Following an outcry, Dutch church leaders who recently visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem removed a reference to the alleged plight of Palestinians from an online account of their visit.
Responding to criticism by Dutch Jewish groups and many Christians of the alleged affair, the Council of Churches in the Netherlands, the kingdom’s largest Christian umbrella group, said on Friday that accounts of the visit of five top members of Yad Vashem in November Jokha was not meant to equate Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians with the Holocaust.
The council said in a statement that the council had removed the controversial passage from the online version of the report about his visit.
Initial reports said Yad Vashem had also asked visitors to consider the plight of Christian Palestinians living in the West Bank, under what the document termed Israel’s “horrific occupation”.
The summary, which was recently published in a report on the council’s website, which also included an image of Anne Frank and a quote from her diary, drew criticism from Dutch Jewish groups and Christians as well as Dutch chief rabbis Binomien Jacobs and There have been many condemnations by Israel. Embassy in the Netherlands.
Critics accuse the council of trivializing the Holocaust to demonize Israel at a time when antisemitism is on the rise in the Netherlands and beyond.
In reporting on a November trip to Israel and the West Bank, the authors wrote that Yad Vashem “chronicles some of the darkest-darkest pages in our history,” adding that it made them wonder whether churches should be “more should have been steadfast” in protesting the killing of Jews and whether Christian Dutch leaders in particular “turned a blind eye to the pure evil of antisemitism.”
But then the author appeared to relate the Holocaust to the realities of life for some Palestinians today.
“A visit to Yad Vashem has another effect on us. We take with us what we have heard from Christian Palestinians and what we have seen: the walls, the fences and the checkpoints. Yad Vashem reflects the immeasurable evil and suffering of the Holocaust . We are well aware of this. And yet, in spite of us, the images of segregation and the ‘forbidden to Jews’ link us to what we have seen in recent times. The plea of the Christian Palestinians rings in our ears :Tell what you saw!, reads the report, which was written by René de Reuever, secretary general of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, a key constituent group in the Council of Churches, according to the Netherlands Dagblad daily.
Rabbi Benjamin Jacobs, head of the Inter-Provincial Chief Rabbinate in the Netherlands, called the council’s reference to the Palestinians “shocking, unfair, false and unexpected from friends who have recently criticized their own church’s failures to confront hatred”. accepted. [during the Holocaust],
Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs. (Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP)
The Israeli embassy in the Netherlands said in a statement that it was “shocked and disappointed” by the Council of Churches, whose reference to Yad Vashem reflected a “lack of adequate understanding” of the Holocaust in the Netherlands, the embassy wrote.
Christians for Israel, a pro-Israel international group based in the Netherlands, has also opposed the Council on the Language of the Church and called the revision of the text “too little, too late” and nothing more than “damage control”. Is.
A crowd gathers as Jews are deported from Oude Beijerland, Netherlands, during the Holocaust (Public Domain)
Roger van Oordt, former director of Christians for Israel, said in a statement: “There needs to be a real shift in the thinking of these church leaders to come to a better understanding of the unique situation of Israel and the Jewish people.” People.”
The Central Jewish Board of the Netherlands wrote a sharply worded letter to the Council of Churches, suggesting that “it would have been better if Vashem had not been visited and such an insulting comparison had been made.”
The Brussels-based European Jewish Federation wrote in a statement from its director, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, that the Council of Churches’ remarks may fall within the International Holocaust Remembrance Coalition’s definition of antisemitism.
