in the European Union Commission. “Ursula von der Leyen has made statements which show support for Israel. There is no willingness in the EU to sanction Israel. But Josep Borrell has been outspoken [in favour of Palestine]. The EU needs to do more.”
Leyen is the president of the EU Commission and Borrell is the vice-president and in-charge of the organisation’s foreign policy.
‘India was on the right side of history before’
Baz, who lives in Vlaardingen, near Rotterdam, home to over 5,000 Palestinians, is aware of the Indian position on the issue, which has been historically pro-Palestine but has seen a shift in recent times, especially under the Modi government, which has been close to the Israeli leadership.
Last year, India abstained from voting on a resolution seeking a ceasefire in Gaza in the UN because the draft note did not condemn Hamas. However, it later did vote on another similarly worded resolution.
“Mahatma Gandhi was the first person to refuse Zionism. Gandhi did not want to cooperate with Zionists. Gandhi and his party were important supporters of the Palestine case at the UN. India, one of the important countries in the world, is being neutral now. The current government is not completely pro-Israel, but Palestinians are angry and afraid about the military relationship between India and Israel. India was on the right side of history before,” he says.
The Wire has previously reported that India sent Hermes drones manufactured by the Adani Group to Israel.
By the evening, the Dam Square slowly emptied out, taken over by pigeons and tourists. Some protesters were still around, such as Max, who wore the Palestinian flag.
Like others, he too criticised the Dutch government for its alleged complicity. “They deny the right of Palestinians to exist freely and peacefully; deny the history of the Nakba; deny that Palestinians have a home.”
For Max, protests over Palestine denote a larger anger in society towards the “global elite system of rule which profits from wars”.
Solis too believes that European nations are sending arms to Israel in order to profit from the war in Gaza and to bolster their economies, which have been hit adversely due to the war in Ukraine, among other things.
She added that other than being violative of international law, Europe’s military and moral support to Israel exposed its hypocrisy since its policies on protecting human rights did not seem to be applicable to the rest of the world.
“They speak of liberty and democracy and preach their virtues to the world. But they apply their ideology only in the Anglo-Saxon world,” she said.
Abhimanyu Kumar is a journalist based in India and the Netherlands, writing on politics and culture.
