What happened to the Netherlands? The new law reveals a deep and dangerous change | Zalman Shoval

The Netherlands is not the only European country boycotting Israeli goods from the settlements, but a new law it recently passed is stricter than laws adopted by other countries on the continent, including Spain, Ireland, and Belgium. The Dutch law also applies the boycott to products from the Golan Heights — to its Jewish and Druze population — and thus effectively establishes a political position that rejects the Israeli status in the Golan from the outset.

It is possible that the fact that the International Criminal Court, which is biased against Israel, is located in the Netherlands also has an influence on Israel's status in Dutch politics. The new law also prohibits local trade in products originating from the settlements, or generally from areas beyond the Green Line, such as the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea, and it is also personal and could contain penalties for citizens who purchase these products — even if they were outside the borders of the Netherlands at the time of purchase.

The percentage of exports from the settlements to the Netherlands out of Israel's total exports is tiny, but that is not the point. The point is the expanding trend of various boycotts, including academic and cultural ones, which in the end could also lead to political decisions in the European Union, in which the Netherlands plays a central role.

What happened to the Netherlands, which was previously considered friendly to Israel? In this matter, there are different sides, some of which contradict the image that the Dutch wanted and succeeded in cultivating. Let us not be misled by the Anne Frank House or the Dutch Holocaust Museum, the Ajax Amsterdam football club, or the 17th-century paintings of Jews by Rembrandt.

The history of the Netherlands in World War II, and the collaboration that took place there with the Nazis, is more severe than that of other countries in Western Europe, including France and Belgium. There were indeed brave underground fighters who risked their lives, there was a workers' strike for the sake of the Jews, there were individual families, like in Germany itself, who hid Jews, but 75% of the Jews of the Netherlands, 102 thousand out of 140 thousand, were murdered in the death camps — more than in any other Western European country.

The German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940 did not encounter resistance. Unlike the situation in most other countries occupied by Germany, the occupation in the Netherlands, at least in its early years, was relatively light and received cooperation from a large part of the population.

The legal government of the Netherlands and its royal house were indeed able to escape and declare from their seat in Britain the continuation of the war, but in practice, the local administration remained in place and continued to manage the country and its various branches under not very tight supervision of the occupation authorities. Hitler saw the Dutch as members of the Aryan race, and most Dutch people did not see a special reason to disagree with him when it worked in their favor.

We will not judge the current generation in the Netherlands for the sins of previous generations, but if there were a prize in the world for the successful change of a national and historical image, it would be awarded to the Netherlands, which in an unprecedented public relations operation managed to create for itself an image of a brave and uncompromising fighter, supposedly, against the Nazis and as a protector of the lives of its Jewish citizens. The reality, as we have seen, was more complex.

In the Netherlands, as in other countries in Europe, there is today a growing Muslim population that constitutes a factor with considerable weight in local elections and in politics in general. Picking on Israel is a convenient means for gaining votes and neutralizing conflicts on other issues. In recent years, another dimension has been added to this. Just as in the United States the extreme left spreads a malicious lie as if Jews had a part in the slave trade, so the "colonialist" Israel pays the price in the Netherlands for the colonialism of the Netherlands itself in its former colonies in Southeast Asia.

There are Dutch politicians like Geert Wilders who see what is coming — not only in the context of Israel but in the matter of the future of the Netherlands itself — but they are still in the minority. In the meantime, one should not expect good news from The Hague.