Geert Wilders and his Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV), “Party For Freedom,” burst out of the Netherlands’ political wilderness with a resounding victory last Wednesday, 11/22/23. Now endeavoring to cobble together a governing coalition, Wilders observed, aptly,
“The PVV is a broad popular party. The largest in the Netherlands. 2.4 million people voted for us. Highly and poorly educated, native and immigrant, workers, retirees, young people, and the elderly. From the city, the countryside. The PVV is for everyone.”
Just prior to the election, the Dutch CIDI (Centrum Informatie En Documentatie Israel) summarized PVV’s record on Israel and “Antisemitism,” Jew-hatred, including these unique declarations:
–the Dutch embassy in Israel must move to Jerusalem
–that Jordan (78% of the original Mandate for Palestine, and still Judenrein, “Jew-free,” by law) is the only true Palestinian state, and PVV does not favor the creation of another one
–support for Israeli settlements in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank)
–opposition to the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, subordinated to the Sharia
–commitment to fighting Antisemitism, as defined by the IHRA, and as promulgated, especially “from an Islamic point of view”
That commitment couldn’t be more timely given the dramatic, over 8-fold increase in Antisemitic incidents within the Netherlands since Hamas’ 10/7/23 jihad carnage in southern Israel.
When CIDI’s annual report for 2019 was released on 2/17/20, recording 182 Antisemitic incidents, its highest number ever registered since 1982, when monitoring began, Wilders inveighed against the denial of what the report’s findings actually substantiated. During a Parliamentary floor debate, Tuesday 2/18/20, eschewing the craven, vacuous platitudes of his colleagues, Wilders thundered,
“[I]t is almost nauseating. We’ve been talking about Antisemitism, here in the Lower House (of the Dutch Parliament) for ten minutes now. And nobody, really nobody has discussed the biggest cause of Antisemitism, which is of course Islam, and Islamization”
Observing that, “we have a million Muslims in the Netherlands right now,” and “Islam is synonymous with Jew-hatred,” Wilders demonstrated, accurately, how “intrinsic” Islamic Antisemitism was redolent within Islam’s defining text, the Qur’an:
“In the Koran its says that Jews are monkeys and pigs (Koran 5:60). That they are bad (5:79). That they cannot be trusted (5:13). That they are liars (2:100). That they are dishonest (3:78).”
Wilders concluded by demanding that his colleagues acknowledge,
“…there is a connection between mass immigration of people from Islamic countries, and Antisemitism…If you do not, you are selling politically correct nonsense.”
Irrefragable support for Wilders’ contention is provided by hard Western European data on both Antisemitic attitudes and non-lethal Antisemitic violence, or violent threats.
Data collected during the 2008 “Six Countries Study” (i.e., The Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, and Sweden) from ~9000 participants (3373 native Christians; 3344 Turkish Muslim immigrants; 2204 Moroccan Muslim immigrants) revealed that 45% of the Muslim immigrants, vs. 9% of native Christians, believed “Jews cannot be trusted.” While such hostility to Jews among “fundamentalist” Christians doubled to ~18%, over 70% of fundamentalist Muslims were hostile to Jews.
“Antisemitism in Brussels’ Schools,” a 426 pp. study, included data on the views within the young Belgian Muslim community, primarily, 12-18 year-olds, during 2011. A 354pp. follow-up study of Antwerp-Ghent youth was published in 2013. 2,837 students in 32 Dutch-speaking Brussels high schools were surveyed. Muslim respondents agreed with the following four statements—i.e., Antisemitic stereotypes—at disproportionate, 3.7-fold, to 7.0-fold, rates!: [I] “Jews want to dominate everything” (Muslims, 56.8%; non-Muslims, 10.5%); [II] “Most Jews think they’re better than others” (Muslims, 47.1%; non-Muslims, 12.9%); (III) “If you do business with Jews, you should be extra careful” (Muslims, 47.5%; non-Muslims, 12.9%); (IV) “Jews incite to war and blame others” (Muslims, 53.7%; non-Muslims, 7.7%). Antisemitic Muslim attitudes were unrelated to low educational level or social disadvantage. The 2013 study of 863 students from Ghent and Antwerp, including 346 Muslim students, confirmed these results. 45-50% of Muslim students evidenced Antisemitic attitudes, versus 10% of non-Muslims, consistent 4.5 to 5-fold excess rates. Gunther Jikeli’s 2011 study yielded concordant results. Jikeli, a Muslim convert, conducted 117 interviews with Muslims from Berlin, Paris, and London, whose mean age was 19 years old. Jikeli affirmed the centrality of Islam, “references to the Qur’an or the Hadith (traditions of Muhammad),” in shaping the Antisemitic views of young Muslim adults in Western Europe.
Anti-Defamation League surveys conducted in Belgium, Spain, Germany, Italy, The United Kingdom, and France, during 2015 and repeated in 2019, assessed the prevalence of “extreme Antisemitism”, defined as agreement with at least 6/11 Antisemitic stereotypes among Christians/non-Muslims, and Muslims. Both surveys revealed a nearly 3-fold increased rate of extreme Antisemitism within the Muslim, relative to the non-Muslim populations. Updated ADL findings from Belgium and France just published in May, 2023, were identical. The prevalence of extreme Antisemitism among French Muslims was 62%, vs. 15% in French Christians. For Belgium, extreme Antisemitism was observed in 52% of Muslims, vs. 21% of Christians.
Finally, a lone study of its kind, assessing non-lethal violence and violent threats targeting Jews, was conducted by FRA – European Union for Fundamental Rights, in 2012. Uniquely, it queried Jewish victims about the identity of those who attacked them, or threatened them with violence, asking them to recall their past 5-year experiences: “Thinking about the incident where somebody attacked or threatened you in a way that frightened you because you are Jewish–who did this to you?” There was a gross 2.2-fold excess occurrence of non-lethal violence, or violent threats against Western European Jews, by Muslims, relative to non-Muslims, collectively, who held designated, “right-wing”, “left-wing”, or “Christian” views.
Current Al-Azhar University Grand Imam, and Sunni Muslim Papal equivalent, Ahmad al-Tayeb, during an October, 2013 interview, riveting on Qur’an 5:82, re-affirmed, authoritatively, the canonical Islamic animus which fuels this global orgy of Muslim Jew-hatred, and violence. When no religious or political leader of stature spontaneously excoriated al-Tayeb for his public endorsement of “sacralized” Islamic Jew-hatred, I appealed to Geert Wilders. Alone, then as now, Wilders not only rebuked al-Tayeb’s statements, he extolled Pope Francis’ antithetical Evangelii Gaudium, which drew “the world’s attention to the indebtedness of Christianity to the Jews and their faith,” and contained a “sharp condemnation of the terrible persecutions which the Jews have endured from Christians in the past.”
An alleged post-October 7, 2023 epiphany of the liberal Jewish intelligentsia has occurred, embodied by journalist Bari Weiss, and her much ballyhooed 11/10/23 Federalist Society speech. In that address, Ms. Weiss proclaimed,
“Look at your enemies and your allies…I know that in the fight for the West, I know who my allies are.”
I maintain that unequivocal support for Wilders and the PVV—bold, informed truthtellers on Islam and the Jews—is a litmus test for the “post-October 7th” sincerity of Bari Weiss, and other avatars of the liberal Jewish intelligentsia.
